Even before Aleksander Barkov delivered the Florida Panthers a 5-4 win against the Dallas Stars in overtime, Monday began with a celebration.
Their spot in the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs is long locked up. Seeding is all they have at stake for the last week of the regular season and they only control so much of their fate. The Panthers have spent so much of the 2020-21 NHL season celebrating victories, they decided to celebrate one of their most unheralded players at their morning skate in Sunrise.
Everyone in the locker room rose for a standing ovation when Philippe Desrosier entered. Florida was setting up the goaltender to dress for his first NHL game, as a backup to fellow rookie Spencer Knight — the sort of luxury the Panthers only have because of how well they performed for the four months of the season to render the regular season games in May effectively meaningless.
In front of Knight, Florida trotted out a lineup with three top-six forwards missing and four rookies helping to fill in.
With an upcoming four-day break before the final series of the season, Patric Hornqvist and Carter Verhaeghe both remained out of the lineup, and fellow forward Sam Bennett, who’s day-to-day with an upper-body injury, went out of the bench, too.
Left wing Grigori Denisenko — the No. 15 pick in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft and the Panthers’ No. 1 prospect, according to ESPN.com — played his fourth game on the top line next to star center Aleksander Barkov. Right wing Owen Tippett — the No. 13 pick in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft and Florida’s No. 4 prospect — played his fourth straight on the second line with All-Star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau.
With the two wingers in the lineup in front of Knight, Florida had three of its top four prospects all on the ice for a late-season game with playoff implications on both sides and all three delivered.
Tippett assisted on the Panthers’ first goal, setting up Huberdeau to put Florida ahead 1-0 just 1:53 into the game. Denisenko and Tippett assisted on their third, teeing up star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar for an open shot from the slot to give the Panthers a 3-1 lead. In the second period, Denisenko won a battle behind Dallas’ goal, and fed defenseman Gustav Forsling for a one-timer to push Florida’s lead back to 4-2 and chase Stars goaltender Anton Khudobin from the game just 45 seconds into the second.
Denisenko now has four points in four games since he rejoined the Panthers on Tuesday and Tippett, who has been with Florida all season, is as hot as he has ever been in his career with five points in his last four games.
Dallas rallied to tie the game 4-4 by scoring two goals in 11 seconds early in the third period, but Knight stopped the final four shots he faced in the final 15:54 of regulation, then picked up his fourth straight win when Barkov scored a power-play, game-winner on a one-timer with 2:10 left in overtime.
Barkov also finished with two points after he handed out a secondary assist on Forsling’s third-period goal.
Knight, meanwhile, weathered the roughest start of his career and still became the youngest goalie in NHL history to start his career 4-0. He nearly cost Florida by giving up the two goals in the third period, but still stopped 25 of 29 shots.
The win means the Panthers control their own destiny for the No. 2 seed in the Central Division as they head into a four-day break. Florida is back into sole possession of second place, two points behind the first-place Carolina Hurricanes and two ahead of the third-place Tampa Bay Lightning, and even though both the division rivals have played two fewer games than the Panthers, Florida can sew up second place by winning its last two games of the regular season.
The Panthers won’t practice Tuesday or Wednesday, then they’ll return to the ice for two days of practice at the BB&T Center before they close the season with two games against the Lightning. By then, Florida hopes Verhaeghe, Hornqvist and Bennett will all be able to return to play meaningful games after their young replacements kept the Panthers alive.
