The Florida Panthers won the battle of quick strikes on Monday night, moving them within one victory of winning their Eastern Conference First Round series against the Tampa Bay Lightning in the process.
Aaron Ekblad and Seth Jones scored 11 seconds apart late in the third period for the defending Stanley Cup champions, who turned a one-goal deficit into a 4-2 victory in Game 4 at Amerant Bank Arena. Instead of heading back to Tampa with the best-of-7 series tied at two wins each, the Panthers will take the ice at Amalie Arena on Wednesday night with a 3-1 series lead and the opportunity to send their in-state rivals home for the summer by winning Game 5.
Ekblad tied the game 2-2 with 3:47 remaining when he chipped the rebound of Sam Reinhart 's shot from the right point past Andrei Vasilevskiy . Before the Lightning could regroup, Florida went ahead when Jones' shot caromed off Lightning defenseman Ryan McDonagh and through a couple of bodies before getting past Vasilevskiy with 3:36 remaining. It was the fastest two goals by defensemen on one team in Stanley Cup Playoff history.
Carter Verhaeghe 's empty-netter with 1:40 remaining capped Florida's stunning comeback and left the Lightning reeling.
"We were four minutes away from being 2-2 [in the series] and there were two quick goals," Tampa Bay captain Victor Hedman said. "It's frustrating. But we knew we needed to win three of the last four, so, now it comes down to winning the last three."
The irony was that Tampa Bay's two goals also came in a span of 11 seconds.
After Anton Lundell put Florida ahead 1-0 at 9:06 of the second period, the Lightning tied it when Mitchell Chafee pumped a rebound past Sergei Bobrovsky at 12:21. Tampa Bay then won the face-off and grabbed a 2-1 lead when veteran defenseman Erik Cernak scored his third goal in 83 career Stanley Cup Playoff games at 12:32.
Teams that trail 3-1 in a best-of-7 series have come back to win just 9.2 percent of the time (32 of 348). The Lightning still have much of the core of the teams that won the Stanley Cup in 2020 and 2021 and made the Final in 2022. They need players like Vasilevskiy, Hedman and NHL scoring champion Nikita Kucherov to step up their games before it's too late.
"It was tough losing the first two at home," Cooper said, "so we have massive challenges ahead of us."
