Sam Reinhart scored twice to eclipse the 20-goal mark for the season, Aleksander Barkov had three assists and the visiting Florida Panthers edged the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-2 on Wednesday night.
Reinhart scored his club’s final two goals, with the latter being short-handed and serving as the game-winner.
Aaron Ekblad potted his first marker of the season and goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 27 shots for the Panthers, who won their second straight game overall and are 11-2-2 against Eastern Conference foes this season.
Florida’s penalty-kill unit stuffed all three power plays by Tampa Bay, which entered the game with the NHL’s second-best group on the man advantage.
The Panthers are 6-4-0 in their past 10 outings and improved to 14-0-1 when leading after two periods.
Florida’s Paul Maurice coached his 1,800th game, just the third bench boss to reach the milestone. He trails Scotty Bowman (2,141 games) and Barry Trotz (1,812).
The Lightning’s Nikita Kucherov notched his 300th career goal and Michael Eyssimont also scored. Goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy made 28 saves, but the club lost for the first time in four games.
With both teams coming off a three-day layoff for the holiday break, Bobrovsky made the game’s first big play when he denied Lightning captain Steven Stamkos on a breakaway at 1:20 of the first.
After the home side’s icing, Evan Rodrigues won a faceoff, and the puck was worked back to Ekblad up high.
Goalless in his 17th game of the season, the defenseman flipped a shot from above the right circle that found the back of the net at 4:16 for the game’s first lead.
During a strong cycle early in the second, Reinhart took a pass from Rodrigues and made it 2-0 by ripping in his 20th tally at 1:24.
Kucherov, the league’s points leader, finally got his team on the board 29 seconds into the third period, scoring his 24th goal of the season.
However, the teams traded goals later in the period.
Reinhart muscled his way around Anthony Cirelli and scored Florida’s second short-handed goal this season — both by Reinhart — but Eyssimont answered 20 seconds later at 3:31 for his sixth goal to make it 3-2.
Bobrovsky made a sprawling glove save on Brayden Point at 10:14 on a breakaway to keep the one-goal lead.
Florida earned a power play with 1:16 remaining and ran out the clock by playing keep-away with the puck.
–Field Level Media
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