SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Jeremy Swayman stopped 38 shots, Brandon Carlo scored just hours after his wife gave birth to their son, and the Boston Bruins lost their second-round lead. They defeated the Florida Panthers 5-1 in the first game. Monday night playoff series.
Morgan Geeky, Mason Loley, Justin Brazeau and Jake DeBrusk also scored for Boston, which improved to 5-0-0 against the Panthers this season. The Bruins took control with two assists from Pavel Zasha and three points in the final 7:08 of the second period, erasing a 1-0 deficit.
Matthew Tkachuk's goal helped Florida recover from a 1-0 deficit and has won just two of its past nine NHL playoff series appearances, including one in Game 1 last year. It was against Boston. Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 24 shots for the Panthers, playing for the first time in a week.
Game 2 will be played Wednesday night at Sunrise.
Swayman has found the net in all five of Boston's previous playoff wins, as he did again in the first series against Toronto, which ended in a thriller overtime Game 7 on Saturday night. He also achieved excellent results. He stopped all seven shots on Florida's three power plays, setting a new record for a netminder in the playoffs.
Swayman appeared in seven playoff games, recorded a league-best 210 saves, and had the stingiest goal against average of 1.43.
The game was the first one-sided game of five this season between clubs that finished with 1 win and 2 losses in the Atlantic Division (1st place Florida with 110 points, 2nd place Boston with 109 points). . Boston won every game in the regular season, three by one goal and one by two, while Florida tied or led in those games 78 percent of the time.
This was different. Once Boston took the lead, the Bruins were completely solid defensively, having come back from a 1-0 deficit in four of five games against Florida this season.
Swayman gave up the first goal of the game to Tkachuk, the Florida star's fourth postseason game, midway through his second goal after a back-and-forth battle between Bobrovsky and the goalie for the first 31 minutes. He did not deal with the deficit for a long time.
It took just 67 seconds for Boston to score the tying goal when Geeky cleaned up a spilled puck in front of him. And the lead was born 3 minutes, 25 seconds later, when Loley scored his first goal of the playoffs, hoisting it over Bobrovsky's shoulder from a tough angle.
That led to a day Carlo will never forget.
He was not on the plane with the Bruins to South Florida on Sunday, remaining behind because his wife, Mason, was about to give birth. She gave birth to son Crew on Monday morning, just in time for Carlo to hop on a plane and make the three-hour trip south. He arrived at the arena later than his other teammates, but made it in time to get into the lineup. He then scored with 21 seconds left in the second to give the club a 3-1 lead.
Brazeau made it with 12:47 remaining, getting behind the Florida defense and beating Bobrovsky with a backhand. The Panthers pulled Bobrovsky with 5:30 left, and DeBrusk added an empty-netter about two minutes later.
AP NHL Playoffs: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
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