Huberdeau, Panthers defeat Hurricanes in OT

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Jonathan Huberdeau scored three points, including a goal at 2:29 of overtime, and the Florida Panthers came from behind to defeat the Carolina Hurricanes 4-3 at PNC Arena on Wednesday.

Aleksander Barkov's pass from the Florida zone sent Huberdeau in on a breakaway, and he scored his second goal of the game.
Huberdeau scored Florida's first goal on the power play, then set up Alex Wennberg with a spin move for a goal that tied it early in the third period.
"He did a lot of good things," Florida coach Joel Quenneville said. "The power-play goal, the [overtime] goal, but the pass was the highlight for me. It's been a long time since I've seen him play like that."

Chris Driedger made 32 saves for the Panthers (10-2-2), who are 4-1-0 in their past five games.
"Being down 2-0, it's a big response by us," Huberdeau said. "After the first period, we came back in the room, we didn't panic. [Driedger] was good in the net. It's a big team win."
Jordan Staal, Sebastian Aho and Vincent Trocheck scored for the Hurricanes (10-3-1), who had won three in a row. Alex Nedeljkovic made 33 saves.
"The way we finished that game was disappointing," Staal said. "We were in control in the first, and we let them back into it with sloppy play and just not being sharp."

Trocheck redirected a pass from Andrei Svechnikov at 13:39 of the third for a power-play goal that tied it 3-3. Trocheck, who played 420 games for the Panthers for seven seasons through 2019-20, was playing his first game against his former team.

The Hurricanes scored goals 22 seconds apart late in the first period.
Warren Foegele fed Staal for a top-shelf wrist shot with 1:32 remaining to make it 1-0. Aho tipped Brett Pesce's shot for a goal off the left post for a 2-0 lead with 1:10 left.
"We were ready to play, we played our game," Aho said. "We got the pucks deep, we went on the forecheck, we got a lot of pucks back. But the last two periods and overtime, we were missing details."
Huberdeau made it 2-1 at 10:52 of the second. He took a long pass off the left boards from Keith Yandle and scored from the left face-off circle.
"I thought everything changed after that," Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "I thought we were on our heels the whole rest of the way. We were probably fortunate we even got a point out of it."

The Panthers tied it 2-2 at 3:11 of the third period. Huberdeau spun to his backhand and passed across the slot for Wennberg, who tapped the puck in at the left post.
"It had to be at the right moment, I felt," Huberdeau said. "I saw [Wennberg] coming in and I did a little spin-o-rama before, and I just hit his tape, so it was fortunate."
Juho Lammikko scored his first NHL goal when his shot from low in the right circle slipped through Nedeljkovic's pads for a 3-2 lead at 12:06 of the third. Lammikko was playing his eighth game of the season and the 48th of his NHL career.
"It felt pretty good," Lammikko said. "It's been a long time. We got the win in a really good comeback, and that's huge."

Driedger (4-1-1) stopped Nino Niederreiter at the top of the crease with 2:58 remaining in the third to preserve the tie.
"I thought he handled the puck well," Quenneville said. "He had a lot of composure when he came out of the net to make plays and stop their forecheck. But that save there at the end was very remarkable. Very timely."
NOTES: In his 14th game, Huberdeau became the fastest Panthers player to reach 20 points (seven goals, 13 assists) in a season. He has scored five points (three goals, two assists) in the past two games and has six multipoint games this season. … Driedger got his first NHL assist on Huberdeau's first goal. ... Staal extended his goal streak to four games (six points; five goals, one assist). … Trocheck now has scored against every current NHL team.