Livescore
The good times continued to roll for the Florida Panthers as they played their first home game in weeks on Thursday.
Florida welcomed the struggling Nashville Predators to Amerant Bank Arena and kept the status quo intact for both.
Led by basically their entire top six, the Panthers took down Nashville 6-2 for their six straight victory, maintaining their spot atop the Eastern Conference standings.
It didn’t take long for Florida to get on the scoreboard, and it was their top line getting the job done.
Sam Reinhart came flying down the right side of Nashville’s zone, and after seeing Predators goalie Scott Wedgewood commit, wrapped the puck around the far side and stuffed it off the goaltender and into the net.
Less than two minutes later, Matthew Tkachuk came down the same side of the ice and scored on a rush to give the Cats a quick 2-0 lead.
Even Rodrigues stayed hot, scoring for the third straight game just as an early second period power play expired.
Later in the middle frame, Rodrigues drew back-to-back penalties – one on Steven Stamkos and one on Roman Josi – leading to a power play goal by Carter Verhaeghe and a 4-0 lead for the home team.
Nashville final got on the board with 6:08 left in the period thanks to a familiar-looking power play goal by Steven Stamkos.
The Panthers got the goal back before the period ended as Verhaeghe finished off a nice cross-ice pass from Barkov, the third point of the game for both, sending the Cats into the break with a 5-1 lead.
Tomas Nosek’s first goal as a Panther made it 6-1 Cats, and a deflection goal by Jusso Parssinen 28 seconds later gave Nashville their second goal of the game.
When the dust finally settled, 12 of the 18 Florida players on the roster finished with at least a point, and four of them logged multi-point outings.
Florida improved to 10-3-1 with the win.
On to the Flyers.
QUICK THOUGHTS
Reinhart extended his goal-scoring streak to five games. He leads the NHL with 11 goals and leads the Panthers with 22 points.
Since returning from an eight-game absence, Barkov has two goals and ten points in four games after dishing out a trio of assists on Thursday.
Niko Mikkola has helpers in three straight games and in five of his past six. He picked up an apple on Reinhart’s first period goal.
Tkachuk has scored in back-to-back games, now with four goals and ten points through his first nine games.
Verhaeghe finished with three points. He’s up to four goals and 11 points over his past 10 games.
Rodrigues went eight games without logging a point, but now he’s got three goals and four points over his past three outings.
Uvis Balinskis logged the first multi-point game of his NHL career, assisting on the Tkachuk and Verhaeghe goals.
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