- Florida went 40-38-4 and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2019
- Bill Zito calls the Hurricanes “the team to beat” and Florida draws them on opening night
- Read below for how the Panthers rebuilt around a healthy Aleksander Barkov
The Panthers open next season by watching somebody else raise a banner.
Florida visits Carolina on Sept. 29, and the Hurricanes will hang their 2026 Stanley Cup banner at Lenovo Center first. General manager Bill Zito talked about drawing the champs in the opener with Tom Gulitti of NHL.com.
“They’re the champs. For us, it’s going to be hard starting against the best. You’ve got to play them anyway. You might as well. But they’re the team to beat and I think we’re just excited to have a chance.”
Here’s the full 2026-27 slate the Panthers put out in July:
That opener sits on the far side of a year Florida would rather skip. The Panthers went 40-38-4 and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2019, one season removed from back-to-back titles and three straight trips to the Final.
The captain never got on the ice, tearing the ACL and MCL in his right knee at his first practice of training camp and sitting out the whole thing.
Matthew Tkachuk, Brad Marchand, Sam Bennett, Carter Verhaeghe and Seth Jones headed the long list behind him. Zito says all of them should be ready for camp.
Zito answered with a loud summer. Brady Tkachuk came over from Ottawa on June 21 for three first-round picks and a second, and Radko Gudas, Lars Eller and Garnet Hathaway followed him in.
Check out the announcement from that night in June:
Brady and Matthew will be NHL teammates for the first time. Zito got a preview as an assistant GM for Team USA at the 4 Nations Face-Off and again at the Milan Olympics, and he was asked what the pairing does to a room.
“I think when you have teams and you have two people on the team that love each other unconditionally, it makes the team better. Having seen them together in tournaments twice, they have an impact.”
Take a look at how the league framed it, on Father’s Day no less:
Goaltending is the other rebuild. Sergei Bobrovsky signed with Toronto after seven seasons and two Cups in Florida, and Jacob Markstrom gets first crack at the job.
Markstrom went 23-19-1 with a 3.07 goals-against average and a .883 save percentage in New Jersey last season. Akira Schmid, in from Vegas, was 16-10-6 with a 2.59 and a .893.
Bobrovsky’s exit came up with Zito, who watched him win two championships in South Florida.
“We’ll absolutely miss ‘Bob.’ He was such an important part of our team and our community, our family, but I think these two guys have both the personality and the skill sets to come in and get the job done.”
Finland already got the healthy version of the captain, who led them to gold at the World Championship in May with a team-high 11 points in 10 games.
Barkov’s first NHL game since Florida’s 2025 Cup run comes in Raleigh, with Carolina’s banner going up in front of him.
