SUNRISE, Fla. \u2013 After letting a late multi-goal lead slip away, the Florida Panthers rallied to lock down a 5-4 shootout win over the Seattle Kraken at Amerant Bank Arena on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Improving to 35-32-3, the Panthers split their season series with the Kraken.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we played pretty solid until towards the end of it,\u201d forward Eetu Luostarinen said. \u201cA few mistakes, and they made us pay there. But we battled and got the win, so it\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first period came and went with no goals.<\/p>\n
Even though they only led 5-4 in shots in the period, the Panthers still had a few very close calls. Early on, Carter Verhaeghe was denied by Kraken goaltender Joey Daccord on a shot from just outside the crease. Later, Daccord robbed Noah Gregor on a shot from the slot.<\/p>\n
The loudest cheers of the opening 20 minutes came during stoppages.<\/p>\n
First, it was Paul Maurice being honored for coaching in his 2,000th career game.<\/p>\n
The man behind the bench during Florida\u2019s back-to-back runs to the Stanley Cup in 2024 and 2025, Maurice joins Scotty Bowman (2,141) as the only coaches to reach 2,000 games.<\/p>\n
With the Panthers still in the midst of a great window of contention, Maurice isn\u2019t slowing down either.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife happens to you,\u201d said Maurice, who also ranks third on the NHL\u2019s all-time wins list with 951. \u201cThe next thing you know, you have a couple thousand games in. You\u2019ve got a group of guys that you love coming to work with, so you\u2019re not ready [to stop]. I don\u2019t feel like 2,000 is the end of it for me. It wasn\u2019t hang out [in the NHL] until a number. We\u2019re in a tough spot here. We all understand that. But we like our group. We like what we\u2019ve built. I love coming to the rink and I love working here. I love living in Florida, and I love these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later in the period, Aaron Ekblad was honored for skating in his 800th game.<\/p>\n
A cornerstone on the blue line ever since he was taken by the Panthers with the first-overall pick in the 2014 NHL Draft, Ekblad currently sits atop the franchise\u2019s all-time leaderboard in goals (121), assists (284), points (405) and games played (800) by a defenseman.<\/p>\n
“It’s been an amazing, wonderful ride, and I can’t wait to continue it,\u201d Ekblad said.<\/p>\n
Called from up from the AHL earlier in the day, Gregor helped the Panthers break the ice in the second period when he flew down the left side of the ice before setting up Nolan Foote for a goal from the doorstep with a slick cross-ice pass in transition to make it 1-0 at 2:32.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SUNRISE, Fla. \u2013 After letting a late multi-goal lead slip away, the Florida Panthers rallied to lock down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-204955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-headlines","10":"tag-florida-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}