*Photo from NHL.com*
It was a win they needed to get, and they did. Sam Reinhart scored the tying goal, Brandon Montour scored the winning goal, and the Florida Panthers rallied to defeat the Toronto Maple Leafs with a 3-2 overtime win on Wednesday night in Toronto.
The Panthers snapped a 4 game losing streak with the win, and move just one point behind the Pittsburgh Penguins for the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. Montour and Reinhart each had a goal and an assist for the Panthers, with 4 other skaters recording a point each.
Montour said of his goal that "I don't think we enjoyed or liked our first, but we kept pushing, obviously, and got the big two points. Their defenseman made a pretty good play, Barkov didn't have much room to get it over to me. He's one of the best in the world and makes big-time plays. I was just trying to get to the net and get open for him and luckily he found me."
The only goal of the first period came from Anton Lundell, who gave the Panthers a 1-0 lead with his 10th goal of the season, assisted by Eetu Luostarinen. Zach Aston-Reese scored the only goal of the second period, getting the Maple Leafs on the board and tying the game 1-1 on his 8th goal of the season.
Auston Matthews scored 6:40 into the 3rd period to make it 2-1 Maple Leafs on his 37th goal of the season. With one minute left in regulation, Reinhart forced overtime on his 28th goal of the season, with Montour and Aaron Ekblad assisting. Montour won the game just 1:41 into overtime, with Aleksander Barkov and Reinhart getting assists.
Getting the start in goal for the Panthers was Alex Lyon, who picked up his first win since January 28 to improve to 4-3-1 in 8 games this season. Lyon stopped 38 of the 40 shots he saw from Toronto, recording a solid .950 save percentage.
Barkov said of Lyon's play postgame that he "Gave us every chance to win the game. He stopped a penalty shot, huge couple saves in overtime and throughout the whole game. He's the type of guy who brings the joy to the locker room and on the ice. You want to play good in front of him, but I still think we could have done a little better job in front of him, but he didn't need that today."
It was Ilya Samsonov who got the start for the Maple Leafs, who played well but couldn't outduel Lyon on the other end. Samsonov made 26 saves out of the 29 shots on goal the Panthers had, good for a .897 save percentage. His record now stands at 24-9-4.
Matthews said of losing the game late that "Other than the first five minutes or so, I thought we played a pretty good game, but obviously you leave the rink a little bit sour just not getting that extra point there at the end. I think there's plenty of things you can take away from the game, but obviously still not ideal."
The Panthers get right back in action on Thursday night as they take on the Montreal Canadiens, with Sergei Bobrovsky lined up to start. The Maple Leafs are projected to start Matt Murray when they face the Ottawa Senators on Friday night.
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