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Panthers complete season series sweep of Flyers

Mar 21, 2007 - 5:06 AM PHILADELPHIA (Ticker) -- Olli Jokinen and the Florida Panthers accomplished a franchise first to give their fading playoff hopes a boost.

Jokinen scored a key goal and the Panthers completed their first season series sweep over the Philadelphia Flyers with a 4-1 victory.

Florida (31-29-13) won all four meetings with lowly Philadelphia (20-42-11) this season and now has 75 points. Carolina currently holds the eighth spot with 80 points and is off until Thursday when it hosts Washington.

"The chances are getting slimmer and slimmer, that's the bottom line," Jokinen said. "You start running out of games and very game is big for us. There is no room for errors right now at this point of the year. We've got nine games to go and we got another Thursday."

Jokinen was coming off a six-point effort, including two goals, in an 8-5 win over the New York Islanders on Saturday. He managed one goal against the Flyers but it was an important one.

Jokinen's 34th tally of the season came with 1:32 left in the second period and gave the Panthers a 2-1 lead.

"We had a number of good chances tonight," Jokinen said. "We played pretty good tonight as a five-man unit. We forced them to make plays and we stayed patient."

Nathan Horton and Juraj Kolnik tallied in the third period for Florida.

"You need to have your key players outperform the opposition," Florida coach Jacques Martin said. "You're looking for your top guys to lead your team down the stretch. We only had the one power play so our penalty killers did a good job.

"This game was big because five of our next six are home games. Hopefully, we can capitalize on that."

Ed Belfour made 24 saves for the Panthers.

"Every game is so important and we have to give ourselves a chance," Belfour said. "The defense is playing great in front of me. They are getting stronger and stronger all the time. We're playing well as a team defensively and that makes a big difference for me back there."

Martin Biron made 30 saves for Philadelphia, which has lost two straight and four of its last five.

"Tonight it seemed like we didn't keep our legs going," Biron said. "We gave them some breakouts and some chances and you can't have that. This is a game where you have two teams that can skate and skate for 60 minutes.

"When you don't skate you push the puck ahead and chase after it all of the time. That is not going to work."