Philadelphia Flyers top Florida Panthers 2-1, snap 5-game losing streak

Noah Cates scored the go-ahead goal 2:36 into the third period, and the Philadelphia Flyers beat the Florida Panthers 2-1 on Tuesday night.

Cates’ goal was his first since Oct. 24, snapping a 22-game drought for the 25-year-old forward. He picked up a loose puck near the high slot, skated in alone and scored unassisted for what became the game-winner.

“When you don’t score for a while, you feel like you never will again,” Cates said. “To get on the board and get that confidence is big for me.”

The Flyers snapped their five-game losing streak in their first game since Jan. 27 following the NHL’s All-Star break.

“It’s the way we have to play,” Flyers coach John Tortorella said. “The way we’ve been successful is checking forward and not being safe. In the first period, we felt we were checking but we were letting them play. We didn’t close anybody out, we didn’t take any ice away from them, and in the last two periods, we played better.”

Travis Konecny also scored for Philadelphia, and Samuel Ersson made 20 saves.

Carter Verhaeghe scored for the Panthers. Anthony Stolarz, who got the start to give All-Star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky a little more rest, stopped 23 shots.

Florida’s four-game win streak came to an end, as well as Sam Reinhart’s 13-game point streak, which was tied for the second-longest in franchise history.

“I didn’t like the way we supported the puck,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “I thought we got stretched in the game that we didn’t need to. They flipped a lot of pucks, we couldn’t get a handle on them, we started to stretch our game out and we couldn’t generate anything because of it. We looked like we haven’t been out on the ice in about a week.”

Flyers forward Owen Tippett played his first game in South Florida since the Panthers traded him to Philadelphia in 2022. He also returned to the lineup from a lower-body injury which kept him out of the team’s past four games.

Panthers forward Nick Cousins played his first game since Jan. 2 after missing 12 games while in the concussion protocol.

Up next

Flyers: Host Winnipeg on Thursday night.

Panthers: Host Washington on Thursday night.