Kings fall to Panthers in final second of overtime for seventh consecutive loss
Sam Reinhart scored on a backhander with less than a second to play in overtime, Matthew Tkachuk scored late in regulation to tie the contest and the Florida Panthers rallied past the Kings 3-2 on Thursday night to push their winning streak to nine games.
Sam Bennett also scored for Florida, which trailed 1-0 and 2-1 before pulling out the win. Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 31 shots for the Panthers, plus had one of the two assists on Reinhart’s winner.
“This was a really tough test tonight,” Reinhart said. “I liked our battle. I liked our compete. ... It was a fun one to play.”
Trevor Moore and Drew Doughty scored for the Kings. Cam Talbot made 38 saves for the Kings, who are 0-3-4 in their last seven games. The Kings have also wasted third-period leads in each of their last three games.
“There is going to be an element of frustration. I would be concerned if there wasn’t,” Kings coach Todd McLellan said. “Frustration is a dangerous emotion if you don’t channel it the right way and I think our group has done a pretty good job of it. When you go on a streak that’s not going your way, sometimes you are really upset at the effort and the overall intensity of the club as a whole, but we don’t have that concern right now. It’s there.”
The Kings’ Adrian Kempe was called for cross-checking Florida’s Brandon Montour with 1:23 left in overtime, giving the Panthers a 4-on-3 edge. The Kings killed off the first 1:22 of that power play, but Reinhart got his 30th goal of the season — going over Talbot’s shoulder — with seven-tenths of a second left to keep the winning streak alive.
Nick Perbix scored 2:02 into overtime and the Lightning rallied from a 2-0 deficit to beat the slumping Kings.
Florida’s nine-game winning streak is the third-longest in franchise history. The Panthers won 12 consecutive games in the 2015-16 season, then had their other two longest streaks in 2021-22 — eight straight wins to open that season, then 13 in a row toward the end of that season.
Doughty got his first goal in his last 15 games — he hadn’t scored since Dec. 7 — about eight seconds into a Kings power play late in the second for a 2-1 lead, and the Kings nearly made it hold up. But with Bobrovsky pulled for an extra attacker, Tkachuk scored with 2:18 left to pull the Panthers into a tie. It was the fifth consecutive game Tkachuk had a goal.
Both teams had chances in the extra session, before Reinhart got the one that mattered most. He became the second player in the NHL to hit the 30-goal mark this season, behind only Toronto’s Auston Matthews.
“He’s amazing,” Tkachuk said of Reinhart. “Just a huge goal.”
Up next for the Kings: at Detroit on Saturday.
