Sam Reinhart scored two goals and Ryan Lomberg recorded the game-winner in the third period as the Florida Panthers stayed hot with a 4-2 victory over the New York Rangers in Monday's showdown between division leaders.
Anton Lundell sealed Florida's fifth consecutive win and 11th in 12 games with an empty-net goal in the final minute, while Aleksander Barkov and Gustav Forsling had two assists in support of Sergei Bobrovsky's 26-save effort.
The win maintained the Panthers' two-point advantage on the Boston Bruins for first place in both the Eastern Conference and Atlantic Division, with the Metropolitan-leading Rangers now four points back of Florida.
After the Rangers tied the game at 2-2 on Chris Kreider's power-play goal late in the second period, the Panthers outshot New York by a 12-6 margin while dominating the third.
Lomberg snapped the deadlock 6:11 into the period when his wrist shot got past New York goaltender Igor Shesterkin, and Lundell put the game out of reach by scoring with 59 seconds remaining.
The Rangers took a 1-0 lead after one period on Will Cuylle's power-play goal, but Reinhart registered his 43rd and 44th goals of the season within a span of 2:45 in the second to put Florida ahead. His first of the night was his league-leading 25th in power-play situations.
Shesterkin stopped 25 of 28 shots for New York, which has now lost three of four following a franchise-record 10-game winning streak from Jan. 27-Feb. 24.
MacKinnon extends home point streak as Avalanche blank Blackhawks
Nathan MacKinnon increased his home point streak to 30 games with a two-goal, two-assist performance that helped the Colorado Avalanche cruise to a 5-0 rout over the badly struggling Chicago Blackhawks.
Justus Annunen stopped 37 shots to record his second shutout of Chicago in five days and send the Blackhawks to a seventh straight loss. The rookie netminder had 24 saves in Colorado's 5-0 win at Chicago on Thursday.
MacKinnon gave Annunen all the help he would need by blasting a shot past Chicago goaltender Petr Mrazek 12:31 in. The Colorado captain's home point streak is the second-longest to start a season in NHL history behind Wayne Gretzky's 40-game run with the Los Angeles Kings in 1988-89.
MacKinnon then set up Jonathan Drouin's goal later in the first period before adding another assist on Cale Makar's score with 7:22 left in the second that extended the Avs' lead to 3-0.
Zach Parise made it 4-0 when he redirected a drive from Caleb Jones five minutes after Makar's goal, and MacKinnon capped his four-point night with a power-play tally with 4:25 remaining.
Mrazek finished with 32 saves in Chicago's ninth shutout loss of the season, tied with the San Jose Sharks for the most in the NHL.
Zacha's two goals lead Bruins past Maple Leafs
The Boston Bruins were able to keep pace with the Panthers in the Eastern Conference race by delivering a 4-1 win over the rival Toronto Maple Leafs behind Pavel Zacha's two goals and 32 saves from Jeremy Swayman.
Jake DeBrusk chipped in a goal and an assist and David Pastrnak had three assists to help the Bruins win for the second time in three outings following a three-game losing streak.
Morgan Geekie added a goal that put Boston ahead midway through the first period, and Zacha made it 2-0 by converting a power-play chance just under three minutes later.
Swayman came up with 13 saves during a second period in which DeBrusk produced the only goal, though Toronto's John Tavares scored for a second straight game to end the shutout bid 3:52 into the third.
Zacha completed his first multi-goal outing of the season by knocking in a feed from Pastrnak with 9:25 remaining.
Toronto, which had won nine of 10 coming in, received 23 saves from Joseph Woll.
Jamaica tops inaugural Ice Hockey Challenger Series
Jamaica’s Ice Hockey team emerged victorious in the final match of the Challenger Series after beating a very strong Lebanon team 12-8 at the College Ice Arena in Toronto on Saturday evening.
In a pulsating match played before hundreds of cheering supporters, Jamaica took the early lead in the first period but fell behind after Lebanon scored three unanswered goals over the next 15 minutes of the first period. During the second of three 20-minute periods, Jamaica regrouped and fought back to take a 6-4 lead, before Lebanon pulled level at 6-6.
Buoyed by the enthusiastic support from the massive crowd, Jamaica asserted their authority on the contest to end the period at 9–6. With victory in sight at the start of the third and final period, the Jamaicans applied pressure on their Lebanese counterparts and extended their lead to 11-7 with four minutes left in the game.
Tight defensive work then ensured Jamaica added to their tally, though they also conceded another goal in the latter stages of the encounter. Reggie Millette and Givani Smith both scored a brace, while Maleek McGowan, Captain Taos Jordan, Amari Sellers, Tyler Drummond, Dante Sheriff, Avery Grant, Josh Mitton, and Marquis Grant-Mentis got the others.
The Challenger Series is a new tournament involving Puerto Rico, Lebanon, and Jamaica, who are all associate members of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF).
The Challenger Series began in Chicago in April, continued in New York in June, and culminated in Toronto on Saturday. At the end of the second leg in New York, Jamaica was in pole position and, as such, earned the automatic right to the final by virtue of the accumulation of points over the first two legs.
Lebanon defeated Puerto Rico 9-3 in the playoff for a spot in the final.
Across the three legs, Jamaica won six of their nine matches and now has an overall tally of 22 matches since it started to play competitively in 2019. Their record currently stands at 16 wins and six losses, with over 100 goals to their tally.
Don Anderson, president of the Jamaica Olympic Ice Hockey Federation (JOIHF), said the Federation is now setting its sights on establishing an ice rink in Jamaica as well as building a strong local program that will facilitate the team playing in qualifying tournaments for the Olympics. He added that expert opinion is that this team could be highly ranked globally if it had the opportunity to play at the next level amongst countries with Ice Rinks.
NHL free agency: Predators sign Stamkos, Marchessault, Skjei
The Nashville Predators came out aggressively on the first day of NHL free agency Monday with the additions of forwards Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Marchessault along with defenseman Brady Skjei.
Stamkos spent his entire 16-year career with the Tampa Bay Lightning after being selected with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2008 NHL Draft.
The 34-year-old Stamkos won two Stanley Cup titles with Tampa Bay and is the franchise leader in games (1,082), goals (555) and points (1,137).
Marchessault, 33, played the last seven seasons with the Vegas Golden Knights after being an original member of the expansion franchise in 2017-18.
He was the Conn Smyth Trophy winner as play-off MVP in 2023 after leading Vegas to its first Stanley Cup championship.
Marchessault set a career high this past season with 42 goals and leaves the Golden Knights as the club’s all-time leader in games (514), goals (192) and assists (225).
Marchessault and Stamkos were teammates for parts of the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons.
Skjei, 30, is also coming off a career season with a personal-best 47 points (13 goals, 34 assists) with the Carolina Hurricanes.
He began his career with the New York Rangers in 2015 and was traded to Carolina in February 2020.
Nashville was eliminated in the first round of the post-season in 2023-24 and has not won a play-off series since advancing to the Western Conference semi-finals in 2018.
Panthers top Oilers in Game 7 to win Stanley Cup
It took 30 years for the Florida Panthers to win their first Stanley Cup.
For Paul Maurice, the wait was nearly as long.
Sam Reinhart's tie-breaking goal late in the second period held up as the Panthers captured the NHL's most coveted trophy for the first time with Monday's 2-1 victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 7 of a memorable Stanley Cup Final.
Carter Verhaeghe also had a goal and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 23 shots - including all nine he faced in the third period - to also give Maurice his first Stanley Cup after nearly 2,000 combined regular-season and play-off games as a head coach.
Maurice is in his 26th season leading an NHL team, the longest wait of any head coach in the four major North American professional sports leagues before winning his first championship.
While Maurice and the Panthers' long streaks came to an end, another continues on as the Oilers' loss marks the 31st consecutive season a Canadian team has not hoisted the Cup since the Montreal Canadiens' win in 1993.
Edmonton was also bidding to become only the second team in NHL history to win the Stanley Cup after losing the first three games of the best-of-seven finals, a feat the Toronto Maple Leafs accomplished in 1942.
Oilers' captain Connor McDavid still took home the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the play-offs after setting an NHL post-season record with 42 points. The superstar centre is just the second skater on a losing team to win the award, joining the Philadelphia Flyers' Reggie Leach in 1976.
McDavid recorded a pair of four-point outings in Games 4 and 5 to help Edmonton extend the series, but the three-time Hart Trophy recipient was kept off the scoresheet by a stout Florida defensive effort for a second straight game in Monday's finale.
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