Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart and Carter Verhaeghe each had a goal and an assist and Sergei Bobrovsky made 26 saves to lead the Florida Panthers to a 4-1 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday night in Las Vegas.
Sam Bennett also scored and Brandon Montour added two assists for Florida, which scored three times on the power play while extending its win streak to a season-high six games.
It was the first regular-season win in six tries at T-Mobile Arena for the Panthers, who closed within two points of first-place Boston in the Atlantic Division.
Pavel Dorofeyev scored for Vegas, which suffered its sixth loss in its last seven games. Logan Thompson finished with 32 saves.
Vegas, coming off a 3-0 loss at Seattle in the Winter Classic on New Year’s Day, jumped out to a 1-0 lead at the 3:59 mark of the first period when Dorofeyev buried a rebound from the slot of a shot by Mark Stone for his fourth goal of the season.
Florida tied it with a power-play goal by Bennett at the 14:15 mark. Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s shot from the left circle caromed off the end boards right to Bennett at the bottom of the right circle, where he snapped in a wrist shot for his seventh goal.
Vegas had two excellent chances to regain the lead at the start of the second period with back-to-back five-on-three power plays, one for 40 seconds and another for 1:21, but failed to score.
Tkachuk then gave the Panthers a 2-1 lead at the 6:15 mark with his deflection in the low slot of a Montour point shot past Thompson’s glove side.
Florida increased its lead to 3-1 near the end of the period on Verhaeghe’s rebound goal off a Gustav Forsling shot, extending Verhaeghe’s goal streak to four games. It also marked the third straight season Verhaeghe hit the 20-goal mark.
Reinhart made it 4-1 early in the third period when he one-timed a Tkachuk pass from the high slot for his league-leading 12th power-play goal and 25th of the season.
Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov (upper body) and forward Evan Rodrigues (lower body) left the game in the first period and didn’t return.
–Field Level Media
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