With Upshall and Tomas Kopecky not offered new contracts with the Panthers, only defenseman Brian Campbell remains with Florida from Tallon’s 2011 remake of the roster that led to the Southeast Division title later that season.
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It’s the first three-game win streak of the season for Florida, which opened a five-game trip with a 2-1 overtime victory at Detroit on Sunday.
After a slow first period that included just seven shots, the Panthers scored three times in the final 7:42 of the second.
The Blues had won six straight games against the Panthers.
“We’ve been kind of hanging around and good teams have to put streaks like this together, ” MacKenzie said.
Derek MacKenzie was disappointed in himself after he was stopped on a short-handed breakaway attempt Tuesday night.
ABOUT THE BLUES (15-6-3): Vladimir Tarasenko notched a goal and an assist in the 3-1 win over Columbus on Saturday for his fifth multi-point performance in his last eight games.
For the second time this season the Panthers will be without the services of one of their top two centers as Bjugstad was sent back to South Florida after sustaining an upper-body injury during practice on Monday at Scottrade Center. “That’s how we’re built; we didn’t want to play that way today. I didn’t really talk to anyone when I left, just read some newspaper clips and said “I guess I’m not coming back”. “So we had a good team effort again tonight”.
Second Period_1, Florida, Pirri 5 (Barkov, Mitchell), 12:18. The Red Wings lone goal came off the stick of Dylan Larkin but Petr Mazek received no other help with 30 stops being a loss that dropped Detroit to 12-8-4 as the Red Wings have had issues in the third period lately. “[MacKenzie] was huge. Guys were making fun of him when he shot that breakaway right into his chest but after that he turned it up to beast mode and buried a couple”.
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Gallant reinserted veteran forward Dave Bolland, who had been a healthy scratch for the previous three games, to center the third line with Jussi Jokinen and rookie Connor Brickley. He has 39 career goals in 413 regular-season games over 12 seasons.
