Wednesday, May 11, 2022. 10:18 PM
The Florida Panthers have demonstrated that they are the regular season champions.
Trailing by three goals early in the second period, they scored five unanswered goals to save themselves with Game 5 of the first-round series against the Washington Capitals, winning 5-3 on Wednesday.
The Panthers take the lead 3-2 in this series. They lead a series for the first time since 2012. The sixth game of this duel will take place Friday in Washington.
It was with a three-goal deficit that the Panthers suddenly came back to life and found the back of the net three times in less than eight minutes to tie the game in the middle period. Game 4 overtime hero Carter Verhaeghe scored the first of his two goals in the game. He first took advantage of a favorable puck bounce against the boards behind the net to open the scoring for Florida.
Patric Hornqvist energized BB&T Center with a goal on a breakaway before watching Sam Reinhart blast through the ceiling when he tied the game 3-3 by jumping on a loose puck after a disc ball machine spin on the skates of the Capitals guards in front of the net.
Verhaeghe returned after being well fueled by a fine pass from Aleksander Barkov at 3:04 of the third period. He also had three assists.
Verhaeghe set a team mark with five points, one point more than Ray Sheppard, who had four on April 22, 1996.
With less than five minutes to go, Claude Giroux showed he still had good hands by beating Ilya Samsonov to give the Panthers a two-goal lead.
Sergei Bobrovsky made 28 saves.
TJ Oshie scored twice for the Capitals, who scored the first three goals of the game but were never able to play with the killer spirit. In the first, he deflected a shot behind Sergei Bobrovsky when he was at the mouth of the net during a power play.
In the second, both teams exploded with five goals. Justin Schultz added ahead of the visitors. Then, taking advantage of a nice transition game, Oshie put on his second game during a two-on-one attack.