subject: Florida Panthers Tickets - Panthers Edge Thrashers 4-3 [print this page] Stephen Weiss, Radek Dvorak, Bryan McCabe, and Michael Frolik scored to give the Florida Panthers a 4-3 victory over the Atlanta Thrashers. Get Florida Panthers tickets and see Frolik score the game winner. Tomas Vokoun made 20 saves for the Panthers. Weiss got Florida on the board at 6:42 in the first. Atlanta's Johan Hedberg stopped the initial shot from Nathan Horton, but Weiss was right on the door step and swept the rebound into the net. It was the 16th goal of the season for Weiss and his third in three games.
Florida extended their lead 2-0 with Dvorak's goal at 8:19 in the first. Dvorak received a pass from Steven Reinprecht before he found the back of the net, firing a shot from the low slot. McCabe scored at 2:54 in the second period to give the Panthers a 3-0 lead. The defenseman took a pass from Victor Oreskovich and then blasted a shot from the right circle that went past Hedberg. It was his fourth goal of the season.
Ilya Kovalchuk, Nik Antropov and Vyacheslav Kozlov scored for the Thrashers, which overcame a three-goal deficit to tie the game in the third period. Kovalchuk started Atlanta's comeback with his 18th goal of the season. The 6-foot-2, 230 pound left-winger ripped a shot from the left circle, which beat Vokoun and cut Florida's lead to 3-1 with 2:08 left in the second period. The Thrashers made it a one-point game after Antropov scored at 1:59 of the third. The 6-foot-6 forward was camping out in front of Vokoun at the crease when he pushed a rebounding puck under the goaltender's legs. Atlanta tied the game 3-all at 6:27 of the third period when Kozlov picked up a loose puck in the high slot and scored on a laser shot.
But Frolik won the game for the Panthers. The forward poked in a rebound, putting the puck high in the net with 1:21 remaining. After the game, Florida coach Pete DeBoer said, "It wasn't textbook or a video that I'm going to do a whole lot of studying of." The coach continued to say it was a good win and the Panthers deserved the two points.
Florida has already met Atlanta twice this season, both games ending in disappointment for the Panthers. Maxim Afinogenov scored the winning goal with six seconds left of regulation to lift the Thrashers to a 4-3 win on Nov. 30, and Kovalchuk scored with 1:04 left of the game in a Dec. 5 matchup that Atlanta eventually won 2-1 in a shootout. Although Kozlov noted that the Thrashers usually come back in the third period and win games, Atlanta coach John Anderson told the press his team's effort was "apparently not enough, too little too late, I guess. It was a bit of payback for them."
DeBoer said, "I'm glad we got the win. We were on the other end of one of those in Atlanta a couple weeks ago and it's tough to lose games like that. But on the flip side, I thought we did a lot of things well tonight."
