The Florida Panthers won their seventh in eight games in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, February 14th. Matthew Tkachuk had a goal and two assists in helping the Panthers achieve their 5-2 win. John Ludvig scored his first NHL goal for Pittsburgh.
Panthers lineup against the Penguins:
Verhaeghe – Barkov – Reinhart
Cousins – Bennett – Tkachuk
Luostarinen – Lundell – Rodrigues
Gadjovich – Stenlund – Lomberg
Forsling – Ekblad
Mikkola – Montour
Ekman-Larsson – Kulikov
Bobrovsky
Stolarz
Penguins lineup against the Panthers:
Guentzel – Crosby – Rust
Smith – Malkin – Puljujarvi
O’Connor – Eller – Rakell
Carter – White
Pettersson – Letang
Graves – Karlsson
Ludvig – Ruhwedel
Joseph
Jarry
Nedeljkovic
The first period was completely scoreless… In the middle frame, it appeared that the Penguins scored – Rickard Rakell scored on the power play in the second period but the Panthers challenged it due to a high stick before the goal. Lars Eller played the puck with a high stick.
Two goals being just 34 seconds apart, both Matthew Tkachuk and Jonah Gadjovich scored to give Florida a 2-0 lead. Tkachuk scored from the left face-off circle with a wrist shot off a pass from Evan Rodrigues… Gadjovich redirected a shot by Brandon Montour. Aaron Ekblad pushed it 3-0 on the power play with his third goal of the season. Ekblad struck from the right circle with a wrist shot. Getting the Panthers a 4-0 lead, Anton Lundell redirected Tkachuk’s pass from the left post. Bryan Rust scored the first goal for Pittsburgh after he deflected a spinning wrist shot coming through traffic by Jake Guentzel.
Anton Lundell extended the Panthers’ lead to 5-1 in the third period. Lundell’s shot burst high into the air off Marcus Pettersson’s skate, and then landed behind Tristan Jarry and got in off his skate. At 13:53 of the final frame, John Ludvig struck his first NHL goal for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Ludvig scored from the right circle with a wrist shot… the score remained 5-2 through the remainder of the game.
Sidney Crosby on the Penguins’ 5-2 loss against the Florida Panthers: “It’s a big shift in momentum. That happens in games sometimes. You got to get by that and find a way to get it back,” – “Obviously, it’s not a big deal. You get one disallowed and then they score two… That’s probably not what you’re looking for but like I said, there’s a lot of time left to get back in the game and we weren’t able to do that.”
Tristan Jarry on the Penguins’ 5-2 loss: “Obviously, it’s tough. A couple of those haven’t gone our way and I think we just need to keep building momentum when things don’t go our way. I think that’s been a tough part of the year and then obviously with all the chances against and the grade A looks, it’s always tough,” – “We are good players. That’s something that we’ve talked about this year and I think we just have to play up to our standards. I think we haven’t done so yet and I think when we do, we have some really good games. We’re tough to play against, we put pucks on net, we’re driving the net, and we score goals. I think we just have to do more of that.”
Notes:
– Tristan Jarry made 18 saves for Pittsburgh
– The Penguins have lost three games straight
– Jake Guentzel missed some time at the end of the game for a possible upper-body injury.
– Matthew Tkachuk has 37 points in 21 games since December 23rd (13 goals, 24 assists)
– Matthew Tkachuk became the sixth player in Florida Panthers history with 20 three-point games. He now joins Aleksander Barkov (50 GP), Jonathan Huberdreau (49 GP), Olli Jokinen (29 GP), Pavel Bure (23 GP), and Stephen Weiss (22 GP).
– Evan Rodrigues hit 200 NHL points
– Anton Lundell scored twice, and Evan Rodrigues picked up two assists
– Sergei Bobrovsky made 25 saves for Florida
