The Florida Panthers wrapped up their latest brief hometstand with a strong 60 minutes of hockey.
Florida shutdown and shutout the visiting Anaheim Ducks, skating to a 3-0 victory at Amerant Bank Arena on Saturday night.
The story for much of the opening period was the goaltending as both Spencer Knight and John Gibson came up with several big stops to keep the game scoreless.
With 4:34 to go in the first, Sam Reinhart caught Isac Lundestrom with what appeared to be a knee-on-knee hit deep in the Ducks zone.
Lundestrom needed help skating off the ice.
The play was reviewed for a major penalty and upheld, giving Anaheim a five-minute power play and sending Reinhart to the showers early.
The Panthers did a good job killing off the penalty, allowing only two shots to the Ducks and their 31s t ranked power play, which came into the game operating at a 12.7% success rate.
Florida finally broke the ice just past the game’s midway point and it was Jesper Boqvist beating Gibson from inside the left circle to give the Cats a 1-0 lead.
It was just past the four-minute mark of the third period when Florida was able to double their lead.
Anton Lundell intercepted a Ducks pass in the neutral zone and quickly transitioned with the puck into Anaheim’s zone, firing a long shot that squeaked under Gibson’s pad before trickling across the goal line.
Gus Forsling added an empty-net goal for good measure, and that would be all Knight needed, finishing with 34 saves to earn his second shutout of the season.
On to Anaheim, again.
QUICK THOUGHTS
Boqvist is up to 11 goals on the season, a new career high.
Seven of Boqvist’s 11 goals have come during his past 13 games.
Lundell has goals in back-to-back games for the second time this season (he scored in three straight games back in October).
He’s now logged three goals and seven points over his past 10 games.
Dmitry Kulikov assisted on Boqvist’s goal, giving him helpers in consecutive games for the third time this season
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