The Florida Panthers opened up a long road trip with a tenth straight win by beating the Buffalo Sabres 5-1 on Tuesday.
This was the first game of a six-game road trip that promises to test the Panthers further. Florida's last six wins all came at BB&T Center in Sunrise. While the Panthers have a better record at home, they have been successful on the road as well with an 11-6-2 mark.
Florida's improbable run has moved the team into first place in the Atlantic Division with 52 points. The Panthers are now only seven wins shy of tying the NHL record for wins in a row. In addition, Florida kept pace with the Eastern Conference leading Washington Capitals who also won on Tuesday.
The man of the hour was once again Jaromir Jagr as he got the scoring started early. Jagr who put two goals home in Florida's last win, scored at the 9:45 mark of the first period. The goal was the 14th of the season for Florida which leads the squad.
The assist went to Jonathan Huberdeau who now has 22 assists on the year.
After Buffalo tied the game early into the second period, Derek MacKenzie put Florida back on top minutes later. MacKenzie's fourth goal of the year came with some help from both Corban Knight and Alex Petrovic.
In the third period, Knight scored a goal of his own to give Florida some insurance. Quinton Howden and Dmitry Kulikov assisted on Knight's second goal of the season. Later in the period, Huberdeau added his fifth goal of the season with an assist from Aleksander Barkov. An empty net goal courtesy of Brandon Pirri was added as the game winded down as well. It was the ninth goal of the season for Pirri.
Roberto Luongo shut things down to help Florida win with its two goals and extend the streak The veteran goalie stopped 30 of the 31 attempts sent his way and is now 18-11-3 on the year.
The Panthers will try to extend their franchise record long winning streak to 11 games when they travel to Ottawa on Thursday.
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Courtesy of our news partner, NBCMiami.com.
