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sports Monday 22 april 2024

Panthers score twice in the third period and beat the Lightning

3-2 in Game 1 of NHL playoffs

By TIM REYNOLDS 2021, then swept Florida 4-0 here all season, but man,
AP Sports Writer in 2022 and outscored the we missed the playoffs. We
SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Here's Panthers 13-3 in that series. missed this atmosphere."
a sentence that has never That ouster brought chang- Florida took the game's first
been said: Florida leads es to Florida, which hired eight shots, keeping Tampa
Tampa Bay in a playoff se- Paul Maurice to implement Bay from getting anything
ries. a new style geared toward to Bobrovsky until 15:55 had
And for the Panthers, that's winning in the playoffs with- elapsed in the opening pe-
a great way to start. out sacrificing offense. The riod. And then it was the
Carter Verhaeghe tapped Panthers rode that to the Lightning who clamped
in a pinpoint pass from Stanley Cup final last year, down — holding Florida
Aleksander Barkov for the to the Atlantic Division ti- to only six shots in the next
lead 58 seconds into the tle this year — and it was 25 minutes, no small feat
third period, Matthew Tka- enough in Game 1. against the team that has
chuk added a goal and "We have history between gotten, by far, the most Florida Panthers players congratulate each other after the Pan-
an assist and the Panthers these two teams," Bar- shots on net in the NHL over thers beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-2, during Game 1 of the
beat the Lightning 3-2 in kov said. "Last two times, it the last four seasons. first-round of an NHL Stanley Cup Playoff series, Sunday, April 21,
Game 1 of their NHL play- didn't work out well for us Shots after two periods: 2024, in Sunrise, Fla.
off series Sunday. but we want to change Florida 14, Tampa Bay 10. Associated Press
Barkov had two assists, it now. I think we have a It tied the second-fewest est the Lightning had enter- ning coach Jon Cooper
Sam Reinhart also scored great opportunity here shots the Panthers had ing a third period. said. "And in the end, a
and Sergei Bobrovsky had and today was unreal. It's through 40 minutes this sea- "That was a pretty tight- power-play goal was the
17 saves for the Panthers, been a great atmosphere son, and tied the third-few- checking game," Light- difference."q
who won a Game 1 on
home ice for the first time
since 1997.
"Game 1 was great," Tka-
chuk said, "especially be-
ing on the winning side."
Brandon Hagel and Steven
Stamkos got the goals for
Tampa Bay. Andrei Vasi-
levskiy made 25 stops for
the Lightning, who pulled
him for an extra attacker
with 3:08 remaining. Tka-
chuk got an empty-netter
63 seconds later, and Flor-
ida soon began celebrat-
ing a 1-0 series lead.
Stamkos scored with 9.3
seconds left for the Light-
ning, but Florida controlled
the ensuing face-off and
time expired.
Verhaeghe's goal came
on the power play, one
that carried over from late
in the second period. Bar-
kov held the puck on the
right wing, then sent a di-
agonal pass through the
slot to a hard-charging
Verhaeghe — who was
behind everyone else and
simply touched the puck
into an open net.
"I didn't even see the pass,"
Verhaeghe said. "Just hit
my stick. That's how well
Barky can pass the puck."
It's the third time the Sun-
shine State rivals have met
in the playoffs — both of
the first two having gone
Tampa Bay's way, and ba-
sically in one-sided fashion.
The Lightning won 4-2 on
their way to their second
straight Stanley Cup in