SUNRISE, Fla. — In dire circumstances, the Florida Panthers once again found a way to win.

Playing down a skater due to salary cap constraints with stars Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk out of the lineup, Florida walked away with its third win in the past four games on the back of an overtime winner from Gustav Forsling.

“Huge wins, big points,” Forsling said. “I think a lot of guys stepped up to the task here that we’re missing a couple of guys and I think that’s going to give us some confidence going to forward here.”

With 16.2 seconds to go in overtime, Forsling wired a cross-crease feed from Sam Bennett top shelf to secure the 4-3 win over the Vegas Golden Knights.

“Are you surprised at this point?” Aaron Ekblad said of his defense partner, who logged a hair over 28 minutes of time-on-ice before scoring the game-winning goal.

“He’s incredible. I mean, it starts in the gym. It starts in the offseason. He’s the hardest worker and he’s someone you can always find open.”

Forsling and Ekblad were two of the biggest players asked to step up to the plate with the injuries piling up.

They shouldered a lot of responsibility for a penalty kill which ranks Top 10 in the NHL this year and finished 1-for-1 on Saturday night.

On top of Forsling’s heroics, Ekblad bailed the Panthers out on both ends.

In the second period, he stuffed a wrap-around attempt to save a goal at the end of a flurry of quality scoring chances from Vegas. He added two assists, including the shot that sparked the tying goal late in the third period.

“Just on minutes alone, the amount of time those guys played, and they’ve been doing that for seven games, right?” coach Paul Maurice said. “They’ve got big minutes on them, and I think you’re just looking at that veteran experience.

“Gustav Forsling is an incredibly fit man and Aaron Ekblad’s test numbers were off the charts relative to where they had been. So both guys, after a pretty successful season, put in an incredible amount of time and it gave them a chance to be as good as they were tonight. So it wasn’t just, they were good for two and a half hours. You got to be good for two or three years to get to that fitness level, and I’m happy for them. They earned it.”

The Panthers had to earn that win as well.

After pressing the Golden Knights for the first six minutes of the third period, Brett Howden scored on a backhand move on a breakaway to give Vegas the lead 6:30 in.

It was their first shot of the period after the Panthers were hounding them all period.

Ilya Samsonov came up with 12-straight saves to start the third period before Florida finally got its break.

Sam Reinhart corralled the rebound of an Aaron Ekblad shot and tapped it over to Eetu Luostarinen, who fired it into the wide-open net to tie the game up with 7:17 to go.

Just like on that play, the Panthers stuck with it and kept on pushing.

And being able to do so when your back is against the wall in your seventh game in 11 nights with one skater short and two stars out of the lineup?

That is the difference between an elite team and a Stanley Cup champion.

It’s early in the season, but the Panthers did not look keen on giving it up just yet.

“Yeah, pretty good game from us, pretty solid effort from the team and I think everybody just chipped in and played hard and got the victory,” Luostarinen said. “So, that’s good.”

Even after winning the Cup last year, the Panthers still came into this game with visions of losing to Vegas in the 2023 Cup Final, and they got them back for the third time in three meetings since.

“Yeah, they’ll always have that on us, and it sucks, right?” Ekblad said. “But, it’s extra motivation when they come here and when we go there. So, we saw it tonight. Obviously, it’s a good team win.”