Florida’s Eetu Luostarinen had a career night with a goal and three assists as the visiting Panthers closed out their first-round Eastern Conference playoff matchup Wednesday night, beating the Tampa Bay Lightning 6-3 in Game 5 of their best-of-seven series.
With the Stanley Cup champs holding a one-goal lead throughout the third period, Luostarinen netted a nifty cross-ice pass from Brad Marchand for a commanding 5-3 edge with 6:58 left. Sam Reinhart had an empty-net tally at 15:36.
By winning the series 4-1, Florida, which won all three games in Tampa, advances to the next round to face either the Toronto Maple Leafs or Ottawa Senators, with Toronto holding a 3-2 lead as the series returns to Ottawa for Thursday’s Game 6.
“You have a goal every round, and it’s to play at your best and take control of moments and be big when opportunities present themselves like tonight,” Marchand said. “There’s so much experience in this room, a lot of guys that have been there.”
Anton Lundell had a goal and two assists, and Reinhart added an assist. Carter Verhaeghe, Aleksander Barkov and Sam Bennett scored, while Marchand had two assists. Goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky made 26 saves.
Tampa Bay’s Gage Goncalves, Nick Paul and Jake Guentzel hit the net. Victor Hedman had two assists. Goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 25 shots.
The Lightning’s Brandon Hagel (injury) and Florida’s Aaron Ekblad (suspension) missed the match.
The home side took the early lead when Goncalves found a rolling puck and tallied at 2:33 for his first career playoff goal.
However, Verhaeghe, a former Lightning forward known for big playoff tallies, sent in a goal on the first power play when he flipped in a marker off a Matthew Tkachuk shot at 5:21.
In the wild frame, Lundell provided Florida’s first lead with a goal off his left skate off Marchand’s pass, but Paul notched an equalizer 2:10 later by spinning and whipping one in.
Barkov tipped in his first goal of the series 52 seconds into the second, and Bobrovsky made enormous point-blank saves on Erik Cernak and Goncalves just seconds apart from each other four minutes later.
Guentzel evened it for a third time when he scored at 9:57 on his team’s second power play, breaking an 0-for-15 stretch of futility.
Florida went up for the third time when Bennett, just out of the penalty box, finished a two-on-one from Lundell with the go-ahead snipe at 15:13 to make it 4-3.
The Panthers have now won 23 consecutive playoff games when holding a lead after the second period and 32-4-1 in those situations during the regular season.
“They’re an exceptional team,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said of the Panthers. “Now they know how to (win the Cup). And there’s only a few teams in the last little while that really know how to do it. We were one of them, and now they’re one of them. It’s unfortunate we’ve had to run into them.”
–Field Level Media
