TAMPA – Florida Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk returned to the ice for the first time since early February and scored two power-play goals in the second period to lead the Cats to a 6-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game One of the NHL Playoffs.
Tkachuk sustained a lower-body injury in the 4 Nations Face Off in February and was sidelined throughout the latter part of the season.
Tkachuk scored the two power-play goals in a 4:49 span when he followed Nate Schmidt’s score on a rebound on the right side of the crease.
“When you put it in the context he hasn’t played a hockey game in two months, he can still take that much time off and handle a puck the way he handles it,” said Florida head coach Paul Maurice. “The rest of it was smartly played by him because I didn’t think he was in the rhythm of the game.”
After Schmidt’s goal gave the Panthers a 3-1 lead at the 4:41 mark of the second period, Tkachuk struck 14 seconds later when he scored on a pass from Sam Reinhardt . After a Tampa Bay turnover in it’s zone, Aleksander Barkov controlled the puck and passed it to Reinhardt, who made the pass from the red line.
“It was a tale of probably two games for him,” explained Lightning head coach Jon Cooper, “He takes the penalty in the first period that we scored on and then he scores two power play goals so Matthew is good on the power play. Really good. I think we kind of gave him the second one. We threw it right on his stick. We have a pretty darned good penalty kill and they go 3-for-3 on the power play, so that’s on us – regardless of who is playing.”
At 9:44, Tkachuk gave Florida 5-1 lead as he controlled the puck with his glove, dropped it, and fired for the score. Returning from his absense, Tkachuk’s experience was instrumental in giving the a positive start to defending the 2024 Stanley Cup.
“It was a strange game,” Maurice commented. “Road team scores the first goal. We get two then still not a lot of action in the game. There wasn’t a lot of danger in the game at that point.”
Florida’s first two scores came when Sam Bennett deflected a waist-high pass from Uvis Balinskis for the score at the 3:44 mark of the first period.
After Tampa Bay’s Jake Guentzel scored off of a rebound from a Nikita Kucherov shot at 12:21, Reinhardt deflected a rebound into the goal for a 2-1 Panthers lead at the 19:16 mark in the first period.
“You know the old cliche, ‘Better watch out for that last minute of the first period and the start of the next period.'” said Cooper. “We gave one up at the end and then one at the start, so we’re chasing it. That was tough for us.”
Tampa Bay outshot Florida, 22-16, but the Panthers were 3-for-3 on the power play against a Lightning penalty kill that finished sixth in the NHL by disposing of 81.6 percent of opponents’ power plays.
“We are a pretty decent defensive team and we have a pretty good PK and we gave up three on that,” said Cooper. “They exposed us in certain areas, but in the end those are areas of strength of us, so I am pretty confident we can button those up and we will be ok.”
