Jack Roslovic scored twice in the opening period as the Edmonton Oilers chased Sergei Bobrovsky in a get-right 6-3 victory over the Florida Panthers on Saturday night in Sunrise, Fla.
Mattias Ekholm and Vasily Podkolzin also scored for the Oilers, while Connor McDavid and Matthew Savoie added empty-net goals to seal the win for Edmonton, which was 0-2-1 in its last three outings. Stuart Skinner made 35 saves in the win.
Anton Lundell, Mackie Samoskevich, and Sam Reinhart scored for the Panthers. Daniil Tarasov stopped all 12 shots he faced after relieving Bobrovsky (four goals allowed on 17 shots) in the second period.
Bobrovsky’s rough night began early as Roslovic’s weak shot from the boards snuck past the veteran goaltender to give the Oilers the lead 25 seconds into the contest.
Lundell knotted things up with 13:30 left in the opening period as he jammed Samoskevich’s cross-crease pass underneath Skinner’s pads.
Roslovic wasted no time burying his second goal of the night, wiring a wrist shot past Bobrovsky, just 36 seconds after Lundell’s game-tying goal.
With just over six minutes left in the first, Ekholm extended the Oilers’ lead to 3-1 with a marker as the puck bounced to him and he fired it into the back of the net.
Bobrovsky was shown the door at 13:15 of the middle frame as Podkolzin banked a bad angle shot off the goaltender’s mask and into the net to improve the Oilers lead to 4-1.
The Panthers found their way back into the contest just under the halfway point of the middle frame as Samoskevich picked up his second point of the night with a goal just after their man advantage expired.
Reinhart’s power-play goal with 6:30 left in the second period cut the deficit to one as he sent home a rebound with his backhand.
Tarasov made his best save of the contest in the dying seconds of the middle frame as his stretched-out pad denied Leon Draisaitl’s partial break opportunity.
McDavid made a crucial defensive play with just over 13 minutes left in the game as he delivered a monstrous hit on Jesper Boqvist to save a possible goal.
The Oilers closed out their seven-game road trip with a 3-3-1 record with the win over a Florida team which had defeated them in each of the past two Stanley Cup Finals.
–Field Level Media
