Bruins beat Panthers 5-1 to take 1-0 series lead

SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Jeremy Swayman stopped 38 shots, Brandon Carlo scored a goal just hours after his wife gave birth to their son and the Boston Bruins topped the Florida Panthers 5-1 in the first match of their second round. playoffs Monday night.

Morgan Geekie, Mason Lohrei, Justin Brazeau and Jake DeBrusk also scored goals for Boston, which improved to 5-0-0 against the Panthers this season. Pavel Zacha had two assists for the Bruins, who scored three times in the final 7:08 of the second period to erase a 1-0 deficit and take control.

Matthew Tkachuk scored the goal for Florida, which came back from a 1-0 deficit to win an NHL playoff series only twice in nine previous occasions – one of them being the year last against Boston in the first round. Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 24 shots for the Panthers. , who were playing for the first time in a week.

Game 2 will take place at Sunrise on Wednesday evening.

Swayman has been in net in all five of Boston’s wins so far in these playoffs and has been brilliant once again – just as he was against Toronto in a first-round series that went ended with a Game 7 overtime thriller Saturday night. He stopped all seven shots he saw on Florida’s three power plays, bettering the best stats of any goalie so far this postseason.

Over seven playoff appearances, Swayman made a league-best 210 saves with a stingy 1.43 goals-against average.

It was the first one-sided game of five this season between the clubs that finished 1-2 — Florida first with 110 points, Boston second with 109 points — in the Atlantic Division. Boston won them all in the regular season, three by one goal and the other by two, but Florida was either tied or ahead in those games 78 percent of the time.

This one was different. Once Boston took the lead, the Bruins – who have now managed to recover from 1-0 deficits in four of five games with Florida this season – became completely airtight defensively.

Swayman gave up the game’s first goal to Tkachuk, the Florida star’s fourth of the playoffs, midway through the second after he and Bobrovsky engaged in a goalie duel for the first 31 minutes. He did not face the deficit for long.

It took Boston just 67 seconds to tie it, with Geekie collecting a loose puck up front. And the lead came 3:25 later, when Lohrei scored his first playoff goal by going over Bobrovsky’s shoulder from a difficult angle.

This paved the way for Carlo to add a day he will never forget.

He was not on the flight with the Bruins to South Florida on Sunday, staying behind because his wife Mayson was about to give birth. She delivered their son Crew Monday morning, in time for Carlo to board a plane for the three-hour trip south. He arrived at the arena after the rest of his teammates, but in time to make the lineup – and he scored with 21 seconds left in the second, giving his club a 3-point lead. 1.

Brazeau sealed the game with 12:47 left, getting behind the Florida defense and beating Bobrovsky with a backhand. The Panthers pulled Bobrovsky with 5:30 left, and DeBrusk added an empty-netter about 2 minutes later.