SUNRISE, Fla. _ The puck dropped at 7:51 p.m. on Thursday night, a seemingly trivial gesture in the minutes following a touching, gripping pregame ceremony that honored the 17 victims of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas last week.
Before the Florida Panthers' 3-2 win over the Washington Capitals on Thursday night, the result had already descended the list of the most important things to happen at the BB&T Center.
There were the 17 spotlights that carried the names of victims. There was the video tribute that memorialized the 14 children and three teachers. There was the blood drive all day in the parking lot. There were the "MSD" patches, whose sale directly benefitted the The Stoneman Douglas Victims Fund.
Hockey hardly mattered on this night in South Florida, the first Panthers home game since the shooting on Feb. 14. Then it reminded the BB&T Center what it could mean to the South Florida community.
Vincent Trocheck won the game by deflecting a pass from Keith Yandle with just 18.7 seconds remaining. Trocheck's heroics came shortly after Nick Bjugstad tied the game at two, with the puck bouncing off him on a feed from Aleksander Barkov.
"I think what's going on tonight before the game is just as important as the game itself," Panthers goaltender Roberto Luongo said Thursday morning. "Hockey is a game. We play it because we love it, but at the end of the day, it's just a game. Stuff like that, that happened last week, that stuff is something that you never want to see happen to anybody. When it hits close to home like that, it's hard. You just want to help as much as you can and grieve with those families."
The Panthers' playoff race took a backseat. Florida entered Thursday seven points back of Columbus for the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference with three games in hand. As the Blue Jackets lost again on Thursday night, the Panthers had a chance to close the gap to five points.
Thursday also kicked off a stretch of critical games that could decide Florida's fate in an Eastern Conference chase. The Panthers began a season-long six-game homestand on Thursday. They play 11 of their next 12 games at home. They don't leave the state of Florida until a March 19 date in Montreal.
In March, the schedule retracts its claws, presenting Florida with struggling teams like Buffalo, Arizona, Ottawa, Edmonton and the Rangers.
"This is it," Panthers coach Bob Boughner said. "We can make our own destiny."
The Panthers opened Thursday night's scoring, courtesy of Maxim Mamin's first career NHL goal at 4:50 of the first period. After Washington goaltender Braden Holtby stopped Ian McCoshen's shot from the point, Mamin pounced on the rebound and banged it home.
But the Capitals tied the game on Lars Eller's shot from the point with only 65 seconds remaining in the first period.
Washington took the lead about midway through the second period on Andre Burakovsky's power-play goal. Burakovsky was left alone in the slot and beat Luongo for his seventh goal of the season.
The Panthers had chances throughout the game. Holtby robbed Trocheck as the second period began by diving across the crease to stop Florida's top goal-scorer. In the third period, Jared McCann stole the puck while shorthanded in the Capitals zone. Holtby had vacated his crease, but McCann waited and then missed the net.
