Hayes set up another one late in the period while killing a penalty, drawing two Panthers to him behind the Florida goal line and picking out Namestnikov all by himself in front for two whacks at it. It was Namestnikov's third goal of the year and his first career shorthanded goal.
"The way we started the game was awesome," Lundqvist said. "Coming off a few days of just practicing, it's not easy to have that intensity, but credit to the entire group. We come out really hard in the first, and sometimes that's not easy."
But none of the Rangers, least of all their head coach, was particularly thrilled with how they followed up after the strong first 20 minutes.
"I was really anxious to see how we were going to respond to our good first period," said David Quinn. "We commit a bad penalty just like we did against Winnipeg (last Sunday), and they score early in the period, and you could just sense it on the bench. We've got to get out of that rut - we can't hang our head after we give up a goal, we've got to keep playing.
"We've got to do the things we did in the first period - we did a lot of good things, we did things that we were hoping to accomplish throughout the week in practice, and we built on it. But we didn't sustain it."
"We came out flying, played with our speed that we need to play with," Brady Skjei said. "Maybe got away from that in the second period. Gave them a bit of life."
The penalty came just 11 seconds into the second, giving the League's fifth-ranked power play a chance to go to work, and Yandle made it count with a one-timer from the blue line at 57 seconds - the 18th time in 19 games the Panthers had scored at least one power-play goal. Yandle entered the game tied for the League lead with 17 power-play points.
Huberdeau leveled the score just 3:17 after that on a fluky goal in which he shanked his shot but Lundqvist's momentum opened him up to let the puck slide through.
Lundqvist said "I made two mistakes on their goals": on Yandle's, "my pad just bent, and then on the second he just missed his shot. Sometimes as a goalie you go for the first shot, and then that motion keeps you moving.
"It's a little annoying," he added. "For a month here I've been working on these new pads. Just finally decide to switch to new pads and this is what happens. We'll see; we might go back to the old pads for next game, to be honest. I definitely felt a difference, the way I was moving. It wasn't perfect."