Evan Rodrigues scored the decisive goal in the fifth round of the shootout, Sergei Bobrovsky stopped five shots in overtime and the Florida Panthers defeated the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 on Saturday night for their seventh straight victory.
Sam Bennett, Dmitry Kulikov and Nate Schmidt scored in regulation for Florida, while Rodrigues added a pair of assists before delivering the shootout winner. Bobrovsky earned his 404th career win, breaking a tie with Grant Fuhr for 12th on the all-time list.
Anthony Richard, Joel Farabee and Garnet Hathaway scored for Philadelphia, and Scott Laughton had two assists for the Flyers.
Aleksander Barkov also scored in the tiebreaker for Florida, and Owen Tippett scored for Philadelphia.
Flyers: Philadelphia is now 1-9-1 in allowing three or more goals this season. Samuel Ersson had 28 saves for the Flyers.
Panthers: Florida had a three-goal second period for the second straight game. The Panthers are now 6-0-0 this season while having scored at least three goals in any period.
The robes returned to Florida as the team’s choice of arrival attire for the game. The Panthers wore the robes – a gift for their trip to Finland earlier this month – for the fourth consecutive game, and apparently plan to continue doing so until this winning streak ends.
The game was the 2,000th as an NHL coach for Florida’s Paul Maurice, including postseason games. He is the second coach to reach this milestone, joining Hockey Hall of Famer Scotty Bowman [2,494 games].
Flyers host San Jose on Monday to start a six-of-seven series at home and Panthers host New Jersey on Tuesday to open a two-game series.