{"id":196741,"date":"2025-10-08T05:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T05:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/196741\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T05:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T05:22:07","slug":"panthers-open-2nd-straight-stanley-cup-defense-with-win-against-blackhawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/196741\/","title":{"rendered":"Panthers open 2nd straight Stanley Cup defense with win against Blackhawks"},"content":{"rendered":"

A.J. Greer<\/a>, Carter Verhaeghe<\/a> and Jesper Boqvist<\/a> scored, and Mackie Samoskevich<\/a> had two assists for the Panthers. Sergei Bobrovsky<\/a> made 17 saves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we wanted, right? Get those two points,” Boqvist said. \u201cSuch a great night, raising the banner and all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frank Nazar<\/a> and Teuvo Teravainen<\/a> each had a goal and an assist, and Tyler Bertuzzi<\/a> had two assists for the Blackhawks, who were playing their first game under coach Jeff Blashill.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to have peaks and valleys, and we need to do a better job of making sure those valleys aren\u2019t so low,” Blashill said. \u201cWe have to continue to grow and work on finding ways that we\u2019re not giving away easy chances. They\u2019re going to create enough on their own.”<\/p>\n

Spencer Knight<\/a>, who was playing against Florida for the first time since being acquired by Chicago in the trade for defenseman Seth Jones<\/a> on March 1, made 34 saves.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood game, good hard battle, and they are obviously a great team,” Knight said. \u201cWe knew it was going to be tough. … It was interesting being on the other side playing here, but it was fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to the game, Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad<\/a> carried the Stanley Cup out of the tunnel and placed it near the spot where the team\u2019s new championship banner was raised to the rafters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A.J. Greer, Carter Verhaeghe and Jesper Boqvist scored, and Mackie Samoskevich had two assists for the Panthers. Sergei…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-196741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}