WINNIPEG -- Matthew Tkachuk had four assists and Brady Tkachuk had a goal and two assists in a 5-1 win for the Florida Panthers against the Winnipeg Jets at Canada Life Centre on Tuesday.
“Those two are special players,” Panthers forward Carter Verhaeghe said. “They have a lot of brother — good chemistry, I guess.
They're making good passes to each other and it's just fun to watch. Every night it seems like they're doing something that I would never try, so it's cool.”
Verhaeghe scored twice, Niko Mikkola had a goal and an assist and Seth Jones had three assists for the Panthers (7-4-2), who’ve won five of seven (5-2-0). Akira Schmid made 24 saves.
“I thought we played a very good team game,” Jones said. “We took care of the puck when we needed to, and the special teams was obviously another big factor tonight.
This little home-and-home with them, it was nice to get the first win against them.”
The Panthers host the Jets in Florida on Friday.
Adam Lowry scored for the Jets (4-5-3), who are winless in their past six (0-4-2) after earning points in five of their first six games of the season (4-1-1). Clay Stevenson made 19 saves.
“We didn’t get it done,” Lowry said. “You want to rebound and it seems like we’re picking ourselves up off the mat.
Like I said, we’ve got to find a way to get some things going in our favor. Just some consistency in our game, 5-on-5, short-handed, on the power play and go from there.
That’s been a thing that’s missing.”
Florida’s power play went 3-for-5, including conversions on its first two man-advantage opportunities as the Panthers scored three times in a span of 2:51 in the first period.
“That is so critical for you — it’s won us a bunch of games this year, really,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “Normally you don't want your power play doing that for you, you want to win it 5-on-5.
With some of the pieces that we have missing, we need it. So good on them.
They've been fantastic.”
Verhaeghe made it 1-0 Panthers at 7:27 of the first period. He collected a rebound below the goal line and tucked it inside the left post for a power-play goal.
“(We) drew a couple power plays and that helped getting the first one and getting a little lead there, and (we) just took off from there,” Verhaeghe said.
Mikkola made it 2-0 at 8:42 when his centering pass redirected off Winnipeg defenseman Mario Ferraro’s stick and over Stevenson’s glove.
“(We) were a pretty focused group tonight I thought, right from the start,” Maurice said. “We spent a lot of time on the road so you're worried about (this) last one — the guys kind of getting ahead of themselves — but I didn't feel that.
I thought our last two games the starts have been very strong.”
Verhaeghe’s second of the game also came on the power play, when his point shot through traffic made it 3-0 at 10:18.
“The first period, just mental errors,” Lowry said. “Reads, assignments, penalty kill.
We give up three goals in three minutes and obviously, you have to give them credit. They did some right things, but we kind of fed all of that offense for them and kind of continue that in the second and the third.
A lot of shooting ourselves in the foot right now.”
Lowry scored short-handed at 12:27 of the second to cut it to 3-1. Lowry produced a turnover from Schmid, who was out of his net to play the puck, and scored with a wraparound at the right post.
The goal was initially waved off by the officials, but roughly 29 seconds later, play was stopped after the Situation Room determined that the puck completely crossed the goal line.
“On the wrap, I thought it went in,” Lowry said. “As the play goes up the ice, you’re obviously waiting and hoping for a horn…
Fortunately, it was a good buzzer and not a bad buzzer. It was nice to see it go in.
It got the building going a bit, but it would have been nice if that led to a comeback for us.”
“Obviously I fumbled it and then gave it right to the guy,” Schmid said. “In the moment I thought I had it…
The goal horn goes off, I was confused at first. I didn't know what was going on, but then I realized pretty quickly.”
Less than a minute later, Sam Reinhart made it 4-1 on the power play at 13:14, finishing a passing play that went from Matthew Tkachuk to Brady Tkachuk, who directed a touch pass from the goal line to Reinhart low in the slot.
“We really beat ourselves in this one,” Winnipeg coach Scott Arniel said. “I don’t know the reasoning.
At the end of the day that’s something we’ll have to dig into here. But our penalty kill certainly has to be a lot better than it was.
(We) made a lot of mistakes, and we took a lot of penalties. We could have had another too many men; we had six guys on the ice another time.
I don’t know if it was coming off the weekend or what it was, but we can’t come out against a team like that and make the mental mistakes that we did.”
Brady Tkachuk pushed it to 5-1 at 12:10 of the third with a one-handed redirect of Matthew Tkachuk’s saucer pass to the netfront on the rush.
NOTES: Matthew Tkachuk’s four assists gave him 203 with the Panthers, the ninth player to reach 200 with Florida. He is the fastest to reach 200 assists in franchise history (255 games), and did so over 100 games faster than Keith Yandle (369 games), who held the previous benchmark.
He passed Yandle (201) for seventh on Florida’s all-time assists list. Tkachuk is tied with Aleksander Barkov for the second most four-assist games in Florida history (three) and tied with five others for the third most by an American-born player in NHL history (six)
Verhaeghe’s two goals gave him 355 points with Florida, passing Scott Mellanby for seventh place on the Panthers’ all-time list.
Lowry recorded his 13th short-handed goal with the Jets, matching Thomas Steen for second place on the franchise’s all-time list, and trailing only Doug Smail (25).
