Sunrise, Florida. – Sunrise, Florida (AP) – He was on a tie 1-1 in the third period. It turned into eruption. And after a barrier of five goals, one like no other in the history of the Florida playoffs, the Panthers are a victory for their third consecutive trip to the Stanley Cup final.
Niko Mikkola and Aleksander Barkov each scored twice, and the Panthers – fed by five goals in nine minutes – exceeded the Hurricanes of Caroline 6-2 on Saturday evening to take a 3-0 lead in the Eastern Conference final.
Jesper Boqvist – By playing for the injured Sam Reinhart – scored the goal of the fire at the start of the third for Florida and Brad Marchand also scored for the panthers, who received 23 stops from Sergei Bobrovsky.
“In the third period, I think we took over,” said Barkov.
It is an understatement of the captain of the Panthers.
Logan Stankoven and Seth Jarvis scored for Carolina, who has now lost 15 consecutive games in the Eastern final – being swept by Pittsburgh in 2009, Boston in 2019, in Florida in 2023 and is now again.
Match 4 is on Monday at sunrise.
“It’s a good team, that’s for sure,” said Sebastian Aho de Carolina. “But I have the impression that we gave them the momentum or a goal at the wrong time – and obviously they made us pay”
The five goals in the third period of Florida were a club record for any eliminatory period and ruined what had seemed to be a good decision of Caroline to change goalkeeper in match 3. The Hurricanes made Pyotr Kochetkov in the net, after Frederik Andersen granted nine goals on 36 shots in the first five periods of the series.
Kochetkov stopped 14 of the 15 shots for two periods. The third, not so much. A tie match has become an pressed rout.
“I do not think the way the matches was played is really an indication of what the results were in terms of score,” said Marchand. “They were quite tight. It seems that we have some rebounds and some lucky breaks here and there which gave us a fairly good lead.”
Florida had a break to do it 1-0. Barkov launched a pass through the Plit fold, the puck striking Evan Rodrigues’ stick before finding Mikkola – who tried to send him back to Barkov.
He never got there. Mikkola’s pass has diverted the defender of Caroline Dmitry Orlov and after Kochetkov, opening the scoring and giving Florida a cumulative score of 11-2 in the series at this point.
Stankuven – which was flat stolen by Bobrovsky earlier in the match – equaled it on the power game at 14:51 of the second, a kind of breakthrough for hurricanes.
Brent Burns took a shot near the blue line that Bobrovsky stopped. The rebound jumped the leg of Bobrovsky and Stankuven redirected it at home to do so 1-1-The first equality of the series, other than 0-0 scores to start the matches.
But the third, like most of the series, was all Florida.
“We have to try to put our best foot forward,” said Hurricane coach Rod Brind’amour. “I felt as if we had done it tonight for two periods.”
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AP NHL Playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
