The Edmonton Oilers six-game home stand ended with a 5-1 loss to the Florida Panthers Saturday night at Rogers Place.
“We had our chances,” Oilers Head Coach Kris Knoblauch said after the game. “I know Nuge had two Grade A scoring chances . . . I think we had a couple more there, but I don’t think we defended well enough. I don’t think there was enough urgency to perfect the slots. We made some mistakes and they forced us into doing that and that’s going to be part of hockey, but I just didn’t like how we reacted to those. You knew we were going to get a very hungry, determined team tonight; losing their previous two — getting shutout — we knew it wasn’t going to be easy and they certainly were ready to play.”
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Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had a great chance to give the Oilers an early lead but was denied by a reaching glove save by Sergei Bobrovsky. Carter Verhaeghe fired up the Panthers offence with a goal less than two minutes later. The Panthers kept pressing and scored twice in the final 1:02 of the period with Brandon Montour and Aleksander Barkov doing the damage.
The Oilers ramped up the attack in the second period and got on the board when Zach Hyman cut in front and beat Bobrovsky with a backhand. Connor McDavid assisted on the play to extend his point streak to twelve games. Bobrovsky made several good saves in the second, including a stop on Mattias Ekholm on a breakaway. The Panthers went up 4-1 when Sam Bennett drove the net on the power play and tucked the puck behind Calvin Pickard.
Verhaeghe made it 5-1 in the first minute of the third. Sam Gagner earned a penalty shot with 15:39 to go but was turned aside by Bobrovsky.
The Panthers are 6-0-3 in their last nine visits to Edmonton. Bobrovsky finished with 38 saves.
Evan Bouchard’s point streak ended at 13 games. The Oilers went 4-2 on the home stand.
The Oilers, 13-14-1, will visit the New York Islanders on Tuesday (630 CHED, Face-off Show at 4 p.m., game at 5:30 p.m.).
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