{"id":399554,"date":"2026-07-15T16:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T16:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/399554\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T16:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T16:58:09","slug":"san-jose-sharks-face-florida-panthers-in-first-home-game-of-2026-27-season-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/399554\/","title":{"rendered":"San Jose Sharks face Florida Panthers in first home game of 2026-27 season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SAN JOSE \u2013 The first home game of the San Jose Sharks\u2019<a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/story\/_\/id\/49356690\/nhl-27-cover-athlete-macklin-celebrini-sidney-crosby-lebron-james-warriors\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> eagerly anticipated 2026-27 season<\/a> will be on Thursday, Oct. 1, against<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/news\/nhl-home-openers-for-2026-27-season\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> the Florida Panthers,<\/a> the NHL announced on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The Sharks also travel to face the St. Louis Blues on Oct. 8, as the league announced home openers for all 32 teams.<\/p>\n<p>The full regular season schedule for all teams will be released on Thursday at 10 a.m. PT.<\/p>\n<p>The Sharks haven\u2019t 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/story\/_\/id\/27766538\/how-sharks-vs-golden-knights-became-hockey-hottest-rivalry\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">to the Vegas Golden Knights<\/a>\u00a0last October.<\/p>\n<p>They went 2-0 last season against Florida, including a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/2025\/11\/08\/san-jose-sharks-florida-panthers-macklin-celebrini-will-smith-brad-marchand\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">3-1 win at SAP Center<\/a> in November, and are 16-19-13 against the Panthers in their history.<\/p>\n<p>Behind a 115-point season from Macklin Celebrini, the Sharks finished last season <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/teams\/SJS\/2026_games.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">with a 39-35-8 record<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The Sharks also signed winger Mason Marchment and anticipate having No. 2 overall draft pick Ivar Stenberg on the roster to start the season.<\/p>\n<p>The Panthers, who won the Stanley Cup in 2024 and 2025, open the season against this year\u2019s champions, the Carolina Hurricanes, on Sept. 29 in Raleigh before they head to the West Coast.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2013 The first home game of the San Jose Sharks\u2019 eagerly anticipated 2026-27 season will be&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[184,7,402,181,1035,404,88,90,89,98,198,403,94685,200,127],"class_list":["post-399554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-inside-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-macklin-celebrini","tag-nhl","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-santa-clara-county","tag-sharks-alert","tag-social-alert","tag-south-bay","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}