Ugly Night for the Florida Panthers in Seattle

The Florida Panthers have been very good in controlling close games thus far this season but Tuesday in Seattle, things got away from them in the third period.

The Kraken, a team which came into the night riding an eight-game losing streak, took it to the Panthers in the final period by scoring three goals en route to a 4-0 win.

Although Florida dominated a number of key metrics through the first two periods, Seattle came into the third holding a 1-0 lead.

Regardless of the numbers, the Panthers did not look all that great — leading coach Paul Maurice to throw his forward lines into a mixer trying to find some sort of spark.

Nothing caught.

The Panthers ended up with 24 shots on goal — with 61 shot attempts. A total of 18 Florida shots were blocked with 19 simply missing.

Florida also went 0-for-3 on the power play.

“I think we were comfortable playing in a tight game,’’ Maurice said, “then we didn’t score on the power play and got a little uncomfortable with it. Even with that, a third of our shots were blocked and another third missed the net. A big chunk of our offense just never got to their net. It was a tight game; they battled hard, they played hard. We had a couple of miscues and they were in our net.”

Whatever Florida threw at goalie Joey Daccord, he turned back — including two shots from Gus Forsling early in the third.

Daccord ended up with his first NHL shutout in his 28th start as the Kraken won for the first time since beating the Sharks on Nov. 22.

The Panthers have been shutout three times this season.

“We did not create a lot today,” Evan Rodrigues said. “I thought they did a good job of being hard defensively, they were heavy on the backcheck and really clogged the middle. They kind of did to us what we usually do to other teams. We didn’t do enough to break them down.”

The saves on Forsling kept things at 1-0 — Kailer Yamamoto scored on Seattle’s fourth shot on goal 3:06 of the second — but it would not stay that way for long.

At 5:59 of the third, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare found himself alone in the slot and he cashed in on a feed from Ryker Evans.

Alex Wennberg all but ended any thought the Panthers could get back in this one with a goal at 9:13.

Maurice pulled Sergei Bobrovsky (19 saves) with 5:40 remaining and Eeli Tolvanen finished it off.

“They did a good job of boxing us out,” Forsling said. “We have to get a guy in front, I think their goalie saw everything all game. We have to do a little better job in front. We created a lot, just did not finish.”

The Panthers head to Vancouver as they take on perhaps the most improved team in the NHL.

The Canucks will be honoring Roberto Luongo by placing the Hall of Fame goalie in their ring of honor after already having beaten the Panthers back in October.

“We just have to get back to our ways,” Rodrigues said. “Everyone knows this was not our best tonight. We just have to hit the reset button and get back to our game.”

Scoreless in Seattle: Kraken 4, Florida Panthers 0