Florida Panthers dominate Toronto Maple Leafs 5-1 -NHL Match Update
Florida must have gotten the much needed confidence after getting such a huge win as the Panthers literally annihilated a stunned Toronto Maple Leafs team, 5-1, Tuesday night, November 8, 2011, at the sold-out Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Coming out a hugely disappointing loss against the Boston Bruins on Saturday, 7-0, Toronto does not seemed to have recovered as of yet and could be facing problems in their upcoming matchups.
"They've got to work hard in practice", Toronto head coach, Ron Wilson, said. "That's their responsibility to sit there with (goalie coach Francois Allaire) and go over the games. At least we go on the road, where maybe they can relax a little bit and not
worry about what's going to happen if they make a mistake”.
Toronto was playing hard in the first period but it could easily be observed that their momentum was broken after Florida got the go ahead goal nearly midway through as Jack Skille scored his first of the season off a smart pass by Mike Weaver.
Florida continued scoring by added two straight nearly 20 seconds after with less than four minutes remaining in the second as Marco Sturm also scored his first and Tomas Kopecky widened the gap even further in their favour to put Toronto in a tough position
entering the final period.
Sean Bergenheim extended the lead to a 4-0 potential shutout as the third period progressed but Phil Kessel’s 11th of the season 58 seconds later gave the home crowd some hope that their team might be able to achieve a comeback.
With less than four minutes left to play in the third, Shawn Matthias secured the match for Florida by scoring another Ben Scrivens after Jonas Gustavsson was pulled out at the 36:47 mark of the game after letting three straight through.
"We played a good game", Florida goalie, Jose Theodore, said. "The Leafs came out hard in the first period, but we didn't get intimidated. We showed them that we were prepared to play. We got the momentum and didn't let go".
Florida hopes to take this momentum even further when they face-off against a struggling Winnipeg Jets team on Thursday while Toronto will be looking to bounce back against St. Louis Blues the same day.
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