Devils halt Panthers’ winning streak at seven victories as Bennett misses game

A Florida Panthers winning streak that spanned three weeks and seven time zones ended Tuesday because New Jersey goalie Jacob Markstrom succeeded where his seven predecessors failed.

Markstrom stopped 34 Panthers shots Tuesday to lift the Devils to a 4-1 road victory — and snap what was the NHL’s longest active winning streak at seven.

It certainly didn’t hurt Markstrom’s cause that the Panthers (11-4-1) were down one of their top weapons — and couldn’t stop hitting the pipe.

Four post strikes plus no Sam Bennett added up to a loss on this night. Bennett, who ranks second among Panthers players in points on the year (15), was a surprise scratch after tightening up in morning skate.

Panthers coach Paul Maurice suggested after the game that he wasn’t concerned that Bennett will miss significant time, but suggested Bennett could be out when these teams face again at Amerant Bank Arena on Thursday.

Without his No. 2 center, Maurice had to reconfigure his bottom three lines.

It wasn’t a coincidence that the Panthers’ lone goal came on the man advantage. Florida’s even-strength attack just felt a hair off all night.

“There will be three or four mistakes that are that end up being the difference,” Maurice said. “I know there weren’t a lot of them. Both teams checked pretty hard get sticks. It was hard to generate. So you, you’re looking to clean those mistakes up as best as you can.”

The Panthers lost Tuesday despite outshooting Devils 35-24 and going on the man advantage three times. But they simply couldn’t find the kind of offensive flow that had fueled their now-expired winning streak.

The Panthers scored 34 points during their winning streak, and went just three periods during that stretch without a goal. They had two scoreless periods Tuesday alone.

Still, the Panthers trailed by just one late in the action. But Paul Cotter ended the suspense of a one-goal game with just less than five minutes left in regulation, hammering home an offering from Nico Hischier after a rush up ice. Ondrej Palat added an empty-netter to conclude the scoring.

Markstrom withstood an early onslaught and the Devils (11-6-2) capitalized on one of the prettiest passes you’ll see.

Jesper Bratt laced a first-period backhand pass cross-ice that landed perfectly on the blade of Jack Hughes for what was a essentially a layup goal.

Panthers goalie Spencer Knight wasn’t to blame; he simply didn’t have time to react before the puck was behind him. The assist was Bratt’s 15th of the season.

Florida put up more of a fight in the second — literally and figuratively — but the deficit was the same when it ended as when it began.

In a 90-second span midway through the period, Sam Reinhart scored his team-leading 12th goal of the season — coming on the man advantage -- and Panthers forward Jonah Gadjovich absolutely laid out Devils defenseman Brenden Dillon with textbook right cross. Put simply, it was an old school hockey fight — and the talk of the postgame media availabilities.

“He stepped up and we were both willing to go and it was just ended up being a good fight,” Gadjovich said. “Nothing but respect for him. It seemed to get the fans into it and, you know, it is what it is, you know, it’s good.”

The emotional jolt was short-lived.

The Devils outshot the Panthers 6-1 to close the period after the Reinhart goal, and threw one too many rushes at Knight.

Winger Dawson Mercer helped the put Devils ahead for good by gathering a loose neutral zone puck and directing it to the free-skating Timo Meier, who beat Knight on the stick-side.

Maurice postgame relished the opportunity of getting another crack at the Metropolitan Division leaders in two days.

“I like the back to back a lot more,” he said. “It’s got a more of a playoff feeling that you’ll make adjustments off your game. Those are really important things and I think you learn faster because you don’t have a change necessarily in style for the next game. So the things that you wanna correct, you’ll have an opportunity to do that. Both teams will try to be better in the areas that they were good, and they’ll try to read what the other team did.”