Improving to 33-27-6, the Panthers, who sit just two points out of a playoff spot with 16 games left on their schedule, will look to extend their winning streak to four games when they close out their back-to-back with another huge matchup against the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday.
"Back-to-backs are fun when you win the first one," said Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk, who dished out three primary assists in the win. "I forget who I heard it from a few years ago, but back-to-back is the quickest way to get four points. Hopefully we can get two [more] tomorrow."
Suiting up in his 200th career NHL game, Caleb Jones opened the scoring for the Blackhawks when he beat Sergei Bobrovsky on an odd-man rush to make it 1-0 at 6:49 of the first period.
Despite having an extended 5-on-3 power play killed off by the Panthers, the Blackhawks still managed to double their lead soon after when Boris Katchouk skated down the slot and re-directed a centering feed from Joey Anderson into the cage in stride to make it 2-0 at 17:53.
Following a scoreless second period, the Panthers kicked off their comeback in the third period when Sam Bennett beat Petr Mrazek from the doorstep to make it 2-1 at 8:29. Just 29 seconds later, Sam Reinhart tied things up with a re-direction on the power play to make it 2-2 at 8:58.
At 12:42, Eetu Luostarinen beat Mrazek from the slot to put the Panthers up 3-2.
"They just relaxed a little bit and started to skate," Panthers head coach Paul Maurice said. "That's when good things started to happen. Good on 'em for finding the fire. These guys want to win so bad. They truly do care. It would look that it was a casual effort, and that's not what the problem was. They have the heart and they do want to [win]. For me, they were just feeling the weight of playing against an underdog. We turned the corner and away we went."
Pulling their goaltender for the extra attacker, the Blackhawks pulled even with just 44.3 seconds left on the clock when Cole Guttman scored to make it 3-3 and force overtime.
Not long after Bobrovsky robbed Jason Dickison on an uncontested shot from the slot to save the game for the Panthers in the extra frame, Montour backhanded a saucer pass from Aleksander Barkov past Mrazek from right outside the blue paint to lock in the 4-3 win.
"Barky flipped it over to me," Montour said when asked to recall the highlight-reel goal. "I was thinking about maybe holding it and making a move, but thought maybe I could catch [Mrazek] off-guard. I haven't seen [the replay] yet, but I felt like I got a pretty good shot there."
