{"id":547305,"date":"2026-04-08T12:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T12:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/547305\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T12:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T12:04:12","slug":"panthers-cant-close-fall-4-3-in-shootout-to-montreal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/547305\/","title":{"rendered":"Panthers can\u2019t close, fall 4-3 in shootout to Montreal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Florida Panthers took the lead three separate times, but couldn\u2019t hold off the Montreal Canadiens, eventually losing 4-3 to the Habs in a shootout at Bell Centre.<\/p>\n

Donovan Sebrango created the game-opening goal, going to coast-to-coast and firing a low shot on Jakub Dobes. The Montreal goaler made a fine kick save, only to see Carter Verhaeghe bury the rebound from the left circle at the 9:23 mark. <\/p>\n

Ivan Demidov blistered Cole Caufield\u2019s cross by Daniil Tarasov 54 seconds into the middle frame to even the score. Juraj Slafkovsk\u00fd drew the second assist on the power-play marker which came with Tobias Bj\u00f6rnfot\u00a0off for slashing the aforemention Demidov. <\/p>\n

Florida regained the lead at 13:43 when a streaking Cole Reinhardt knocked the puck from center into the Canadiens end and caught up to it before pulling Dobes to the ice and finishing on the forehand. Luke Kunin and Seth Jones received assists forworking the puck up to Reinhardt.<\/p>\n

Montreal got a little lucky to tie the tilt 6:22 into the third. Noah Dobson took a pass from Adam Engstrom and centered into the slot looking for Oliver Kapanen. The pass was broken up by Dmitry Kulikov, but the puck to came to Phillip Danault and he beat Tarasov with a snapper from between the circles.<\/p>\n

The Panthers responded quickly to forge ahead a third time 1:27 later. Jesper Boqvist fedthe puck back to Gustav Forsling at the left point and he slung a wrister towards the cage that was deflected in by Eetu Luostarinen.<\/p>\n

Heartbreak happened in the final minute when Lane Hutson took a crisp pass from Slafkovsk\u00fd, skated through a hole in the Panthers defense, which forced Tarasov off the near post, and centered back out to Nick Suzuki, who easily deposited the puck into the vacanted net with 31 ticks left on the clock.<\/p>\n

Dobes would come up huge in overtime, stopping Mackie Samsoskevich\u2019s initial wrister on two-on-one break and then getting a piece of the rebound with his skate to deny the Cats the win.<\/p>\n

Montreal would make short work of the Panthers in the shootout to complete the season-series sweep. Caufield opened the skills competition with a five-hole conversion and then Alexandre Texier went top-shelf in the top of the seond round. Dobes denied Luostarinen in the first round and then made a pad save on Sam Bennett to end it.<\/p>\n

A spirited effort from the Panthers, who just couldn\u2019t make it to the final buzzer to snap a losing streak which has grown to three games. The well-earned point keeps the Cats at .NHL 500 heading into Thursday night\u2019s tilt in Ottawa, where Florida will try to embrace the spoiler role against a Senators team trying to hold on to the second wild card. Unfortunately, the injury but bit again as Kulikov joined the broken finger brigade and will miss the remainder of the season. Siri, play the instrumental version of Suicide Is Painless. <\/p>\n

Stat Card<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Florida Panthers took the lead three separate times, but couldn\u2019t hold off the Montreal Canadiens, eventually losing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,5,264,21,5147,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-547305","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal-canadiens","8":"tag-canadiens","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-montreal","11":"tag-montreal-canadiens","12":"tag-montrealcanadiens","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116368996800067751","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547305","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=547305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}