Jacob Markstrom in net for the Florida Panthers against the Carolina Hurricanes. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker)
For the third straight year, the Florida Panthers’ first game of the season featured a banner-raising ceremony, but this time, it wasn’t theirs. The Cats took on the reigning Stanley Cup Champion Carolina Hurricanes in a match that felt a lot like their 2023 playoff series – a tightly contested match with a whole lot of defense and a goalie duel to the end. But this match ended like those matches did, with a Panthers win in overtime; only Matthew Tkachuk wasn’t the OT hero it was Gustav Forsling. But the first game of the NHL season answered some questions for Panthers fans as well as starting to instill some faith around the biggest question mark when it came to the team. Sasha Barkov looked like himself in his first regular-season action in over a year.
Solid Start:
After a disastrous year last season, there was still a bit of trepidation about how the Panthers would look in their first game of the year, especially since the majority of their veteran players played mostly non-vets in the preseason. But Florida looked like Florida against the Hurricanes. In the opening period, the Cats had a 6-3 SOG advantage and would hold the SOG advantage for the entire night, ending with a 20-15 advantage. Florida was physical in the first period, and Carolina matched that physicality and even held an 18-25 edge after 20 minutes. Was it the most eventful hockey ever put on ice? No, but it was a solid foundational period for Florida as they work on getting the new players mixed in. Boko Imama was the only player who played with the vet-heavy roster in the preseason; Eller and Hathaway spent all of training camp not with the main group. Towards the end of the period, Imama dropped gloves with Deslauriers in a fight that was just ok, but it did add some juice to the building for a first period that had been largely uneventful hockey.
Oops All Penalties:
The special teams got a workout in the second period as the majority of the middle frame was spent playing either power play or penalty kill for both sides. There were two penalties in the first that gave the Cats power-play opportunities and offsetting fighting penalties. The second period is where they really started to pile up. Florida had penalties from: Forsling (tripping), Kulikov (tripping), B. Tkachuk (interference), Hathaway (roughing), and Imama (tripping). Carolina had penalties from Svechnikov (holding), Aho (tripping), Blake (too many men), and Walker (unsportsmanlike conduct). Both sides got a 5v3 opportunity but didn’t convert. Unfortunately, this has been an ongoing trend for the Cats, as it’s their fifth straight game taking consecutive penalties for at least one 5v3 opportunity for the opponent. The third period only had two penalties – Hathaway (tripping) & Hall (tripping), so at least there was more 5v5 play to end the match. It was good to see that the elite penalty killing the preseason carried over to start the year, and the Cats are technically down one penalty killer in Brad Marchand, but they didn’t look like they were missing him in that aspect. And credit to the Canes penalty killing because Florida couldn’t get anything going on the man advantage, even with seven cracks at it.
Mark-strong
Most of the noise around Florida during the offseason was about their goaltending. With Sergei Bobrovsky & Daniil Tarasov leaving in free agency, the Cats come into the season with a brand new goalie tandem of Jacob Markstrom and Akira Schmid. The 15 SOG will be deceptive to anyone who didn’t watch the game. Markstrom had some huge saves en route to his first shutout of the season. Two of the biggest ones came in the second period, with Jacob stopping a breakaway chance but, more impressively, he made a massive stop on a 4-on-1 chance for the Hurricanes towards the end of the period. Markstrom had a strong third period as well and looked good during all the special teams that happened. It was a real question of whether he’d be able to handle the long bouts of inaction that usually happen during Florida games, and he was up to the task every time a shot came his way. Jacob had high praise for his teammates when he spoke to the media, “I thought we played a great game. Everyone, the whole lineup, you know, all four lines and all six D played really good. They made my job a lot easier.” Forsling said, “He felt very calm back there. You know, he made some unbelievable saves. And, yeah, I’m really happy for him. Great start,” when he talked to the media about Markstrom. Forsling was also the hero in OT, scoring the only goal of the night with 4.3 seconds left on the clock. With a long road trip out to the West Coast ahead, this was a good start to the new season for Florida.