Earning six out of a possible eight points and going 2-0-2 on a 10-day road trip that started in Buffalo, stopped in Washington D.C. and Denver, and ended in Phoenix, is quite positive for a Florida Panthers team that struggled prior to leaving South Florida last week. However, head coach Gerard Gallant cannot be entirely satisfied with one element that was a major cause of an overtime loss in tonight's contest against the host Arizona Coyotes. That is the extreme amount of penalties. Eight minor penalties to be exact.

Whether they were weak calls by the set of referees or careless ones by specific players on the ice, the Panthers are tied with the Boston Bruins for the most minor penalties to this point in the league at 41. The difference is, the Bruins have played three more games this season.

Defenseman Erik Gudbranson stated, "We put ourselves behind the 8-ball all game and made the game way harder than it needed to be. It's too bad we lost that game. We played so well in the first and second, we dominated that team. We had such a great road trip but this isn't where we wanted to be. It came down to me making a strong play in the corner, that's all it came down to. It's a stupid mistake, absolutely embarrassing.''

"We've got to be smarter. We can't take how many penalties we took, but those are tough. We killed most of them but eventually a 4-on-3 is a tough kill and we weren't able to get the job done. We spent a lot of energy killing penalties. We played a good game but we can't take that many penalties. That's not the first time that's happened. We got to learn and the quicker we learn the better,''  said goaltender Roberto Luongo.

After a scoreless and mostly even first period from both teams, at the 2:10 mark of the second period, Coyotes forward B.J. Crombeen almost got his team on the board before referees disallowed the goal as it was knocked in by a high stick. The game remained scoreless going into the third period as well with another very even period.

Things did finally break open in the third period. Panthers forward Brandon Pirri made use of a nice pass by forward Tomas Fleischmann from behind the net and scored his second goal of the season at 1:47 into the period to give Florida a 1-0 lead.

On Arizona's sixth power play, forward Justin Hodgman, who was playing in his first NHL game, made use of a nice cross-ice pass from forward Lauri Korpikoski to tie the game for the Coyotes at 1-1. As the Coyotes kept pushing to get ahead, Roberto Luongo made some fantastic saves throughout the remainder of the third period to keep the Panthers in the game and into overtime.

The Panthers would take their eighth penalty of the night at 1:25 into overtime with a high sticking call by forward Aleksander Barkov and the Coyotes made the team pay for their unnecessary mishaps. Forward Sam Gagner passed it to defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson for the game winning goal at 2:20.

Arizona is now 3-3-1 and has beaten the Panthers four straight times to go 5-0-1 since 2009 when head coach Dave Tippett took over. The two teams will face one another again in South Florida on Thursday evening. The Coyotes will make a stop in Tampa to face the Lightning on Tuesday night before heading further south.