Florida Panthers end long homestand with embarrassing overtime loss to the Blues

Last season, the Florida Panthers were known as the ‘Comeback Cats’ due to their flair for the dramatic.

Saturday night, they were on the wrong end of what they used to deal out.

The Panthers ended up losing a game they were in complete control of, watching the visiting St. Louis Blues rally from a three-goal deficit in the third period before escaping Sunrise with a 5-4 overtime win.

Florida had led 4-1 before Ryan O’Reilly scored by banking a shot off goalie Spencer Knight with 11:44 remaining in the game.

The Panthers were still been in fine shape, but two more goals went in later in the third before Jordan Kyrou scored his second of the night 1:08 into overtime.

“I thought we did a very good job in the first two and in the third we made errors that are not usual for us and it cost us,” said Radko Gudas, who gave the Panthers a 2-0 less than three minutes into the game.

“The biggest thing is to learn from it and forget it; remember the mistake and forget about the loss. It is going to happen. We can’t always be the team that comes back. Sometimes that is going to bite you.”

Florida was certainly hoping to pick up two more points at home before it flies off to western Canada on Sunday afternoon for a long five-game road trip.

The Panthers were looking to rack up the points when they saw the schedule come out — and with seven of eight games on home ice, they should have been thinking that way.

Only Florida ended up going 3-3-2 during that span.

As frustrating as some losses have been this season, the one on Saturday night may have topped them all considering how dominant the Panthers were for much of the game.

Aaron Ekblad scored 80 seconds in with Gudas’ 60-foot shot going in moments later. Carter Verhaeghe then scored on a breakaway to make it 3-0 before the game was even nine minutes old.

Anton Lundell gave Florida a 4-1 lead with 7:10 left in the second — a lead the Panthers carried fairly deep into the third.

The Panthers ended up getting a point out of the game but it most certainly should have been two.

“You have to skate and you have to make plays. You can’t sit on anything,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said.

“Maybe even to the 10-minute mark [of the third period] we were fine then they made a push and we did not handle it well. … When it got to 4-2, you could feel us back off and not be confident or direct with the puck. You can’t play a tentative game.”

Saturday night marked the first game with Knight in net after Maurice said he was going to move away from splitting goaltending duties as was the case in the opening 20 games.

Instead, they want to see someone “get on a bit of a roll.”

Knight had been the Panthers’ hot hand and will still get the chance to see more playing time.

He obviously gave up the goals in the third but is not completely to blame for what happened in the second half of that period on Saturday.

Knight, 21, takes pride in having a short memory when it comes to giving up a goal or two in a game.

He will need that mentality after St. Louis came back to beat him on Saturday.

“Sometimes things do not go your way, sometimes you do not get the right bounces like when they come off the back of the net,” said Knight, who ended with 32 saves.

“We have had plenty of games where we came back and we should have stuck to the game plan. Hey, we move on. You have wins and you have losses but the important thing is to learn from all of them.”

The Panthers were playing shorthanded with captain Aleksander Barkov missing the game due to an unspecified illness he has been dealing with since last week.

Barkov missed his team’s loss to Dallas on Nov. 17 but played in the following three games. He was not at practice Friday and Maurice said was told by doctors to stay away from the arena.

The team stresses Barkov’s illness is not Covid-19 related — although he may have to miss the team flight on Sunday. If that is the case, Barkov could meet the team when he gets the all-clear from medical staff.

“It’s not something we can have around the players,” Maurice said. “The doctor’s best advice was he not come to the rink and we’ll see how he feels.”