TORONTO – The Florida Panthers couldn’t find the goals they needed in the first stop of their road trip, falling 4-1 to the Toronto Maple Leafs at Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday.
As it stands, the Panthers (22-17-3) and Maple Leafs (20-15-7) now both have 47 points.
“I didn’t like our game tonight,” head coach Paul Maurice said.
With the Maple Leafs earning a power play early in the first period, Sergei Bobrovsky came up in the clutch on the penalty kill when he shut down Auston Matthews on a breakaway.
After a broken stick by the Panthers sent play the other way, the Maple Leafs opened the scoring when Easton Cowan finished off a nifty passing sequence with a tap-in goal from the right doorstep to make it 1-0 at 19:36.
Just 42 seconds into the second period, Matthew Knies doubled the lead for the Maple Leafs when he tipped in a shot from Troy Stecher to make it 2-0. Soon after, Knies dangled his way through the defense before setting up Matthews for a goal to make it 3-0 at 4:01.
Struggling to sustain pressure, the Panthers had just 13 shots on goal through two periods.
“They were getting traffic to the net and playing physical,” forward Carter Verhaeghe said of the Maple Leafs. “They made a couple nice plays there. They were a little faster than us tonight, and it showed.”
Despite finishing the second period, Brad Marchand did not return for the third.
Already missing several star players such as Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk, Maurice said after the game that Marchand was kept out for precautionary reasons.
“He’s been dealing with something,” Maurice said of Marchand, who leads the team with 46 points (23G, 23A) this season. “It just got to the point where we didn’t want to make it worse. We’re a little sensitive about injuries here now. We do our best to keep guys healthy.”
Starting the third period on the power play, the Panthers mustered several shots on goal, but couldn’t get anything past Woll, who made 18 of his 31 saves in the final 20 minutes.
Keeping the Panthers in position to try and mount a late comeback, Bobrovsky came up with another huge stop on a breakaway when he denied former teammate Steven Lorentz by pinning the puck to the goal line with his skate after Lorentz flew straight into the net.
Of the 23 shots Bobrovsky faced, NaturalStatTrick.com considered seven high-danger.
“Bob’s always great,” forward Noah Gregor said.
Getting the Panthers on the board, Verhaeghe gloved down a batted puck from Woll and ripped it into the cage from a sharp angle to make it 3-1 at 11:38. A native of Toronto, he’s now racked up 10 points (5G, 5A) in 17 career games against his hometown team.
