Matthew Tkachuk had two power-play goals and an assist in his first game after a two-month absence and the Florida Panthers opened defense of their Stanley Cup title with a 6-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday night in the first game of the teams' first-round playoff series.
The teams meet for Game 2 of the best-of-seven matchup at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Amalie Arena.
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Nate Schmidt scored on a power play and finished with two goals, and Sam Bennett and Sam Reinhart each added a goal and an assist for the Panthers. Sergei Bobrovsky made 20 saves.
Jake Guentzel and Brayden Point scored for Tampa Bay. Andrei Vasilevskiy had 10 stops.
The Lightning played the final 33:30 without center Anthony Cirelli. There was no immediate word why the 27-year-old center was out.
Tkachuk was playing for the first time in more than two months after dealing with a lower-body injury. He scored twice in the second period. Those two goals put Florida up 4-1 — the second goal for the Panthers in a 14-second span — and the next one pushing the lead to 5-1 midway through the second period.
“Matthew's good on the power play, really good. He knows what he's doing down there,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “I think we kind of gave him the second one; we threw it right on his stick."
The decision on whether Tkachuk would even be out there for Game 1 wasn't certain until just before game time. He suffered a lower-body injury during the 4 Nations Face-off all-star tournament two months ago.
“It was a long two months away,” Tkachuk said in a televised postgame interview. “You miss everything, but you just miss competing, on the ice, in the locker room with the guys, just going through it all. I missed that the most. It's so, so nice to be back out there with them.”
During an in-game interview with ESPN, Florida coach Paul Maurice said he was comfortable with what he was seeing from Tkachuk and expected him to “be the difference-maker” for the Panthers.
“That's what he is for us," Maurice said. "He's got an incredible set of hands, got an incredible gift for the emotional needs of a game, when you need a hit, when you need a big play. He's been great for us.”
Bennett had opened the scoring at 3:44 of the first, batting a puck out of the air.
Guentzel responded for Tampa Bay, scoring with a man advantage at 12:21.
The Panthers regained the lead when Reinhart tipped in a shot bu Dmitry Kulikov with 44 seconds remainin the first.
The Panthers broke the game open early in the second when Schmidt scored on a rebound at 4:41. Tampa Bay lost a challenge for goaltender interference on the play, and Tkahchuk scored his first goal on the ensuing power play — 14 seconds later — and added a second at 9:44.
Point cut the deficit to 5-2 at 13:04 of the second. Schmidt added Florida's third power-play goal off a pass from Tkachuk at 5:09 of the third period.
