• ESPN News Services

May 12, 2024, 09:50 PM ET

BOSTON — Aleksander Barkov slipped through three Bruins defenders to score the go-ahead goal Sunday night, and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 16 shots to give the Florida Panthers a 3-2 victory over Boston and a 3-1 lead in their Eastern Conference semifinal series.

One year after Florida knocked out the record-setting Bruins in the first round on its way to the Stanley Cup Final, the Panthers won their third straight to send Boston to the brink of elimination.

Sam Bennett and Anton Lundell also scored for the Panthers, who scored three times in a row to rally from a two-goal deficit.

Florida can advance to the Eastern Conference finals with a victory in Game 5 at home on Tuesday night.

One game after Bennett’s hit — or, as the Bruins believe, his sucker punch — knocked Brad Marchand out of action for Game 4, Bennett scored a disputed goal to tie the game 2-all about four minutes into the third period. After Jeremy Swayman made a save on Lundell, Bennett gave Boston’s Charlie Coyle a shove, sending him into the goaltender, then flipped the puck into the net.

The Bruins challenged, claiming goaltender interference, but the replay confirmed the goal.

“We thought that Coyle was on top of our goaltender. And If Coyle was able to stand his ground, he could have cleared the puck,” Bruins coach Jim Montgomery said.

“That inhibited our goaltender from being able to react to playing the puck.”

As Swayman added, “The fact is, Coyle was pushed into me, and I couldn’t play my position.”

The NHL is alone among the major North American sports in refusing to make referees available to reporters to explain controversial calls.

But the league did put out a statement explaining its decision on the coach’s challenge, noting: “Video review supported the Referees’ call on the ice that the shove by Florida’s Sam Bennett on Charlie Coyle and the subsequent contact with Jeremy Swayman did not prevent Swayman from playing his position in the crease prior to Bennett’s goal.”

Playing without Marchand — Boston’s captain and leading postseason scorer — the Bruins jumped to a 2-0 lead with goals from David Pastrnak and Brandon Carlo.

Swayman made 39 saves for the Bruins.

Boston, which lost three of its last four games in the regular season to fall one point below Florida in the Atlantic Division, now must win three straight — with two on the road — to remain alive in the playoffs.

Pastrnak had 47 goals this season but just one on the power play in the final 34 games of the regular season and the first 10 of the playoffs. Boston hadn’t scored at all on the man-advantage in its first 11 tries in the Florida series. But Pastrnak slapped a 92 mph missile past Bobrovsky immediately following the faceoff after Aaron Ekblad was sent off for interference midway through the first period.

Carlo, who scored in Game 1 just a few hours after his wife gave birth to their son, made it 2-0 with five minutes left in the first period on a seemingly harmless wrist shot from the blue line.

But the Panthers kept putting shots on net, outshooting Boston 15-5 in the first, and it paid off early in the second when Lundell made it a one-goal game five minutes into the second.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.