Anton Lundell Continues to Step Up for Panthers with Two-Goal Outing in Boston

The Florida Panthers needed Anton Lundell to step up with both Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk, and he did just that. Big time.

The man who many call ‘Baby Barky’ stepped up big time for the Florida Panthers to fill Aleksander Barkov’s shoes on Monday afternoon.

Anton Lundell scored his first two goals of the season, including the game-winning goal, in a 4-3 beatdown of the rival Boston Bruins on Monday night with Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk ailing and out of the lineup.

“I think we played really good as a team today,” Anton Lundell said. “I know we have Barky and Chucky away, so you can’t make any excuses. We have to be able to win without some guys in the lineup. I think today was a really good team effort from everybody.”

Lundell stepped in to fill roles all over the lineup, logging 19:16 of time-on-ice and 4:04 of shorthanded time-on-ice for a Florida penalty kill which went 4-for-4.

And both of his goals came at very big moments for the Panthers.

His first came less than two minutes after the Bruins took a 1-0 lead.

Lundell kept jamming away at his own rebound and eventually got the puck to take a bounce over Jeremy Swayman’s skate and tie the game 6:37 into the game.

It was a key moment for a shorthanded Panthers team that was not able to roll with the punches very well in a 5-2 loss to the Buffalo Sabres two nights prior.

His second goal was a little bit prettier.

Lundell wired a wrist shot off the rush with 7:01 to go in the second period to beat Swayman for what stood as the game-winnng goal.

“I got the puck with a little room and some speed and I just tried to get the shot off as quick as I can,” Lundell said. “Today, it went in.”

It gave the Panthers a 4-2 lead, but one they would need after allowing the Bruins to score 1:08 later.

Sam Reinhart added a couple of goals of his own — one on the power play and one shorthanded — while joining Lundell’s line, which dominated at 5-on-5.

For Lundell, coming up in big moments has become routine at this point.

The then-youngest player on the Panthers arguably came up the biggest at times during their run to the 2024 Stanley Cup, scoring three goals and 17 points in 24 playoff games and five assist in the seven-game Stanley Cup Final.

“You guys have had a front-row seat to it since the start of the playoffs last year,” Reinhart said. “He has just elevated his intensity, his compete level. You know he’s coming out with the puck every time. So, it’s easy to forget that he’s played in some pretty big situations in his career, and he’s still so young, so to see him kind of learn and adapt that quickly is incredible.”

That string of success for Lundell arguably started in that same building he led Florida to a win to on Monday. He dashed the Bruins’ hopes in the second round of the playoffs last year by putting up four goals and five points in the six-game series, including a two-point outing in the series-clinching game at TD Garden.

In his career against the Bruins, including two playoff series in the past two seasons, Lundell has 16 points in 23 games against what has been Florida’s most heated rival.

“I think we’ve been playing against Boston probably the most during the past three seasons, so we know each other very well. So, it always brings a little heat up during games, but that’s when we want to be at our best.”

Coach Paul Maurice has grown confident in running Lundell out there in crucial moments of the game, and is even moreso in doing so with him next to Reinhart and his usual trusty winger Eetu Luostarinen, which they have done time and time again in the playoffs.

It usually ran out of the three-hole, but with Barkov out for 2-3 weeks and Matthew Tkachuk missing the next week with an illness, it will have to fill in as the defacto first line.

And Maurice is fine with having it as a “safety blanket,” as he called it.

“They were absolutely fantastic,” Maurice said of Lundell’s line. “It comes with the maturation of Anton. Both of those guys scored, and that’s certainly the highlight, but the win came in all of the other parts of it. The face-offs, he was certainly really strong with that and just a lot of the grind that goes into the game. The maturity of him has been incredibly impressive and that’s why we really like that line. … There’s three penalty killers on that line and they scored four goals tonight, so they can do it.”