The Panthers entered the second period trailing the Coyotes 1-0, hoping to cut down on their penalties and re-take control of the game. But for the majority of the second period, things didn’t go the Panthers’ way. They committed another penalty within the first two minutes of the period, but then got lucky as the Coyotes were called for a penalty about 30 seconds later, ending the penalty kill. They Coyotes put more consistent pressure on the Cats this period, playing a more aggressive and hard game (16 hits in the period), and they broke through by scoring another power play goal at nine minutes in.
To the Panthers’ credit, they reacted to falling behind 2-0 by immediately jumping on the puck and controlling possession. They had a number of scoring chances in the later half of the period, and eventually scored at 19 minutes when Kris Versteeg dropped a pass back to defender Brian Campbell, who moved the puck inside the faceoff circle and scored on a snapshot.
Unfortunately, after the Panthers scored their goal, on their following possession Mikael Samuelsson was hit by a hard check and went down head-first into the boards. He was slow getting up and was removed from the game; there hasn’t been an update about his condition, but he seems unlikely to play the remainder of the night. The Panthers are already without four of their regular forwards — Sean Bergenheim being the most recent player out with an injury — and all their lines behind their first line are severely depleted of talent. They could use Samuelsson to future games, so here’s hoping his injury is not that severe.
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