Florida Panthers have no answers in blowout loss to Seattle Kraken

Paul Maurice had an inkling about how Sunday’s game at FLA Live Arena was going to unfold. The Florida Panthers entered on the back end of a back-to-back. The Seattle Kraken entered on the heels of a three-game losing streak that began with a four-goal loss to Florida in Seattle eight days earlier.

“They’re gonna come back in and kind of get back to their base,” Maurice said about two hours before puck drop. “I think this is a lot more of a grinding game. I don’t think we’re going to generate the [same amount of] offense because we had a whole bunch of offense in that [first game]. I think it’ll be a tighter game by them by design.”

That turned out to be exactly the case ... until Florida was blown out in the third period for a second consecutive night en route to a 5-2 loss to the Kraken.

Matty Beniers and Andre Burakovsky scored for Seattle (16-8-3) in the first two periods before the Kraken tallied three in the third, just like the Tampa Bay Lightning did to Florida one night earlier. Eric Staal and Chris Tierney scored the goals for the Panthers (13-12-4).

“There was an awful lot of difficulty in some basic things in our game,” Maurice said. “We had a hard time moving the puck. There were physical turnovers and then mental ones. We had a little bit of both. We had pucks on our stick that we would normally handle pretty easily and that was a challenge for us. As the game went on, you started to see the mental and we started turning pucks over in the neutral zone. ... They pushed down and I didn’t think we could find a way to get better during the game.”

It was a stark contrast from the first matchup between these two teams on Dec. 3, when Florida jumped out to an early two-goal lead and never looked back in a 5-1 win in Seattle despite only generating 28 shots on goal.

On Sunday, Florida managed just 25 shots on goal. Staal’s first goal with Florida — a snap shot in front of the net on a feed from Nick Cousins to tie the game at 1-1 with 12:26 left in the second period — and a garbage-time goal from Tierney with 1:17 left to play the only ones getting past Seattle goaltender Martin Jones.

Seattle took the lead for good 91 seconds later on Burakovsky’s goal. The Kraken added an insurance goal 7:15 into the third period when Jordan Eberle redirected a Will Borgen shot past Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, who made 27 saves and kept the game close through the first two periods.

Alex Wennberg padded Seattle’s lead with 4:51 left in regulation with a power-play goal that came following Ryan Lomberg’s major penalty for boarding Seattle’s Justin Schultz. A Yanni Gourde empty-net goal with 2:38 left to play capped scoring.

Beniers initially put Seattle on the board 64 seconds into regulation with a shot from the slot following a Panthers turnover in front of their net.

“They attacked us with their quickness and their speed,” Staal said, “and we just didn’t seem to have enough guys with the gas needed to play.”

Scoreless Tkachuk

For the first time this season, Panthers All-Star winger Matthew Tkachuk has gone consecutive games without logging at least one point. He was also held off the scoresheet in Florida’s 4-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday.

Tkachuk, who leads the Panthers in points (37) and assists (24), has failed to produce either a goal or assist in just seven of the 27 games he has played this season. Florida is 1-5-1 in those seven games.

Injury updates

Center Anton Lundell (illness), defenseman Radko Gudas (concussion) and goaltender Spencer Knight (illness) all remained out on Sunday. Lundell has missed the past five games, Gudas four and Knight three.

This is in addition to veteran winger Patric Hornqvist, who is on long-term injured reserve and has missed four games. The earliest Hornqvist can return is Dec. 29 when Florida hosts the Montreal Canadiens.

Up next

The Panthers continue their three-game homestand when they host the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday with puck drop set for 7 p.m. The set ends with Florida hosting the Pittsburgh Penguins at 7 p.m. Thursday.