TAMPA, Fla. — Matthew Tkachuk had two power-play objectives and an help in his first sport after a two-month absence and the Florida Panthers opened defence of their Stanley Cup title with a 6-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday night time in the primary sport of the groups’ first-round playoff collection.
Nate Schmidt scored on an influence play and completed with two objectives, and Sam Bennett and Sam Reinhart every added a objective and an help for the Panthers. Sergei Bobrovsky made 20 saves.
Jake Guentzel and Brayden Level scored for Tampa Bay. Andrei Vasilevskiy had 10 stops.
The Lightning performed the ultimate 33:30 with out heart Anthony Cirelli. There was no fast phrase on why the 27-year-old centre was out.
The groups meet for Game 2 of the best-of-seven collection on Thursday at Amalie Area.
Tkachuk was enjoying for the primary time in greater than two months after coping with a lower-body harm. He scored twice in the second interval. These two objectives put Florida up 4-1 — the second objective for the Panthers in a 14-second span — and the subsequent one pushing the result in 5-1 halfway by means of the second interval.
Bennett had opened the scoring at 3:44 of the primary, batting a puck out of the air. Guentzel responded for Tampa Bay, scoring with a person benefit at 12:21. The Panthers regained the lead when Reinhart tipped in a shot by Dmitry Kulikov with 44 seconds remaining in the primary.
The Panthers broke the sport open early in the second when Schmidt scored on a rebound at 4:41. Tampa Bay misplaced a problem for goaltender interference on the play, and Tkachuk scored his first on the following energy play — 14 seconds later — and added a second at 9:44.
Level minimize the deficit to 5-2 at 13:04 of the second. Schmidt added Florida’s third power-play objective off a go from Tkachuk at 5:09 of the third interval.
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