SUNRISE, Fla. _ Trailing Columbus by a goal with just over two minutes left, the Panthers rallied to force overtime, but that momentum was short-lived.
Eighteen seconds into the extra period, Blue Jackets defenseman Seth Jones scored off an assist from Pierre-Luc Duboi to bury the Panthers, 4-3, at the BB&T Center.
"(Overtime) was over before it started," Panthers coach Bob Boughner said. "It wasn't a very good start for us (overall), but we battled back, but you look and three or four of their goals were breakaway goals. They got behind us.
"I feel like we beat ourselves a little bit by not managing the game properly at certain times ... The one big mistake keeps haunting us."
On Saturday night, the Panthers continued their recent trend of stumbling out of the gate at the BB&T Center. Eighty-seven seconds into the contest, the Blue Jackets took a 1-0 lead after Anthony Duclair scored his ninth goal of the season on a breakaway. For Florida, it marked the third straight home game in which the Panthers have given up a goal in the first two minutes. It was also the fifth straight game where Florida surrendered a goal within the first six minutes.
"I don't think we're very good at the beginning of the game," Boughner said. "We talked about our start and we talked about making sure we come out with some urgency and that we'd be emotionally invested. When you give up a goal, your mentality changes.
"Now you're chasing a game and when you start chasing a game, you come out of your structure. You start cheating; you start looking for the offense instead of being on the right side of the puck and it just snowballs from there."
Florida bounced back later in the period, thanks to a highlight assist from Aleksander Barkov. Roaming in front of the net, Barkov took a feed from Keith Yandle and delivered a back-handed touch pass to Jonathan Huberdeau, who fired in the game-tying goal. For Yandle, who earned All-Star game honors earlier in the week, it was his 34th point of the season _ and 500th of his career.
The Panthers took their first lead of the game with just under two minutes left in the first period. Mike Hoffman intercepted a pass and then launched a left-handed slap shot past goalie Sergei Bobrovsky for his 20th goal of the year, giving the Panthers a 2-1 lead.
With just under three minutes in the second period, Columbus evened the game after Josh Anderson scored off a rebound to make it 2-2.
Knotted up 2-2 in the third, Brandon Dubinsky put the Blue Jackets on top, scoring a 4-on-4 goal with just over 13 minutes to play.
With just over two minutes left, Aaron Ekblad tied the game off assists from Jared McCann and Yandle.
The Panthers will kick off a five-game road swing on Tuesday at Pittsburgh.
