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Two Wins Tucked Away: Mercer Powers Devils to Victory Ahead of Home Opener

  Photo: Andrew MacLean The New Jersey Devils survived a chaotic, late-game flurry in Columbus to secure their second straight victory on Monday night, defeating the Blue Jackets 3-2 to cap off their opening road trip. The star of the dramatic finish was forward Dawson Mercer, who netted a pair of goals—including the decisive empty-net marker—that momentarily gave the Devils a two-goal cushion before the Blue Jackets scored with 20 seconds left to keep the tension high until the final horn. Having collected four points out of a possible six on the road, New Jersey now turns its focus to the familiar roar of the Prudential Center crowd. The team finally heads home to Newark, where they will open their home slate on Thursday night with a pivotal early-season clash against the formidable Florida Panthers. New Jersey Devils Lineup: Palat - Hughes - Bratt Meier - Hischier - Mercer Gritsyuk - Glass - Brown Cotter - Glendening - Halonen Hughes - Pesce Siegenthaler - Hamilton Dillon - Neme...

Pittsburgh Penguins lose their third game straight 5-2 against Florida Panthers, 2/14/24

 




*Sorry for the lack of photos! Hoping to get permission eventually.*


   The Florida Panthers won their seventh in eight games in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, February 14th. Matthew Tkachuk had a goal and two assists in helping the Panthers achieve their 5-2 win. John Ludvig scored his first NHL goal for Pittsburgh.


Panthers lineup against the Penguins:

Verhaeghe - Barkov - Reinhart

Cousins - Bennett - Tkachuk

Luostarinen - Lundell - Rodrigues

Gadjovich - Stenlund - Lomberg


Forsling - Ekblad

Mikkola - Montour

Ekman-Larsson - Kulikov


Bobrovsky

Stolarz


Penguins lineup against the Panthers:

Guentzel - Crosby - Rust

Smith - Malkin - Puljujarvi

O'Connor - Eller - Rakell

Carter - White


Pettersson - Letang

Graves - Karlsson

Ludvig - Ruhwedel

Joseph


Jarry

Nedeljkovic


   The first period was completely scoreless... In the middle frame, it appeared that the Penguins scored - Rickard Rakell scored on the power play in the second period but the Panthers challenged it due to a high stick before the goal. Lars Eller played the puck with a high stick.


   Two goals being just 34 seconds apart, both Matthew Tkachuk and Jonah Gadjovich scored to give Florida a 2-0 lead. Tkachuk scored from the left face-off circle with a wrist shot off a pass from Evan Rodrigues... Gadjovich redirected a shot by Brandon Montour. Aaron Ekblad pushed it 3-0 on the power play with his third goal of the season. Ekblad struck from the right circle with a wrist shot. Getting the Panthers a 4-0 lead, Anton Lundell redirected Tkachuk's pass from the left post. Bryan Rust scored the first goal for Pittsburgh after he deflected a spinning wrist shot coming through traffic by Jake Guentzel.


   Anton Lundell extended the Panthers' lead to 5-1 in the third period. Lundell's shot burst high into the air off Marcus Pettersson's skate, and then landed behind Tristan Jarry and got in off his skate. At 13:53 of the final frame, John Ludvig struck his first NHL goal for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Ludvig scored from the right circle with a wrist shot... the score remained 5-2 through the remainder of the game.




Sidney Crosby on the Penguins' 5-2 loss against the Florida Panthers: "It's a big shift in momentum. That happens in games sometimes. You got to get by that and find a way to get it back," - "Obviously, it's not a big deal. You get one disallowed and then they score two... That's probably not what you're looking for but like I said, there's a lot of time left to get back in the game and we weren't able to do that."


Tristan Jarry on the Penguins' 5-2 loss: "Obviously, it's tough. A couple of those haven't gone our way and I think we just need to keep building momentum when things don't go our way. I think that's been a tough part of the year and then obviously with all the chances against and the grade A looks, it's always tough," - "We are good players. That's something that we've talked about this year and I think we just have to play up to our standards. I think we haven't done so yet and I think when we do, we have some really good games. We're tough to play against, we put pucks on net, we're driving the net, and we score goals. I think we just have to do more of that."




Notes:

- Tristan Jarry made 18 saves for Pittsburgh

- The Penguins have lost three games straight

- Jake Guentzel missed some time at the end of the game for a possible upper-body injury.

- Matthew Tkachuk has 37 points in 21 games since December 23rd (13 goals, 24 assists)

- Matthew Tkachuk became the sixth player in Florida Panthers history with 20 three-point games. He now joins Aleksander Barkov (50 GP), Jonathan Huberdreau (49 GP), Olli Jokinen (29 GP), Pavel Bure (23 GP), and Stephen Weiss (22 GP).

- Evan Rodrigues hit 200 NHL points

- Anton Lundell scored twice and Evan Rodrigues picked up two assists

- Sergei Bobrovsky made 25 saves for Florida



 



Postgame: John Ludvig

Postgame: Mike Sullivan


Extra Links:

Pittsburgh Penguins Valentine's Day cards

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