SUNRISE–It was only one win for the Florida Panthers Tuesday that and that one was off the ice. Inside BB&T Center, the second place Ottawa Senators continued their strong play in claiming a 4-2 win over the Panthers in Florida’s first home game since their 4-1 road trip.

Florida grabbed a 1-0 lead at 7:49 of the opening period on Logan Shaw’s first NHL goal.  After Ottawa tied the game on a power play goal by Zack Smith early in the second, the Panthers Reilly Smith (no relation) scored his seventh of the season at 13:58.

Ottawa erased that advantage to tie the game at 2-2 when Kyle Turris scored a power play goal at 0:51 of the final period. The back and forth game favored the Senators until  Mike Hoffman scored his 15th of the season for the Senators at 14:23 for the game winner.  With Panthers goalie Roberto Luongo on the bench during a Florida power play, Ottawa’s  Jean-Gabriel Pageau finished off the scoring  with an empty net, short-handed goal to seal  the victory against the usually strong-finishing Panthers on this night.

The Panthers top line was scoreless. Jonathon Huberdeau and Aleksander Barkov had three shots while Jaromir Jagr had two. Highlights and stats from nhl.com can be seen here:

http://www.nhl.com/gamecenter/en/recap?id=2015020412&navid=sb:recap&intcmpid=sb-highlights

The Panthers lost a chance to gain on the Senators in the Atlantic division, and also Detroit, which picked up a point in a shootout lose to Washington to match the Senators record.

No movement on the Jagr-O-Meter Tuesday night.

All Star Voting: Jaromir Jagr tops Atlantic Division vote-getters and is second overall to Arizona’s John Scott, who is benefiting from a highly successful underground campaign to put him in as captain of the Pacific Divison’s squad in the first-time ever three-on-three tournament. To date, fans have ignored Jagr’s recent request to vote for younger players as his nearest competitor, PK Subban, is seventh in the overall voting. Ahh, the beauty of the democratic process with on-line voting.

The Panthers host Washington Thursday night, before playing their final  four road games of December. Florida will finish 2015 with four home games and start 2016 with a pair. Tickets and great packages for home games can be secured at http://www.floridapanthers.com.

Despite the loss to Ottawa, Off the ice It  was a great day for the Florida Panthers. The ownership group led by Vinnie Viola and Doug Cifu received final approval for the reworked arena package they had sought since taking over the team in 2013.  The deals gives them relief, indemnifies Broward County should something go wrong down the road and gives the county development rights to the land near the arena. The Sun Sentinel published this report after earlier in the day calling for approval of the plan in an editorial.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-panthers-subsidy-vote-20151208-story.html

With expansion teams going for $500 million dollars, the county kept theirs in an existing arena for a fraction of a cost giving a large metropolitan area a team they can call their own.