SUNRISE, Fla. — The Florida Panthers, a juggernaut for most of the first month of the season, are now learning to survive.
They were thrown into the middle of hockey’s biggest scandal last week and kept winning despite an unexpected coaching change. They’ve won in overtime when they’ve had to and staged comebacks at other times. On Thursday, they had survive their biggest blown lead of the year and still they figured out a way to manufacture a 5-4, overtime win against the Washington Capitals in Sunrise.
Center Eetu Luostarinen scored the game-winning goal with 3:05 left in overtime when a Capital inadvertently knocked his centering pass into the net. The Panthers (9-0-1) possessed the puck for all of overtime after star center Aleksander Barkov won the opening faceoff and came up with a takeaway deep in the offensive zone after Washington goaltender Vitek Vanecek stuffed star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau.
Barkov, Huberdeau and star defenseman Aaron Ekblad took their time to pick apart the defense before heading to the bench for a line change. After one more change, Luostarinen was on the ice, tried to feed winger Frank Vatrano as he cut to the net and got a fortuitous bounce for another win at FLA Live Arena.
The two teams combined for four goalie changes in the first 27:16 because of injuries, performance and a strange, unexplained late arrival from Capitals goaltender Ilya Samsonov. They combined for seven goals in the first two periods and three needed some sort of deliberations from the referees because of potential goaltender-interference calls. Barkov scored twice for Florida to tie the franchise record for goals and Alex Ovechkin scored once for Washington to move within one of Brett Hull for fourth on the NHL’s all-time list.
The Panthers had a 2-0 lead at the end of the first and a 4-1 lead late in the second, and let the Capitals (5-1-4) battle back to tie the game at 4-4 with 13:04 left in the third.
Barkov opened the game with a rebound goal in the first four minutes and Ekblad followed with a slap-shot score with 9:56 left in the first. After four days off following its first loss of the season, Florida came out firing, with its top line generating a pair of goals and Sergei Bobrovsky stopping all 13 shots he faced.
With 12:44 left in the second period, defenseman Brandon Montour fired a rising shot into the top-left corner of the net, chasing Samsonov from the game and pushing the Panthers’ lead back to 3-1. Washington goaltender Vitek Vanecek, who actually started the game and played the first 1:45 because Samsonov had to make a last-minute trip back to the dressing room for unclear reasons, reentered and Florida beat him, too. Barkov followed up another rebound with 4:28 left in the second and beat the new Washington goaltender to score the 188th goal of his Panthers career, tying Olli Jokinen for the most in team history.
With 13:04 left in regulation, the lead was gone. Knight gave up three goals on 19 shots in the second period, and the Capitals had cut Florida’s lead to 4-3 by the start of the third on goals by right wing Tom Wilson and Ovechkin. Washington center Connor McMichael scored the first goal of his career early in the third when the Panthers lost track of a bouncing puck in front of the next and a three-goal comeback in 8:45 was complete for the Capitals.
