No Jet Lag Here: Panthers Trounce Predators, 6-2, in First Game Back from Finland

The Florida Panthers are now winners of six consecutive games and nine of their past 11 after a dominating win over the lowly Nashville Predators.

It took all of five minutes for the Florida Panthers to prove that they have shaken off the jet lag from their big Finland trip.

The Panthers had an 11-hour flight back from Tampere, Finland after an exciting two-game set in captain Aleksander Barkov’s home town and returning home from it brought a couple of concerns: How do you adjust to the time change and how do you get back to your routine mentally after an exciting weekend of sauna islands and wins against the Dallas Stars?

“That’s the big concern, because you’re not sure and it’s not like any other roadtrip,” coach Paul Maurice said. “You’ve got probably a seven-hour time change there. We looked right yesterday [in practice.] Our team performance group, those guys have been great about all the things you need to do to try to mitigate the time change and we looked right.”

The Panthers answered those questions very quickly, with thanks to goals from Sam Reinhart and Matthew Tkachuk in the first 5:14 of the game, and blitzed the Nashville Predators 6-2 for their sixth consecutive victory in their first home game in over two weeks.

“It was big for us,” captain Aleksander Barkov said. “We wanted a good start, we wanted to play simple, we wanted to be predictable, so I think we did that. And obviously, it could be hard after a long trip, but I think we handled ourselves really well this week and got prepared for this game and we were ready from the start.”

It was a dominant win in every sense of the word — they possessed the puck for a large portion of the game, they swarmed the Predators with chance after chance and their stars all put up numbers.

Florida saw a weakened Nashville team which now sits dead last in the NHL at 4-9-1 walk its house and absolutely feasted.

Carter Verhaeghe scored a goal and added an assist, Aleksander Barkov dished out three assists, Tkachuk had two points, newly-minted power play quarterback Uvis Balinskis had the first multi-point outing of his career.

“It’s always nice when you score six goals,” Verhaeghe said. “Guys are feeling good and making plays. It’s always good for the confidence.”

The Predators became the prey.

Reinhart started things off by walking right past Nashville defenseman Brady Skjei and beating goaltender Scott Wedgewood with a wrap-around attempt 3:33 into the game. Less than two minutes later, Tkachuk slid a Verhaeghe rebound past Wedgewood on his backhand to make it a 2-0 game.

The Panthers put a lid on the Predators, outshooting them 13-7 in the first period, and immediately went right back at it in the second period.

Evan Rodrigues ripped a wrist shot into the top shelf 1:56 into the second period — one second after the power play Florida began the period with expired — to make it a three-goal game. That goal extended his goal streak to three games, which began when he scored the first goal in each of the two games the Panthers played in Tampere.

Verhaeghe jammed home a Balinskis rebound on the power play to give the Panthers a four-goal cushion with 9:42 to go in the second period.

Steven Stamkos ended Sergei Bobrovsky’s shutout bid with 7:08 to go in the second period, blasting a one-timer on the power play as he did against the Panthers many times in his Tampa Bay Lightning career, to make it a 4-1 game. He notched his 100th point against Florida in his first game against them in a Nashville uniform after signing there as a free agent this offseason.

Verhaeghe restored the four-goal lead with 27 seconds to go in the period, finishing off a 2-on-1 with Barkov for his second goal of the game. It marked his first multi-goal game of the season.

Tomas Nosek scored his first goal as a Panther with 11:23 to go, redirecting a feed from Nate Schmidt past Wedgewood on the power play with 8:37 to go to make it 6-1. Nashville got one back 28 seconds later to make it a four-goal game.

Bobrovsky finished the game with 16 saves on 18 shots.

The Panthers are now 9-1-1 in their past 11 games, which included the aforementioned five-game trip through New York and Finland, five games without Tkachuk and eight games without Barkov.

They return to action on Saturday night against the Philadelphia Flyers, when they continue a stretch where they are at home for nine of their next 12 games.