"We don't give up, and we compete," Panthers interim head coach Andrew Brunette said. "I don't think we were at the level that we're normally at, but give [the Capitals] a lot of credit. They play in your face and don't give you space out there. … It's hard to chase games on the road."
With neither goaltender giving up an inch early on, the goals were hard to come by in the first period for both teams until Jonathan Huberdeau pounced on a turnover in Washington's zone and went five-hole on Ilya Samsonov to give the Panthers a 1-0 lead at 19:28 of the first period.
Despite the Panthers earning a power play just 10 seconds into the second period, the Capitals managed to swing momentum back in their favor when Tom Wilson beat Sergei Bobrovsky on a 2-on-1 rush while shorthanded to even things up and make it 1-1 just 1:34 into the middle frame.
Moving forward, the Cats know they need to be better with the extra attacker.
"I think our execution is the problem right now," Huberdeau said when asked about the power play. "We know what to do on the power play. We've all played there. It's just not clicking right now. Too many turnovers. They have too many chances on the PK. We're just a little sloppy."
Making contact with Wilson and falling to the ice after the goal, Bobrovsky remained in the game but eventually went to the locker room after Ovechkin buried a rebound on the power play to put Washington up 2-1 at 2:50. With rookie Spencer Knight coming into the game in relief, Ovechkin quickly tallied his second goal of the game just 56 seconds to make it 3-1 in the blink of an eye.
Looking no worse for wear, Bobrovsky then returned to Florida's crease after that goal.
Pushing back for the Panthers, Sam Reinhart took a pass from MacKenzie Weegar and ripped a quick shot from the right circle into the far side of the net to trim the deficit down to 3-2 at 6:49.
After that, Bobrovsky was pulled from the game again -- this time by decree of the officials -- only to finally return to the action for good with just under three minutes remaining in the frame.
Despite some confusion and an abundance of caution, Bobrovsky was fully cleared.
"Originally it was concussion protocol from the spotter," Brunette said of Bobrovsky's back-and-forth trips to the bench. "He went in and was evaluated by their physician and was cleared to go back and play. I'm not sure what happened after that. I guess we were told that he wasn't past the protocol. It kind of got really gray there for a while, but we were told that he was cleared."
Back at it in the third period, Ovechkin capped off the 28th hat trick of his career when he dug in on top of the crease and buried a back-door feed from Evgeny Kuznetsov to make it 4-2 at 4:02.
Getting that goal back less than two minutes later, Carter Verhaeghe went coast to coast with the puck before finishing off the impressive sequence with a laser of a goal to make it 4-3 at 5:36, but that from that point on the Capitals held down the fort and staved off the late push.
"Even with that big goal there at the end of the first, we knew it wasn't our best hockey," Reinhart said. "Bobby certainly kept us in it in that first. It kind of caught up to us early in the second, but then we were able to tighten it up. I thought we competed well in the third period."
With a chance to become the first team in NHL history to start 12-0-0 at home, the Panthers will now get right back to work with a battle against the Kraken at FLA Live Arena on Saturday.
"We would've liked to have won this one, but we've got to refocus, get back home and tomorrow's going to be special," Huberdeau said. "We have the chance to make history, so we're going to work hard and be ready right from the get-go."
Here are five takeaways from Friday's loss at Washington…
