#LGRW Final: Panthers outlast Red Wings, 3-2, secure series sweep

DETROIT --Captain Dylan Larkin and Anthony Mantha each tallied goals, but the visiting Florida Panthers scored twice on the power play, en route to a 3-2 win over the Detroit Red Wings at Little Caesars Arena on Sunday.

With the victory, the Panthers secured the road series sweep and improved to 9-0-1 in the last 10 meetings against Detroit. The Red Wings saw their losing streak extended to six games heading into a road trip that begins Wednesday at Tampa Bay.
Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill was pleased with his team's aggressiveness, but reiterated the importance of closing out games.
"We'll walk out of this game, we'll have out-chanced them, but we didn't win. So that's disappointing," Blashill said. "I thought, given the circumstances, back-to-back and Bert (Tyler Bertuzzi) out, not everybody 100 percent, I thought we played really hard. I thought we played good enough to win, but we've got to find ways to win these close games. These are the games we've talked about; we have to be in, in order to have a chance to be successful. We're not going to win games, 5-1. So we've got to find ways to win these close games."

Larkin tallied his fourth goal of the season to give the Red Wings the early 1-0 lead just over four minutes into the game. Givani Smith, recalled from the Taxi Squad earlier in the day on Sunday, fed an attacking Larkin, who backhanded the shot past Panthers goalie Chris Driedger. The Red Wings held the Panthers scoreless in the opening frame and owned a 13-6 advantage on shots.

The Panthers evened the score, 1-1, just 2:03 into the second period. Patric Hornqvist lit the lamp after setting up in front of the net, battling traffic and wedging the puck past Red Wings goalie Thomas Greiss. It marked Florida's sixth power-play goal of the season. The Panthers' seventh power-play goal came with 4:56 remaining in the second period, after defenseman Aaron Ekblad converted a one-timer with Hornqvist shielding Greiss. Florida took a 2-1 lead into the dressing room at the second intermission.
Carter Verhaeghe gave the Panthers a two-goal cushion (3-1), set up by Aleksander Barkov, at 8:09 of the second period. Greiss vacated the net and gave the Red Wings an extra attacker out of a timeout with 3:30 remaining. Mantha took advantage, scoring his second goal in as many games at the 18:12 mark, trimming the deficit to 3-2. Bobby Ryan and Filip Hronek combined for the assists. Despite a few more scoring chances from Detroit down the stretch, time ran out and Florida clinched the road series sweep.

"We had a great start to the game and we just didn't generate enough in the second period and just killed our momentum," Larkin said. "But we came back in the third, hit a couple posts. It was right there for us tonight."
Along with the man games lost to the ongoing COVID-19 protocols, the Red Wings were also without the services of Tyler Bertuzzi, who sat out the game with an upper-body injury suffered in the opening game of the Florida series on Saturday night.
The Red Wings' six-game road trip will begin Wednesday, Feb. 3, the first of a two-game series against the defending Stanley Cup-champion Tampa Bay Lightning. Puck drop is set for 5:30 p.m. from Amalie Arena.