SUNRISE, Fla. – Niko Mikkola and Aleksander Barkov each scored twice, and the Florida Panthers scored five goals in a nine-minute span of the third period to beat the Carolina Hurricanes 6-2 on Saturday night and move one win from a third consecutive trip to the Stanley Cup Final.
Jesper Boqvist — playing for the injured Sam Reinhart — scored the go-ahead goal early in the third for Florida, which now leads the Eastern Conference finals 3-0.
Brad Marchand also scored for the Panthers and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 23 shots.
Logan Stankoven and Seth Jarvis scored for Carolina, which has now dropped 15 consecutive East finals games — getting swept by Pittsburgh in 2009, Boston in 2019, Florida in 2023 and are now on the brink of it happening again.
Game 4 is Monday in Sunrise.
Florida’s five third-period goals were a club record for any playoff period and ruined what had seemed like a good move by Carolina to switch goaltenders going into Game 3.
The Hurricanes went with Pyotr Kochetkov in net, after Frederik Andersen gave up nine goals on just 36 shots in the first five periods of the series.
Kochetkov stopped 14 of 15 shots through two periods. The third, not so much.
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