SAN JOSE – The first home game of the San Jose Sharks’ eagerly anticipated 2026-27 season will be on Thursday, Oct. 1, against the Florida Panthers, the NHL announced on Wednesday.

The Sharks also travel to face the St. Louis Blues on Oct. 8, as the league announced home openers for all 32 teams.

The full regular season schedule for all teams will be released on Thursday at 10 a.m. PT.

The Sharks haven’t won a home opener since the start of the 2021-22 season when they beat the Winnipeg Jets 4-3. Since then, the Sharks are 0-2-2 in home openers, including a 4-3 overtime loss to the Vegas Golden Knights last October.

They went 2-0 last season against Florida, including a 3-1 win at SAP Center in November, and are 16-19-13 against the Panthers in their history.

Behind a 115-point season from Macklin Celebrini, the Sharks finished last season with a 39-35-8 record for 86 points, a 34-point improvement over the year before. The Sharks, behind a revamped defense and a bolstered forward group, hope to advance to the playoffs this season for the first time since 2019.

The Sharks signed veteran Jacob Trouba to a four-year deal on July 1 and acquired Darnell Nurse and Michael Kesselring via trade, bringing in three defensemen they hope can fit into their top two pairs.

The Sharks also signed winger Mason Marchment and anticipate having No. 2 overall draft pick Ivar Stenberg on the roster to start the season.

The Panthers, who won the Stanley Cup in 2024 and 2025, open the season against this year’s champions, the Carolina Hurricanes, on Sept. 29 in Raleigh before they head to the West Coast.

Florida missed the playoffs this spring in its title defense, finishing seventh in the eight-team Atlantic Division. The Panthers have made tweaks to their roster in the wake of that failure, adding Brady Tkachuk via trade from Ottawa to play alongside his brother Matthew, and bringing in center Lars Eller and defenseman Alexander Petrovic. They also remade their goalie tandem, trading for Akira Schmid from Vegas and Jacob Markstrom from New Jersey. as Sergei Bobrovsky left for Toronto in free agency.