Anton Lundell's Hat Trick Powers Panthers Past Jets 5-2

Anton Lundell didn't need a second invitation. On Friday night at Amerant Bank Arena, the Florida Panthers turned a shaky stretch of hockey into a comfortable 5-2 win over the Winnipeg Jets, the second game of a home-and-home series spread across four days. Lundell scored three times for the first hat trick of his career, and Seth Jones added three points of his own. Akira Schmid picked up another win in goal and moved to 5-2-1.

The win extended Winnipeg's losing streak. The Jets have now dropped another game they had little business losing on the scoreboard, and the Panthers did what good teams do against a struggling opponent: they kept the pressure on and cashed in when chances came.

Lundell's night and the hat trick club

Lundell's first goal of the night came with plenty of relief attached. The Finnish center is 25, and he hadn't found the back of the net since Oct. 12. Once the pucks started going in, though, the rest of the evening looked easy for him. At 25, he became the 12th-youngest player in Panthers history to record a hat trick, which puts him in good company in a franchise that has been producing more of them than usual.

October has been a busy month for hat tricks in South Florida. Four different Panthers combined for five of them, with Brady Tkachuk accounting for two, along with Carter Verhaeghe, Sam Bennett and now Lundell. That kind of spread matters. A team that can get multi-goal nights from different players is harder to game-plan against than one that leans on a single finisher, and it's a big reason Florida has been able to stay in the mix while dealing with the usual ups and downs of an early-season schedule.

The empty-net goal that sealed the win gave the building another moment to celebrate. Lundell's final shot was the kind of finish that tends to get replayed on highlight packages, and it capped a night in which he looked more confident with the puck than he had in recent weeks.

Schmid's night: good, with a caveat

Schmid earned his fifth win of the season, but the scoreline flatters the game a little. Winnipeg scored twice on him, which is one fewer than the Jets managed when the teams met a couple of days earlier in Winnipeg. The Panthers led 3-2 eight minutes into the third period, and for a stretch the game was tighter than the final score suggests.

The concern isn't about the volume of bad goals. Every goalie gives up a few sloppy ones, and Schmid's season has been built around making the saves that matter. The worry is that both Winnipeg goals looked like they should have been stopped. Kyle Connor picked his corner and beat Schmid with a puck threaded through a small opening, and Schmid could have taken away more of that space with a slight pivot and better positioning. Later, Morgan Barron worked through the circles with a power move and got a snapshot on net that found a hole. Neither goal was a coverage breakdown in the traditional sense. Both were places where a goalie can close the gap, and Schmid didn't quite do that.

Still, the Panthers won comfortably, and the goaltending was good enough to keep the Jets from building momentum. For a goalie still establishing himself in a demanding crease, that's the right kind of tension: he's winning games while leaving some clear room to sharpen his technique.

Jones is quietly having a monster month

While the attention in the NHL has landed on Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard in Edmonton, Jones has been producing at a pace that deserves more notice. Bouchard entered Friday with 22 points in 13 games and a plus-19 rating, and Quinn Hughes of Minnesota sat at 20 points with a plus-8. Jones is keeping up with that group. His goal Friday was his second of the season, and his two assists gave him three points in the game, his second straight three-point night and third of the month.

That production has set a franchise mark. Jones finished October with 18 points, which is a Panthers record for points in a single month by a defenseman, passing the previous mark of 17 set by Keith Yandle. The 32-year-old has never topped 57 points in a season, and at this rate he would blow past that career high. Elite Prospects has him on a pace for 108 points, a number that would be a significant leap for any defenseman, let alone one who has spent most of his career as a steady, mostly underrated contributor.

Pace numbers early in a season always need a grain of salt, and nobody should expect Jones to sustain this scoring rate through a full schedule. Even so, the Panthers' offense has leaned heavily on him, and the sort of production he's giving them is what turns a good team into a dangerous one. If he keeps moving the puck and jumping into space at this clip, he becomes an obvious name in any early Norris Trophy conversation.

What's next for the Panthers

Florida gets a rare weekend off before returning to action Monday night against the Detroit Red Wings. Detroit will arrive in South Florida without Dylan Larkin in their lineup, which gives the Panthers a chance to build on Friday's momentum against a team they should be favoured to beat.

The bigger question is whether the balance from this win holds. Lundell's hat trick and Jones's scoring were the headline, but the Panthers' best nights this season have come when the goals are spread across several lines and the goaltending keeps the margin manageable. If Schmid tightens up on the goals that look saveable and the secondary scorers keep finding the net, Florida has the tools to keep rolling. That's the thing to watch next: not whether the Panthers can score, but whether the rest of the lineup can keep up with Lundell and Jones.