Hurricanes outlast Florida Panthers for 4-3 shootout victory
Two days after feeling down and deflated, the Carolina Hurricanes had much to smile about Saturday.
The Canes edged the Florida Panthers 4-3 in a five-round shootout at BB&T Center, ending the three-game losing streak that came against the Tampa Bay Lightning by beating the team that was leading the Central Division.
Vincent Trocheck, who once helped the Panthers win a bunch of games, was victorious in his first return to South Florida. Trocheck, traded to the Canes last February, scored a power-play goal and also scored in the shootout against his former team, calling the win special.
Trocheck, a steely eyed, stick-to-business type, also found himself a bit emotional when the Panthers honored him with a short video in the first period.
“It was awesome to see the tribute they gave me,” Trocheck said after the game. “It was very classy of them. I was just trying to keep it together.”
Trocheck held it together well enough to score on the power play not long after the video clip, redirecting a Dougie Hamilton shot for a 1-0 lead with his team-leading 10th goal of the season.
Martin Necas had the winning shootout goal in the fifth round for the Canes (13-6-1), scoring after Trocheck and Dougie Hamilton had beaten goalie Sergei Bobrovsky. Canes goalie James Reimer, another former Panther, survived a rocky third period to earn the victory with 28 saves.
Patric Hornqvist tied the score 3-3 with 1:54 in regulation for the Panthers (13-4-3), and scored again in the shootout. Aleksander Barkov also got the puck past Reimer in the shootout but Carolina, the team that once struggled mightily in shootouts, now has won for a 10th straight time.
Good rebound win
While giving up a point to the Panthers, the Canes were happy to be leaving with two after playing so well Thursday against Tampa Bay and eating a tough regulation loss.
Defenseman Jake Bean picked up his first NHL goal for the Canes, also scoring on a power play with a shot from the left point early in the third. Necas collected the puck for his former Charlotte Checkers teammate as a memento, then flipped it to goalie Alex Nedeljkovic, another former Checkers teammate, on the bench.
Warren Foegele had the third Canes goal, giving the Canes a 3-2 lead in the third as Brett Pesce earned his second assist of the game. That came after Jonathan Huberdeau and Frank Vatrano had scored for a 2-2 tie as the Panthers looked for another comeback win after beating the Dallas Stars with three third-period goals in their last game.
“It wasn’t pretty,” Foegele said of a victory. “We got the win, but we definitely need to figure out how to be consistent and stick to what makes us successful. Right now we’re having spurts of it but we all need to do it.”
While the Canes allowed a power-play goal in the third, the puck sliding off Reimer’s right skate at the post, coach Rod Brind’Amour said penalty killing helped set the Canes in motion in the second period. The Canes had three shorthanded chances on a Panthers power play as Sebastian Aho hit a post, Brock McGinn was denied on a backhander and then Necas had the puck poked away by Bobrovsky.
The Canes killed off that penalty and two others against one of the NHL’s best power-play teams.
“That’s a great power play over there and if you look at it, we probably had more chances that they did on the penalty killing,” Brind’Amour said. “That actually got our game going. Even though we were up 1-0 we weren’t playing that well. That kind of flipped the momentum and got us rolling.”
During the third period, players from both teams got into a chippy, push-and-shove scrum by the Panthers net. The Canes’ Andrei Svechnikov was hit by two players and a third missed on a punch, although there was no penalty called.
The Canes and Panthers go at it again Monday at BB&T Center. Odds are, it will be another intense one.
This story was originally published February 27, 2021 at 6:40 PM.
