The Canadian Press
Joshua Clipperton
VANCOUVER—The Florida Panthers’ franchise-record 12-game winning streak ended with a bang last night—and a few punches.
Daniel Sedin ripped his second goal of the night off the crossbar and in past Roberto Luongo on the power play at 2:21 of overtime as Vancouver edged Florida 3-2.
With the Canucks celebrating on the ice and the Panthers heading to their locker-room, the teams came together near the benches with a lot of pushing and shoving.
Vancouver forward Derek Dorsett engaged back-up goalie Al Montoya before players from both sides began throwing punches as officials tried to break up the scrum.
“One of their guys came over to our bench and tried to punch one of our guys,” noted Luongo.
“You have 60 minutes to fight anybody on our team that’s willing and able, but he wants to do it after the game,” he added.
Dorsett said one of the Panthers yelled something that Henrik Sedin deemed “unacceptable.”
“[The Sedins] don’t get mad too often and they were pretty mad,” noted Dorsett.
“I saw Montoya and [Florida defenceman Alex] Petrovic jawing with them and trying to squirt them with water, so I skated over to intervene and Montoya took a cut at me so I took a cut at him.”
Panthers’ head coach Gerard Gallant was yelling at Canucks’ assistant Glen Gulutzan during the melee, but the teams eventually were separated.
“You want to get in there and stick up for those guys,” said Vancouver rookie forward Jake Virtanen, who had his team’s other goal.
“I don’t really know what happened,” he added. “I know there was a lot of guys in there.”
The post-game spat somewhat overshadowed Daniel Sedin’s winner on a great shot, with Jaromir Jagr in the box for hooking, that tied Markus Naslund’s franchise record for goals (346).
“He [Naslund] was an idol growing up,” Sedin said after scoring his 19th of the season.
“He meant so much to us when we came into this league.”
Jacob Markstrom made 26 saves for Vancouver (17-16-10), which finished its season-high seven-game homestand at 4-2-1.
Jussi Jokinen and Jonathan Huberdeau scored for the Panthers (26-12-5), who were looking to become just the ninth team in NHL history to win 13-straight games.
“We could have won this game 4-1 but sometimes the breaks, they don’t go in your favour,” said Luongo, who saw his personal nine-game winning streak stopped despite making 27 saves.
“We had a bunch of breaks during the streak,” he added.
“A couple went against us tonight and we’re on the wrong side of the score.”
Trailing 2-1 in the third without much offence to speak of, Virtanen beat Luongo short side to get the Canucks level with 2:38 left in regulation time.
The rookie’s second goal of the season came after Markstrom made a couple of great saves to keep his team in it, including a stop on Steven Kampfer on a 3-on-1 moments before the equalizer.
“They’ve been on quite a streak,” said Canucks’ head coach Willie Desjardins.
“I thought as a group we were hungry,” he added. “We wanted to try and break their streak.”
“We’ve been playing close games a little bit too much,” noted Huberdeau.
“It kind of sucks the streak is done, but at least we got a point and are ready for the next game,” he reasoned.
Elsewhere in the NHL, San Jose topped Calgary 5-4, the N.Y. Rangers edged Boston 2-1, and L.A. doubled Detroit 4-2.
