Panthers PK Gives up Five Goals in Loss to Wild

SUNRISE — Despite conceding five times on the penalty kill, the Florida Panthers kept themselves in Friday night’s game until the final seconds before falling 6-4 to the Minnesota Wild. 

Florida has dropped their past four games — all of which were at home — sliding to 27-14-4 on the season.

“Losing four in a row is tough,” Aaron Ekblad said. “Holding ourselves accountable to the hard, tough, strong, resilient, responsible game is important. We’re going to have to get back to scoring the first goal, taking care of leads, not taking penalties.”

Minnesota scored their first five goals of the game on the power play. It wasn’t until 11.8 seconds remaining in the game where they’d score their only non special team’s goal, by way of a Ryan Hartman empty netter. 

The Wild were 5/6 on the man-advantage while the Panthers went 0/4. This was the first time all season where the Panthers conceded more than twice on the penalty kill. 

Kirill Kaprizov and Ryan Hartman scored twice for the Wild. Joel Eriksson Ek, and Mats Zuccarello also scored. The Wild’s power play success had them up 5-2 early in the third period. 

After going down 5-2, Anton Lundell and Gustav Forsling scored 17 seconds apart to make it a one-goal game with just under 12 minutes to go in regulation.  Eetu Luostarinen and Aaron Ekblad scored the other two Panthers goals. Ekblad tied his career-high with four-points in the game. 

“Lundell was good… I liked Aaron Ekblad getting up the ice. Four-point night for him is real good,” coach Paul Maurice said. “After that we won’t be bragging about this one. This was a tough one for us.”

Lundell’s goal was his first since Nov. 22 on Friday. He had two points on the night, his first multi-point night since Dec. 8.

“I feel like we gave everything in the third. It wasn’t enough,” Lundell said. “We gave them too much in the start and today was too hard to get it back.”

The Panthers had 19 shots in the final period. 15 of Minnesota’s 26 shots came on the power play.

After cutting the deficit to one, the Panthers were pushing the Wild all period — controlling plenty of o-zone time with the goaltender pulled.

Filip Gustavsson made a few big saves down the stretch to keep the Wild ahead and Ryan Hartman iced off the game with an empty netter.

Game Notes

The Panthers were without captain Aleksander Barkov (lower-body) for a second consecutive game. 

Will Lockwood left the game in the first period and did not return after getting knocked down in a fight with Wild forward Brandon Duhaime.  Maurice said an update on Lockwood would be provided on Saturday.

Both starting goalies left the game Friday night. The Panthers pulled Sergei Bobrovsky after he conceded his fourth goal of the night. Anthony Stolarz took over the crease. 

Wild goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury pulled himself from the game the same time Bobrovksy left. Filip Gustavsson took over the net for Minnesota.