PITTSBURGH \u2013 The Florda Panthers are leaving the Steel City empty handed after suffering a 5-2 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins at PPG Paints Arena on Sunday.<\/p>\n
After securing a 9-4 win on Saturday, the Penguins completed a sweep of the weekend back-to-back.<\/p>\n
\u201cBetter than it was yesterday,\u201d head coach Paul Maurice said. \u201cGot behind it a little bit, but I don\u2019t think we\u2019d given a whole lot to get behind in that manner. We had some good penalty kills; had some pretty good action on the power play, scored a goal. That\u2019d be about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the playoffs being out of reach, the injury-plagued Panthers plan to finish as strong as they can.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been together as a group for so long, so to be missing big pieces [due to injuries] is tough,\u201d forward Carter Verhaeghe said. \u201cBut we\u2019re just feeding on the energy of all the new guys. Even if the games don\u2019t mean too much, you just think of how grateful you are to play in the NHL. You think back as a kid, and to be playing against the Penguins is a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keeping the Penguins off the board during the first half of the first period, the Panthers held their ground over the course of two penalty kills. Even during a season full of adversity, the penalty kill has been consistent for Florida, entering this afternoon’s game 10th in the NHL at 81.1%.<\/p>\n
Shortly after that second penalty kill, however, the Penguins managed to break the ice when Connor Dewar met Daniil Tarasov outside of his crease and poked the puck loose. Off that turnover, Elmer Soderblom fired the puck into the empty cage to make it 1-0 at 11:00.<\/p>\n
After dishing out an assist in his first game back from injury on Saturday, Cole Schwindt evened the score for the Panthers when he took a no-look pass from Vinnie Hinostroza and beat Arturs Silovs with a laser of a snap shot from the left circle to make it 1-1 at 16:15.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to move him up a bit, get him a little more ice time,\u201d Maurice said of the plan for the young center down the home stretch. \u201cIt\u2019s tough coming in on a back-to-back, for sure. But he\u2019s moving well. We\u2019re going to try to get him as much of an opportunity to feel good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2013 The Florda Panthers are leaving the Steel City empty handed after suffering a 5-2 loss to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5113],"tags":[5,4,118,1469,100,5216],"class_list":{"0":"post-542830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-penguins","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-penguins","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-penguins","13":"tag-pittsburghpenguins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116354549394514721","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542830","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=542830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}