"He's earned it," Panthers head coach Paul Maurice said of Lyon. "He worked hard. He's put the effort in to be given the opportunity to be good. He was the key guy, first star of the night."
Snapping out of a four-game skid and improving to 37-31-7, the Panthers now trail the Pittsburgh Penguins by just one point for the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.
Florida has seven games remaining, while Pittsburgh has eight.
"We all know what the standings look like," Lyon said when asked about the team's belief. "What've we got to lose? Why play scared? Why play nervous? This is what you play the game for."
Applying pressure from the moment the puck dropped, the Panthers opened the scoring when Eetu Luostarinen stole the biscuit in the offensive zone and sent it to Anton Lundell. With a wide-open lane ahead of him, Lundell then ripped a shot past Ilya Samsonov to make it 1-0 at 19:00.
Getting the game back to even early in the second period, Zach Aston-Reese re-directed a flukey shot from T.J. Brodie past Lyon, who was called into action after Sergei Bobrovsky was forced to sit out the game with an illness, to get the Maple Leafs on the board and make it 1-1 at 3:13.
Just past the midway point of the middle frame, Aston-Reese nearly netted his second goal of the game after being awarded a penalty shot, but was denied by Lyon in the tense 1-on-1 battle.
"He gave us every chance to win the game," Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov said.
Putting the Maple Leafs on top in the third period, Auston Matthews blasted a blistering one-timer from near the top of the left circle through traffic and past Lyon to make it 2-1 at 6:40.
After pulling Lyon to gain a 6-on-4 advantage while on a late power play, the Panthers made sure they'd get at least a point when Sam Reinhart tipped a shot from Aaron Ekblad past Samsonov to make it 2-2 with 59.6 seconds left in regulation and get the game to overtime.
But after coming all that way, why not pocket a second point?
Not long after Lyon saved the game by robbing Matthews with a spectacular glove save on a net-front shot, the Panthers finished off their impressive comeback when Brandon Montour buried a feed from Barkov on an odd-man rush to lock in the 3-2 win at 1:41 of the extra frame.
"We've shown it since the break," Montour said of the team's never-say-die attitude. "This is a tough league. Everyone can beat everyone. We have all the belief in the world."
