RALEIGH, N.C. – Well, you can’t win ‘em all.
With Sebastian Aho pouncing on a loose puck and rifling a shot into the net with just 19 seconds left in regulation, the Florida Panthers saw their franchise-record road win streak snapped at 11 games with a 1-0 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes at PNC Arena on Thursday.
Suffering their first loss away from home since Dec. 18, the Panthers (37-16-4) still remain just one point behind the Boston Bruins (34-12-11) for the top spot in the Atlantic Division.
“It came down to 19 seconds,” Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad said. “That’s a playoff game, there’s no doubt about it. That’s two teams colliding that play almost the exact same way. There’s almost no room out there for anybody. I don’t know what the chances were, but I feel like they had to be pretty darn close. It was a hard-fought game.”
With both goaltenders on top of their game, Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 28 of 29 shots for the Panthers, while Pyotr Kochetkov turned aside all 44 shots he faced for the Hurricanes.
Bobrovsky has yet to surrender more than two goals in any of his last eight starts.
“Bobby made some unbelievable saves,” Ekblad said.
Losing two key pieces during a scoreless first period, both Gustav Forsling and Matthew Tkachuk exited the game and did not return. Forsling left with 7:41 left in the period, while Tkachuk exited with 2:26 left after absorbing a hit from Andrei Svechnikov.
Entering the game, Forsling, one half of Florida’s top-defensive pairing, led the NHL with a +39 plus/minus rating. Tkachuk, meanwhile, has racked up more points in 2024 than any other player in the NHL, producing 38 points (15 goals, 23 assists) in 20 games since Jan. 1.
After the game, Cats head coach Paul Maurice said both players are considered day-to-day and will be re-evaluated on Friday.
“Those two guys are impossible to replace, but at the same time everyone can step up a little more and play a little harder, a little better,” Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said. “I think we did a pretty good job. We didn’t score any goals, but we had some chances. We played tight defense and played well enough to win the game.”
In the second period, the red lights remained off as both teams continued to come up just short. The best scoring chance of the period came when Carolina’s Martin Necas appeared to have a wide-open net, but his point-blank shot was kicked away by Bobrovsky’s left pad.
After Nick Cousins was bloodied by a high stick from the Hurricanes – a penalty that was initially missed but then correctly called after a review – the Panthers had four minutes of power-play time to work with in the third period, but were kept off the board by Kochetkov.
“A four-minute power play, you’ve got to get something going,” Barkov said.
Soon after, the Panthers responded with a key penalty kill of their own.
With 3:18 left in regulation, the Panthers appeared to take a 1-0 lead when Eetu Luostarinen finished off a stellar sequence to break the ice. Unfortunately, the goal was stricken from the scoreboard after Carolina successfully challenged for offside.
Not long after the Panthers clanged a shot off the post, the Hurricanes skated down the ice and, after Svechnikov had a shot blocked, Aho pounced on the loose puck and fired a perfect shot into the net from the slot to put Carolina up 1-0 at 19:41.
In defeat, the Panthers led 4.14-2.27 in expected goals, per NaturalStatTrick.com.
“Both goaltenders were good,” Maurice said. “It was a good road game for us.”
With likely some bad blood still left over from Florida’s sweep of the Hurricanes in last year’s Eastern Conference Final, a sizeable scrum broke out following the final whistle.
Sometimes you can knock the Panthers down, but you can’t keep them down.
“I think it was a good game by both teams,” Barkov said. “A tough game. We know how they play, they know how we play. It was a good example of how both teams play out there. I think both teams tried to do everything right. That’s how it ended up, 0-0 almost all the way to the end. I know it’s been a couple of those already against them. We knew it was going to be like that. We accepted that and just tried to grind it out and it ended up this way.”
THEY SAID IT
“I really didn’t feel like I played all that much more. When you have five guys committing to making simple plays and forwards getting pucks deep and making it easy on us, making it easy for us to change, it really wasn’t [too bad]. Some games are much worse in that sense when you get teams that are buzzing in the O-zone for minutes on end.” – Aaron Ekblad
“We just want to go into every game and treat it as its own. Every team plays differently. We just have to get ready to play against them and play as hard as possible. Of course, we’ve been winning a lot of games in a row, but I still think it was a good game by us today.” – Aleksander Barkov
CATS STATS
- The Panthers have allowed two or fewer goals in 12 straight games.
- Aleksander Barkov went 10-for-15 (66.7%) in the faceoff circle.
- Dmitry Kulikov and Niko Mikkola each blocked four shots.
- Brandon Montour saw a team-high 28:45 of ice time.
- Sergei Bobrovsky made five high-danger saves.
- The Panthers led 15-10 in high-danger shot attempts, per NaturalStatTrick.com.
WHAT’S NEXT?
The Panthers will now return home to host the Washington Capitals at Amerant Bank Arena on Saturday at 6 p.m. ET.
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