2. Four score for Reinhart
The Panthers won four out of six games to win the Stanley Cup. Sam Reinhart scored four goals in Game 6 to help his team get to the top of the mountain once again.
The forward made it 1-0 at 4:36 of the first period. He scored to make it 3-0 at 17:31 of the second period, then 4-0 with his first empty-net goal at 13:26 of the third period and his fourth and second empty-netter at 14:55 to make it 5-0.
He became the first player in 103 years and just the second in NHL history to score four goals in a Stanley Cup-clinching win. The other was Babe Dye for the Toronto St. Patricks in 1922.
Reinhart also scored in Games 3, 4 and 5, giving him seven in the series, making him the first player since Wayne Gretzky in 1985 to score seven goals in a Stanley Cup Final. Mike Bossy scored seven with the New York Islanders in 1982, and Jean Beliveau did it with the Montreal Canadiens in 1956.
Nobody has scored more than seven goals in a Stanley Cup Final in the NHL’s expansion era (since 1968).
The only hiccup is Reinhart didn’t get the game-winning goal. That went to Matthew Tkachuk, Florida’s only other goal scorer in Game 6, after Edmonton forward Vasily Podkolzin scored to make it 5-1 with 4:42 to play.
Reinhart was that close to becoming the first player since Bossy in 1982 to repeat as the game-winning scorer in the Cup-clinching game; Reinhart did it last year in Game 7 for the Panthers.