Florida Panthers drop gloves, then drop Arizona Coyotes. Takeaways from win

The puck had barely touched the ice for the opening faceoff, and Florida Panthers winger Ryan Lomberg had already dropped his gloves.

The fight was going to happen right from the get-go, and the Arizona Coyotes knew it was coming. The Panthers were out for revenge after the Coyotes’ Jason Zucker three weeks ago gave Florida’s Nick Cousins a concussion in the teams’ first meeting of the season. There was even a meeting near center ice during warmups, one in which Jonah Gadjovich admitted included “a lot of not nice words that I probably shouldn’t repeat.”

So a few swings from Lomberg on Arizona’s Jack McBain and a few more from Gadjovich on Liam O’Brien in the first seven seconds set the tone for Wednesday’s game at Amerant Bank Arena.

“A couple savages,” star winger Matthew Tkachuk called his teammates.

“Everybody was pretty fired up after that,” center Anton Lundell said.

“Sometimes stuff like that happens,” Gadjovich said. “We’re here to answer the bell.”

The Panthers then dominated the rest of the game from there, crushing the Coyotes 6-2 to secure the series sweep against Arizona and win their second consecutive game.

Florida improves to 29-14-4. Arizona falls to 23-20-3.

“It was handled pretty right,” said Panthers coach Paul Maurice, who on Wednesday moved to second all-time in games coached with No. 1,813. “That stuff happens, and then more importantly our game was really good.”

Just about everyone contributed to the win.

Tkachuk had two goals and an assist to continue his torrid month of January.

Sam Reinhart had a power-play goal and an assist to extend his point streak to a career-high 11 games and his point total for the season to 60.

Carter Verhaeghe had three assists for his third multi-point game in the past five outings.

Lundell had a goal and an assist, giving him five points over the past four games since moving to the Panthers’ top line.

Gustav Forsling, who returned to the lineup Wednesday after missing Monday’s game due to the birth of his first child, had two assists — the second of which was the 100th of his NHL career.

Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 31 of 33 shots he faced, with both Arizona goals — one on the power play by Dyan Guenther, one at even strength by Logan Cooley — coming in the third period when the Panthers had already put the game out of reach.

And Gadjovich followed up his fight by scoring a goal in the third period — his first tally with the Panthers.

“We just wanted to start it off right from the first shift,” Gadjovich said, “and finish a full 60 there.”

Here are three takeaways from the game.

Ryan Lomberg steps up for teammates

Lomberg’s game-opening fight marked the second time this season he took getting revenge for a teammate into his own hands.

During the Panthers’ 4-2 win over the Vegas Golden Knights on Dec. 23, Lomberg dropped the gloves with Vegas’ Keegan Kolesar, who had the open-ice hit on Tkachuk in Game 3 Stanley Cup Finals that resulted in Tkachuk’s broken sternum.

And knowing Lomberg... this probably won’t be the last time he drops the gloves in support of a teammate.

Matthew Tkachuk continuing to heat up in 2024

Before the calendar flipped to January, Tkachuk had just five goals and 27 points through 36 games.

Since then? Tkachuk has 21 points (10 goals, 11 assists) over 11 games in 2024. This includes both of his games this season with multiple goals — a hat trick on Jan. 9 at the St. Louis Blues and his two-goal performance on Wednesday — while logging at least one point in all but one of those games.

Aleksander Barkov on the third line

After missing the past three games with an unspecified lower-body injury, Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov drew back into the lineup on Wednesday.

But instead of Barkov holding down his customary role as Florida’s top-line center, Panthers coach Paul Maurice slotted Barkov on the third line between wingers Evan Rodrigues and Mackie Samoskevich.

The reasoning was two-fold: Maurice wanted to have an avenue where he could limit Barkov’s minutes if needed and he wanted to see what Barkov and Samoskevich looked like on a line.

Barkov finished the game with a primary assist on Reinhart’s first-period power-play goal and was on the ice for 14:24.