Sam Reinhart’s hot scoring streak continues as Florida Panthers beat San Jose Sharks

Sam Reinhart has had his share of hot streaks over the course of his NHL career.

But rarely have they been as long as the one he’s on right now.

And never have they come this early in the season.

Reinhart’s latest extended scoring stint continued Tuesday when he scored the go-ahead goal late in the second period of the Florida Panthers’ 3-1 win over the San Jose Sharks at Amerant Bank Arena to continue his torrid start to the season.

Reinhart’s goal, which came while Florida had a 4-on-3 power play, was his team-leading seventh of the season and marked his career-high fifth consecutive game with at least one goal.

“Sometimes the puck falls for you,” Reinhart said. “I’m playing with some pretty good players that are finding the areas. You get some bounces here and there and you get on a bit of a streak.”

Reinhart is just the eighth player in Panthers history to have a goal streak of at least five games. Matthew Tkachuk was the most recent, with a six-game stretch from March 11-23. Pavel Bure, who had two such streaks, holds the franchise record with a seven-game goal streak from March 11-23, 2001. Bure’s other five-game goal streak came on Dec. 11-20, 1999.

The others to have five-game goal streaks: Mike Hoffman (Feb. 20-29, 2020), Barkov (Oct. 30-Nov. 10, 2019), Jonathan Huberdeau (March 24-April 2, 2016), Olli Jokinen (twice; Feb. 2-10, 2008, and March 17-27, 2007), and Kristian Huselius (Oct. 24-31, 2001)

The others: Matthew Tkachuk, Mike Hoffman, Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau, Olli Jokinen (twice) , Kristian Huselius and Pavel Bure (twice).

“He’s been unbelievable,” winger Carter Verhaeghe said. “Every time he gets the puck in front, he knows where to be and has really good hands. He’s so good at finding areas around the net and making good plays.”

Reinhart has had four other goal streaks of at least four games in his career, but none of them came earlier than mid-November.

And his early-season struggles have been evident during his Panthers tenure.

It took Reinhart until Game 23 last season to get his seventh goal and Game 24 of the 2021-22 season to get there.

This year, he got to that mark in Game 6.

“I don’t think I’ve ever it this time of the year,” Reinhart said, “It’s nice. When it doesn’t go at the start of the year, it’s a lot worse than when it’s in the middle of the year because you’ve got nothing to fall back on, so it just adds to that pressure. To be able to start like this is obviously nice personally as well.”

Florida (3-3-0) and San Jose (0-5-1) exchanged goals within less than a minute-and-a-half of each other earlier in the first period before Reinhart’s go-ahead goal.

Fabian Zetterlund opened scoring with a power-play goal 8:30 into the period before Verhaeghe tied the game after snapping in a feed from Tkachuk behind the net at 9:48 of the period.

Kevin Stenlund added an empty-net goal with 1.5 seconds left to cap scoring.

The Panthers dominated puck possession and scoring chances for the majority of the game despite playing without Barkov, who did not play due to illness. Anton Lundell took Barkov’s spot on the top line with Reinhart and Evan Rodrigues while Verhaeghe replaced Barkov on the top power-play unit.

It all backed a stellar first start of the season for Anthony Stolarz, who had 27 saves. Stolarz entered Tuesday with a .929 save percentage in 11 career games against the Sharks.

Up next

The Panthers wrap up their four-game homestand against the Seattle Kraken on Saturday, with puck drop scheduled for 6 p.m.