SUNRISE, Fla. — The Panthers ran their Stanley Cup banner to the Amerant Bank Arena rafters Tuesday night and then promptly ran the Bruins right out of the rink.
Boston looked a day late and a dollar short for long stretches of its 6-4 opening-night loss to Florida in a game that wasn’t close to being that close.
The Bruins scored a pair of late goals to cloud the competitiveness of this one.
Unable to consistently generate chances early, the Bruins fell behind early and then got lost in a fog of Florida’s ferocious
“Their execution was really good. Our execution was really poor,” said Bruins coach Jim Montgomery. “I can’t pinpoint why we looked slow, but we looked slow the entire game, not just the first 10 minutes, in my opinion.”
Making his first start with the Bruins, Joonas Korpisalo (29 saves) was peppered with shots early and then physically pummeled later when Sam Bennett ran him over after Florida’s final goal.
- “Korpisalo was not a problem tonight. It was the people in front of him. You can’t give up four backdoor tap-ins and expect your goalie to make save after save,” said Montgomery. “He made a lot of saves on breakaways. He was good tonight. The players in front of him, the rest of the team, and the coaching staff. We weren’t good enough.”
Korpisalo was under siege almost immediately and he held up well for the first five minutes, making a big right pad save on Carter Verhaeghe after a sloppy giveaway at center ice while the Bruins were changing. He denied Verhaeghe on the doorstep moments later.
The Bruins, meanwhile, didn’t land a shot on Sergei Bobrovsky until five minutes had elapsed.
The first fisticuffs of the season came when Mark Kastelic dropped ‘em with ex-Bruin A.J. Greer, who had taken exception to Kastelic’s hit on another ex-Bruin, Jesper Boqvist.
Greer rapped his stick on Kastelic’s legs and the two went at it, exchanging a couple of nice blows. Greer, mysteriously, escaped an instigator minor.
Trent Frederic tried to spark his mates by challenging Matthew Tkachuk, but the Panther wouldn’t oblige — just like last season’s playoffs — and Frederic was hit with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
Tkachuk’s unwillingness to match up surprised Frederic.
“He said yeah, and he didn’t [drop his gloves], so it’s kind of hard when someone says, yeah,” said Frederic. “He actually asked me because I was asking him and then he didn’t, so it’s hard to read that.”
“I mean, the game was 4-1 after first, so not too happy with that,” said Korpisalo. “A couple weird bounces. Four go in in one period. It doesn’t matter how many shots you got there. It’s pretty tough to climb back there.”
The Bruins showed a little life as the second opened but couldn’t cash in on their chances.
The Panthers upped the advantage to 5-1 and this time it wasn’t the usual suspects. The fresh faces got involved.
Following another sloppy center ice exchange, Boqvist bolted down the left side before saucering a cross-slot pass to Jonah Gadjovich, who banged it home.
Shortly after the goal the Panther crowd started a “We want Swayman” chant. They weren’t getting Boston’s $66 million man on this night.
Almost as if he was responding to them, Korpisalo made his best save of the night, denying Aleksander Barkov on a breakaway with a nice flash of the right pad.
Boston got it to 5-2 when Bobrovsky couldn’t cleanly glove Johnny Beecher’s snapper and McAvoy zipped home the rebound.
Things got ugly (and a little dangerous) when Max Jones was slashed by Evan Rodrigues and when Jones went to return the favor, he instead caught linesman Devin Berg. Jones was sent off for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Rodrigues scored to make it 6-2 with Bennett barreling over Korpisalo a split second after the puck went in. The hit set off a mini melee that resulted in a Boston power play.
Frederic and David Pastrnak scored in the last four minutes to pull the Bruins within two goals. That late surge was a silver lining to Frederic.
“I thought a positive there is we kept pushing back and I think we just ran out of time, and we’ll get them in the next week or so,” Frederic said of the upcoming Columbus Day matinee rematch. “I think it’s good. I mean, it’ll be fun at our rink.”
