"We're a resilient team," Ekblad said. "I only say 'Comeback Cats' because we've done it quite a few times over these last few years. We live on that on that mantra. We obviously don't want to be down in games in the third period, but the fact that we were able to pull out those two points tonight is huge."
Winning it for the Panthers with a goal in overtime, Carter Verhaeghe also got the party started.
After escaping out of some danger along the wall, the man they simply call "Swaggy" then turned and let loose a shot from beyond the right circle that flew through some traffic, under the right arm of Casey DeSmith and into the far side of the net to give the Panthers a 1-0 advantage at 9:17 of the first period.
Helping maintain that lead heading into the first intermission, the Panthers stifled a pair of power plays for the Penguins, with Sergei Bobrovsky stopping all four shots he saw while the team was shorthanded.
"Bob was very good tonight," Panthers coach Joel Quenneville said. "He had a strong, strong game."
Doubling their lead in the second period, the Panthers made it a 2-0 game when a nice defensive play from Gustav Forsling sent Frank Vatrano and Anthony Duclair up the ice in a hurry. Taking a pass from Vatrano, Duclair drove toward the net with speed and, although the puck was initially poked away by DeSmith on his scoring attempt, it then bounced off a defender and into the cage for a goal at 3:57.
Gaining a four-minute power play later in the period after a series of whistles, the Penguins then finally got on the board when Danton Heinen, who now has goals in two straight games, beat Bobrovsky with a top-shelf snipe from the center of the right circle on a 2-on-1 break to trim Florida's lead to 2-1 at 11:45.
Back on the man advantage with time winding down in the middle frame, Jeff Carter brought Pittsburgh back into a deadlock when his shot re-directed off the stick of Ekblad in front of the net and flew up over Bobrovsky's left shoulder and into the twine to suddenly make it a 2-2 game at 18:58.
Keeping with the trend of weird goals, the Penguins took their first lead of the game near the midway point of the third period when, after Bobrovsky made a spectacular initial save, Jake Guentzel got the rebound and fired a shot from behind the net that bounced off MacKenzie Weegar and in to make it 3-2 at 8:01.
Just 30 seconds later, Pittsburgh increased its newfound lead to 4-2 with a goal from Evan Rodrigues.
"They had us on our heels a lot," Ekblad said. "In the second period, they came back. Props to them. They were putting pucks to the net and hemming us in our own zone. It didn't feel like we had any room out there. They were kind of smothering us. That's what a good team does. They're well structured."
On special teams, the Panthers went 0-for-6 on the power play, while the Penguins went 2-for-9.
"I think the power play tonight was an area where we lost a little momentum in the game," Quenneville said. "I thought we had turnovers and didn't generate much. Usually you keep the momentum in the game, but we lost it with our power play. … We'll be way better [moving forward]. We expect to be."
Down but not out, the Panthers then began to mount their comeback. With seemingly every player on the ice piled up in front of the net, the puck squirted out of the chaos and onto Ekblad's stick for a goal to make it 4-3 at 13:29.
"I was the only one that wasn't in the pile," he grinned.
Back it again soon after, Ekblad then brought the game even when he buried a nifty backhand goal from the slot to make it 4-4 with 4:53 left in regulation and eventually get the game to overtime. Coming up in the clutch in the extra frame, Bobrovsky, who finished with 43 saves, robbed Rodrigues on a breakaway moments before Verhaeghe buried a shot from the left circle at 1:37 to lock in the 5-4 win.
