Florida Panthers win: Vegas leads 2-1 in series

• Sports

Carter Verhaeghe was the hero of his team. His goal 4:27 into overtime gave the Panthers a 3-2 win vs. the Vegas Golden Knights. The Panthers knew how important this match was, and they reduced the advantage to 2-1. "To win it overtime in front of our fans, it gives us a little bit of momentum," Verhaeghe said, as quoted by nhl.com Florida coach Paul Maurice commented on Verhaege and his performance.

"Over the course of his career he's gotten the puck off his stick faster than somebody can react to it," Florida coach Paul Maurice said. "So, you get to overtime, nobody is beefing you for a better play, 'I'm wide open, why didn't you hit me?' Just shoot the [darn] puck." Tkachuk is one of the Panthers' most important players.

Even before the start of this match, he was talking about how important the match was. Although his team did not dominate, the most important thing for him is that they achieved their goal. "Everybody will probably say how they were leading most of the game, which they were, but at the end of the day nobody cares how we got here," Tkachuk said.

"It's a 2-1 series. We came into this game to just win one game and we did that."

Jack Eichel comments

Vegas forward Jack Eichel cannot be happy considering that his team had an advantage that they wanted to keep. However, the Panthers knew that they had to pick up the pace if they wanted to win.

They succeeded in that. "Give them credit, they stuck around, they found a goal at the end in overtime," -Jack Eichel said. "Obviously you don't want to blow a lead when you're up a goal with two minutes left, but it's all part of it.

I mean, nobody said it was going to be easy." Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy could not be dissatisfied with his team's performance. "I thought we were doing a lot of things correct," -Bruce Cassidy said. "We just couldn't get the next one to put the nail in the coffin, so to speak."