Liam Ohgren and defenseman Elias Pettersson scored, and Leevi Merilainen made 36 saves for the Canucks (2-6-1), who have lost six straight (0-5-1).
“We continue to grow and get better,” Vancouver coach Manny Malhotra said. “It was a much more complete game aside from the last 10 minutes. I thought we did a better job weathering the storm than we expected. We capitalized on a couple of opportunities early. Again, not enough.”
Vancouver took a 1-0 lead at 7:23 of the first period on its first shot of the game after Florida failed to clear the puck.
Linus Karlsson got it at the top of the zone and fed it through traffic to a wide-open Ohgren near the right face-off circle, and he scored through the five-hole with a skipping shot from above the hash marks.
Pettersson made it 2-0 at 17:06 during 4-on-4 play. Filip Chytil, in his season debut after sustaining a shoulder injury in the preseason, sent a pass from below the goal line to Pettersson in the low slot, where he snapped a shot past Schmid.
“I think we battled really hard tonight,” Pettersson said. “I don’t think we get the bounces right now, but I thought we played well and battled really hard for 60 minutes.”
The Panthers finally scored on their 32nd shot of the game at 11:11 of the third, Tkachuk making it 2-1 with a wrist shot from above the right circle off an Aaron Ekblad pass.
“Happy to be a part of it tonight,” Ekblad said. “We needed that point, those points. We always have that resilience in us, and it’s the culture we have built here. I felt very confident we were going to come back in that game and we obviously controlled a lot of the play. Once we got pucks through and got them in, we found a way to get it done.”