"It's such a good sign when he shoots the puck early," Maurice said. "He had [Matthew] Tkachuk off the post, but when his mentality is to shoot first, he's just such a dynamic player. He's going to make those plays. He's going to hit the open guy, but that shot that he has, to get it off his stick, he's just so big and strong."
Not long before the captain broke the ice, Bobrovsky kept the Capitals off the board when he laid out to rob Anthony Mantha from inside the blue paint with a clutch paddle save.
Through the first 20 minutes, Florida led 18-8 in scoring chances.
"Our first period's been good for us all year," Panthers forward Nick Cousins said. "We come ready to play. We come out and establish our forecheck and all four lines just kind of roll over the boards. We make it hard on the other team. I think our starts have been really good."
Showing off his hand-eye coordination, Sam Reinhart doubled the lead to 2-0 in the second period when he backhanded a rebound out of mid-air into the twine on the power play at 3:46.
With an assist on the goal, Tkachuk recorded his 400th career point in the NHL.
"And he's still getting better," Maurice said when asked about Tkachuk, who dished out three assists against Washington. "There's still lots to his game. His hands are probably the thing I've maybe underappreciated coming in, even having seen him play as much as I've seen him play. He's just got an incredible set of hands."
Playing 4-on-4 hockey, the Capitals cut their deficit in half when Dylan Strome fired a rising shot that sailed just over Bobrovsky right shoulder and into the top of the net to make it 2-1 at 15:04.
Over the course of the second period, the Panthers successfully killed off four power plays.
"Penalty killing was the defining piece to our game," Maurice said. "Our power play goes 1-for-1, and we needed it, but we ran eight minutes of PK through the second period. We kind of took ourselves out of the rhythm with that. That's fine, but you've kind of got most of your blue line gassed going into the third. The part of the game I enjoyed the most was the last six minutes because we got a huge kill and then we're right in those last five minutes. We settled our game down and we were good."
After spending the start of the third period in their own end, momentum shifted back in Florida's favor when Cousins tucked a shot around Kuemper to extend the lead to 3-1 at 7:02.
