RECAP: Panthers 4, Lightning 2

SUNRISE, Fla. – Eleven.

That’s a number that will stick with the Florida Panthers for a while.

After giving up two goals in just 11 seconds to fall behind earlier in the game, the defending Stanley Cup champions showed their resolve by scoring a pair of goals of their own in the same amount of time late in the third period to secure a 4-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday.

Giving a sellout crowd of more than 19,000 fans at Amerant Bank Arena a night they won’t soon forget, the Panthers now hold a 3-1 lead in the Eastern Conference First Round.

“Belief is a dangerous thing, and we had that,” forward Brad Marchand said of the team’s never-say-die attitude. "I don’t think we’re sitting on the bench thinking we’re going back [to Tampa] 2-2. We believe that we can make a play. You’re one shot away.”

Getting their first big roar from the home crowd, the Panthers came up in the clutch on a crucial penalty kill in the first period in which they held the Lightning to zero shots on goal.

A tight opening 20 minutes, each team had just six shots on goal in the first period.

With the shots still hard to come by for both sides through the first 10 minutes of the second period, the Panthers finally broke through thanks to some hustle and heart.

After winning a foot race with a pair of Lightning defenders to negate an icing, Marchand sent a feed into the slot right onto the stick of Anton Lundell, who then beat Andrei Vasilevskiy to break the ice and put Florida on top 1-0 at 9:06.

“Brad did a great job,” Lundell said of his linemate’s effort.

Then, it was Tampa Bay’s turn to the press the attack.

Just 11 seconds after Mitchell Chaffee fired a knuckling shot past Sergei Bobrovsky to make it 1-1 at 12:21, Erik Cernak pinged in a shot off the bar from the right circle to put the Lightning up 2-1 at 12:32.

Per NHL stats, it was the fastest back-to-back goals in Tampa Bay’s playoff history.

Losing a defenseman just 19 seconds into the third period, Niko Mikkola received a game misconduct and a five-minute major for boarding Lightning forward Zemgus Girgensons.

A do-or-die moment, the Panthers went on to kill off the entire five-minute power play.

Over the course of the kill, Tampa Bay had just one shot on goal.

“That was huge,” said Lundell, who logged 2:42 of shorthanded ice time in the win. “We did a good job killing the penalty there. Huge shoutout to Bob (Bobrovsky) and all the guys that were blocking shots. It was a big moment in the game, and we got some momentum off it.”

Indeed they did.

Shortly after that big kill, the Panthers thought they tied the game on a goal from Aaron Ekblad, but the score quickly came off the board after a successful challenge for offside.

Still, the Panthers saw an opening in that moment.

Keeping his foot on the gas, Ekblad eventually found the game-tying goal – for real this time – when he crashed the net after a shot from Sam Reinhart and sent the rebound past Vasilevskiy from the slot to make it 2-2 at 16:13.

Giving fans a feeling of déjà vu, the Panthers took the lead and didn’t look back just 11 seconds later when Seth Jones fired a long shot on net that managed to slip just through Vasilevskiy and across the goal line to make it 3-2 at 16:24.

Per NHL stats, the stellar sequence marked the fastest two goals by defensemen for one team in the history of the playoffs.

“Just a knuckler that came up to me, and I just had to put it to the net,” said Jones, a key trade deadline acquisition. “Vasy (Vasilevskiy) played well, so anything we can put to the net, we talked about pregame, we’re going to do that with bodies and traffic.”

As for the crowd in that moment, you could probably hear the cheers all the way up in Jacksonville.

“It was one of the loudest moments, for sure,” captain Aleksander Barkov said. “It was amazing. They (the fans) pushed us really hard today. Great atmosphere. We loved it.”

After coming all that way, the Panthers weren’t going to let their lead slip away again.

With 1:40 left in regulation, Carter Verhaeghe locked in the 4-2 win with an empty-net goal.

Now, the Panthers are just one win away from a trip to Round 2.

“It started with the [penalty] kill,” head coach Paul Maurice said of the come-from-behind stunner. “That was such an important piece of the game. Keeping that belief, you come out of it and think something good is going to happen. You get a power-play goal and think that’s what it is, except it’s not. I think the block of time before the five-minute kill, the belief is almost stronger than after the offside. … We haven’t had a lot of those this year. It's been grinders, it’s been tough. … It was really mentally important that you could come back.”

THEY SAID IT

“The one thing that you see in the room with the group is just the level of calm throughout the game.” – Brad Marchand on Florida’s poise in Game 4

“It’s great to have him back. He’s a big voice in the locker room. He speaks up, and then on the ice he’s a leader as well. He shows up big in big games.” – Seth Jones on Aaron Ekblad

“We pushed pretty much the whole period for that, and got a couple bounces there. Our effort was there. That’s what I liked.” – Aleksander Barkov on the comeback win

CATS STATS

- Seth Jones scored his sixth career playoff goal.

- Brad Marchand factored in on a game-winning goal in the playoffs for the 26^th time in his career.

- This was the first game in the history of the Stanley Cup Playoffs that both teams scored two goals within a span of 11 seconds.

- Anton Lundell became the sixth player in franchise history to record 30 career playoff points.

- Niko Mikkola registered a team-high eight hits.

- Aleksander Barkov went 10-for-15 (66.7%) in the faceoff circle.

WHAT’S NEXT?

The last win is always the hardest.

Trying to close out their cross-state rival, the Panthers will carry their 3-1 series lead into Game 5 against the Lightning at Amalie Arena on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. ET.

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