SUNRISE, Fla. — The Bruins showed up in south Florida itching for a fight. The Florida Panthers, having just hung their Stanley Cup banner in the Amerant Bank Arena rafters, were intent on playing hockey, albeit their own irritating, maddening variety of it.
In the end, the B’s did not get their pound of flesh and the Panthers tuned them up on the scoreboard, scoring four first-period goals on Joonas Korpisalo and cruising to a 6-4 victory in the season opener. It was not as close as the score might indicate.
Did the leftover anger interfere with what they wanted to do from a hockey standpoint?
“I’m sure it would seem that way, but we crosschecked them, we went to the box, they crosschecked us when we had an opportunity to score a goal in the second the call didn’t go our way,” said coach Jim Montgomery. “But in general? We just weren’t good enough in so many areas tonight, they were.”
The Bruins had re-jiggered their roster with some beef in the offseason so that they could create the kind of grinding forecheck that led the Panthers to the Cup. But it’s tough to forecheck when you’re playing most of the game on your heels.
‘I can’t pinpoint why we looked slow, but we looked slow the entire game, not just the first 10 minutes, in my opinion,” said Montgomery.
Much of the game looked all too familiar, with the B’s unable to make clean breakouts, Sam Bennett getting away with infractions most of the night (he had the crosscheck to which Montgomery referred) and Matthew Tkachuk trying to draw penalties in the most pest-like way. Trent Frederic, who was trying to get at Tkachuk all game, said that the Panther agitator actually asked him to fight but then kept his gloves on, presumably to get Frederic to drop his and get a penalty.
“I didn’t know people did that. I think it’s kind of disrespectful to the game. Those are my thoughts,” said Frederic.
Frederic conceded the vengeful mind-frame of the team got in the way of any success.
“Maybe a little. I know my mind was probably not in the greatest place for (the start) of the hockey game. But I thought the positive there is we kept pushing back. I think we just ran out of time. We’ll get them in the next week or so,” said Frederic.
The B’s face the Panthers at home in a matinee on Monday.
It started early with Frederic yapping in Tkachuk’s ear and the Florida agitator skating away. Frederic later tried to give Tkachuk no option but Bennett came flying in to Tkachuk’s defense.
Somehow, Frederic was the only player who got a penalty. While Brad Marchand had said earlier in the day that he held no animosity toward Bennett, who concussed him with a cheap shot in the playoffs last spring, the focus of the B’s ire seemed to be focused on Tkachuk, who fought David Pastrnak last spring and took a couple of cheap shots himself on the Bruin superstar. Tkachuk kept his gloves on even when Pastrnak got in his face.
New Bruin Nikita Zadorov wanted to get a piece of Tkachuk as well and was called for cross checking.
Bennett, meanwhile, would renew his villainous status later in the game.
Elevated blood pressures aside, the Panthers dominated territorially and scored a pair of goals 1:04 apart. Korpisalo had been under a barrage of pucks and made some good saves early, but the first goal was not a good one. He could not control a rebound of a long Evan Rodrigues shot and Bennett swooped in to get the tap-in at 6:27. Before the Panther fans got back in their seats, Eetu Luostarinen cleaned up a rebound of a Anton Lundell shot and it was 2-0.
But on the penalty kill, an Andrew Peeke clear-in took a fortuitous bounce right to Elias Lindholm, who dished it to Pavel Zacha on the left wing and he beat Sergei Bobrovsky for a shorthanded goal.
Then it looked like the B’s were in business when former Bruin A.J. Greer, who had fought Mark Kastelic earlier, took a hooking penalty. But the Panthers answered with a shorty of their own. With Charlie McAvoy on his hip on is off wing, Sam Reinhart somehow got a shot off that beat Korpisalo under the bar.
Then a minute later, with just 26 seconds left in the period, Greer’s shot was blocked in front, but Bennett was there to beat Korpisalo and give the Panthers a commanding lead three-goal lead. The B’s would never fully recovered.
The Panthers took a 5-1 lead at 9:12 when Brandon Carlo turned the puck over at the Florida blue line to Uvis Balinskas. He got it up to another Bruin castaway, Jesper Boqvist, who took it deep and fed Jonah Gadjovich for the easy goal.
“Korpisalo was not the problem tonight. It was the people in front of him,” said Montgomery. “You can’t give up four backdoor tap-ins and expect your goalie to make save after save. He made a lot of saves on breakaways. He was good tonight. The rest of the team and the coaching staff … we weren’t good enough.”
The Panthers’ fans were having a good time. Soon, a full-throated “We Want Swayman” chant. That wasn’t going to happen, with the B’s No. 1 goalie having missed all of training camp.
The B’s did get one back when McAvoy followed up a John Beecher shot to make it a 5-2 at 12:32.
The Panthers pushed it to a four-goal lead at 6:36 of the third on a goal that ignited more Bruin fury. After Rodrigues beat Korpisalo cleanly on a high slot shot, Bennett steamrolled Korpisalo. Mason Lohrei started jamming his stick in Bennett’s gut and a melee ensued. Frederic again tried to get at Tkachuk but the Panther was able to use the linesmen as his bodyguards.
Later, Zadorov tried to get Bennett to go but, again, it was not to be.
“It’s the game within the game,” said Zadorov. “It’s not frustrating. That’s the reality. If you’re talking about my situation, I felt like Tkachuk was going against Pasta, so I have to be the middle man, I have to be in between and protect my best player. And I thought Bennett ran our goalie and I didn’t like that as well and I let him know about that.”
Frederic and Pastrnak scored late goals to make the score look respectable. But it didn’t change the fact that the Panthers were clearly the better team on Tuesday. Infuriatingly so.
Originally Published:
