A 'good bounce' helped Panthers force overtime. A second sunk them in loss to Bruins.

Jordan McPherson, Miami Herald on Jan 11, 2025

Published in Hockey

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MIAMI — In the dying seconds of regulation at Amerant Bank Arena, the puck fluttered off Sam Reinhart’s stick, lifted into the air and found its way into the Boston Bruins’ net.

The Florida Panthers, after seeing so many of their chances fall flat throughout the game on Saturday afternoon, tied the game with 1.8 seconds left and managed to force overtime.

In the dying seconds of overtime, with the Bruins cycling in the Panthers’ zone while on a power play, Boston’s David Pastrnak took a final shot. It fluttered off Reinhart’s stick, lifted into the air and found its way into the Panthers’ net.

The Bruins beat the Panthers 4-3.

“A good bounce for us at the end of regulation,” Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said. “A good bounce for them at the end.”

It was a crushing end for the Panthers (25-15-3), who played from behind the entire game despite having more than enough chances on the offensive end.

Florida outshot Boston (21-19-5), which entered Saturday on a six-game losing streak, 43-18. According to the advanced hockey statistics website Natural Stat Trick, the Panthers also had a dominant edge over the Bruins in total shot attempts (109-37), scoring chances (56-18) and high-danger chances (23-6).

But Boston goaltender Jeremy Swayman stood tall when needed to, making 40 saves against the Panthers.

“I think that’s the best game we’ve played in quite some time,” forward Evan Rodrigues said. “Obviously, you want the result, you want the two points, but that’s not one we’re gonna hang our heads on or sulk about.”

The Panthers never trailed by more than a goal and tied the game on three separate occasions.

Rodrigues scored on the power play with 4:31 left in the first when he tipped in a long shot from defenseman Uvis Balinskis to make the score 1-1. It was Rodrigues’ first goal since Dec. 5 and snapped a 15-game goal drought for the winger.

Reinhart then knotted the game at 2-2 just 43 seconds into the third period when he beat Swayman backdoor on a feed from Barkov and did so again with his fluttering goal just before regulation ended.

The All-Star winger is now up to 25 goals on the season, which is tied for second in the NHL with Tampa Bay’s Brayden Point and Colorado’s Mikko Rantanen and behind only Edmonton’s Leon Draisitl.

But they couldn’t get the goal to put them ahead.

Morgan Geekie, Pastrnak and Oliver Wahlstrom scored for Boston in regulation. Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky made 14 saves.

“You’re gonna leave the rink in a bad mood, but it’s not gonna stay with you,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “You don’t want to lose games, and especially ones you feel that you played as hard as you can and deserved and did a lot of right things, but you won’t carry that one into tomorrow. You’ll be right tomorrow.”

Aaron Ekblad out

Defenseman Aaron Ekbald did not play for the second time in three games due to an undisclosed injury he sustained on Jan. 3 against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

After sitting out Florida’s loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Monday, Ekblad played just over 24 minutes on Wednesday against the Utah Hockey Club.

Maurice pregame Saturday said the team is being “careful” with one of their top defensemen as the ailment continues to nag at him.

“There’s nothing sinister long-term,” Maurice said. “He played the other night. I thought he played very well with it. The question is how many times to we want to do that? We got to let his thing heal.”

With Ekblad out, Tobias Bjornfot drew into the lineup as Florida’s sixth defenseman. Also, Dmitry Kulikov took Ekblad’s spot on the Panthers’ top defense pairing with Gustav Forsling and Nate Schmidt ran the top power-play unit.

On the road again

The Panthers’ time on home ice was short lived.

They play their next two games on the road — a back-to-back against the Philadelphia Flyers on Monday and New Jersey Devils on Tuesday.

It’s part a stretch in which the Panthers play eight of 11 on the road.

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