Sunrise, FL. The beat goes on for the Florida Panthers.
The Florida Panthers kicked off their playoff run with a 3-2 win over the cross-state rival Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference First Round at Amerant Bank Arena on Sunday.
“We’ve been waiting all year for this moment, to have a chance to do what we didn’t do last year,” said forward Matthew Tkachuk, whose late empty-net goal held up as the winner. “You don’t even have to ask guys. You could see on their faces how fired up they were.”
Picking up right where he left off during his 57-goal regular season, Sam Reinhart opened the scoring and blew the roof off the jam-packed arena when the tipped a shot from Gustav Forsling past Andrei Vasilevskiy to give the Panthers a 1-0 lead at 6:17 of the first period.
The Panthers allowed zero scoring chances over the 4:09 their fourth line was deployed.
After going nearly 16 minutes without registering their first shot on goal, the Lightning broke through and evened the score late in the period when Brandon Hagel followed up on a shot from Anthony Cirelli and sent the rebound past Sergei Bobrovsky to make it 1-1 at 16:04.
Florida holds an all-time series record of 5-1 when leading 1-0 in a playoff series.
“The two guys that had the real challenge tonight were in the net. There were stretches of grind,” Panthers head coach Paul Maurice said. “Everyone knows the shooters are dangerous. Our first [goal] was a deflection. They’re just so hard to get in on.”
Shots after two periods: Florida 14, Tampa Bay 10. It tied the second-fewest shots the Panthers had through 40 minutes this season, and tied the third-fewest the Lightning had entering a third period.
The Panthers and Lightning will reconvene for Game 2 on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. ET.
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