By TIM REYNOLDS<\/p>\n
SUNRISE \u2014 Noah Gregor scored eight seconds into the game to open an early five-goal barrage by Florida, Matthew Tkachuk had his first four-point game since December 2024 and the Panthers defeated the Ottawa Senators 6-3 on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
Carter Verhaeghe scored two goals and added an assist for Florida, while Seth Jones had three assists \u2014 including one on Gregor\u2019s history-making goal.<\/p>\n
Gregor\u2019s goal was the fastest to open a game in Panthers history \u2014 two seconds ahead of Johan Garpenlov\u2019s goal at the 10-second mark of a game against Colorado in October 1996 \u2014 and the fastest to start a game in the NHL this season.<\/p>\n
A.J. Greer and Mackie Samoskevich also scored for Florida, while Sam Bennett added two assists and Daniil Tarasov stopped 22 shots for the Panthers.<\/p>\n
Drake Batherson, Jordan Spence and Michael Amadio scored for Ottawa, which has gone 0-2-1 in its last three games as it chases a wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. Linus Ullmark started and stopped 11 of 16 shots before getting chased after Florida took a 5-0 lead with 5:24 left in the first period.<\/p>\n
James Reimer replaced Ullmark and stopped 12 of 13 shots.<\/p>\n
Matthew Tkachuk had a goal and three assists in the game. It was the 25th time he\u2019s gone head-to-head in the NHL with his brother Brady Tkachuk, the Senators\u2019 captain; Matthew Tkachuk\u2019s teams have now won 15 of those meetings.<\/p>\n
Linesman Brad Kovachik worked regular-season game No. 1,972 of his career \u2014 and it\u2019ll be the last. The veteran of three decades is retiring, ending a career that saw him work the Stanley Cup Final in five different years, as well as the 2014 Sochi Olympics.<\/p>\n
Players from both teams lined up to shake Kovachik\u2019s hand during a first-period stoppage in play.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Panthers: Host the Boston Bruins on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By TIM REYNOLDS SUNRISE \u2014 Noah Gregor scored eight seconds into the game to open an early five-goal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5102],"tags":[62,57,5141,5,1180,4,63,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-533999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-panthers","10":"tag-floridapanthers","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-panthers","15":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116327405783925611","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}