Florida Panthers Get Thumped 6-3 By The Los Angeles Kings
Even though we wore our away jerseys for tonight’s home game, we were still the home team surprisingly, despite our play.
Tonight’s game was a weird one to start off with. Because the Kings equipment manager forgot to pack the Kings away jersey, it left the Panthers suiting up in their away jerseys here at home. The first period did not go as planned as we surrendered an early goal off a Jussi Jokinen penalty. Shortly after that, the Kings doubled their lead and made it 2-0. At that point, the Panthers dug themselves a pretty deep hole to fall in. Moments later, the Cats finally found themselves on the score sheet, cutting the lead back down to one. Jussi Jokinen made up for the bad penalty he took earlier by scoring the goal.
Unfortunately, with poor defending saw us give up another goal shortly after. The Kings took back their two goal lead and chased James Reimer out of the net. With all fairness, only the first goal can be blamed on Reimer. The other two goals were clearly defensive mistakes that also could have been prevented. It only got worse from here on then. As Luongo stepped into the goal, he allowed three goals on nine shots and was pulled immediately after the sixth goal. In result, the score rose to an embarrassing 6-1 score line. At this point the game was surely over, however, the Panthers could make this game more respectable by putting the puck in the net a couple times.
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Sadly, the third period was the only period that the Panthers showed up to play for. The Cats grabbed two goals in the third by both Marchessault and Barkov. Those two goals definitely made the score a lot less painful to see, but unfortunately did not change the outcome of the game. On a positive note, the Panthers did not allow a single goal to the Kings in the third period. Had the Cats played as they did in the third, the end result most likely would have been different.
Moving on from our horrible play last night, the Cats take on the Nashville Predators in Nashville to start off a five game west road trip. This road trip will be key to grab some valuable points to help us in the standings. It’s important that we prepare ourselves for the upcoming five games on the road trip. These five games will certainly be tough, and will not be a walk in the park. If we play like we did last night, we will find ourselves without any points on this important road trip. However, if we go into each upcoming game like we did against Anaheim, then we certainly have a shot of grabbing two points in our upcoming five games. Brace ourselves Panther fans, these next five games are going to be a grind!
