{"id":414357,"date":"2026-09-30T03:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T03:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/414357\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T03:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T03:36:13","slug":"panthers-look-like-contenders-again-in-impressive-opening-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/414357\/","title":{"rendered":"Panthers look like contenders again in impressive opening win"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the big questions facing the Panthers is how they will fare without goalie Sergei Bobrovsky<\/a>, who left for the Toronto Maple Leafs as a free agent July 1. The Panthers acquired Markstrom in a trade with the New Jersey Devils on June 30.<\/p>\n

Markstrom, who began his NHL career with Florida from 2011-13, went 23-19-1 with a 3.07 goals-against average, an .883 save percentage and one shutout with New Jersey last season.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the adjustments he has to make is kind of some stretches of not a lot of action,\u201d Maurice said.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t seem to bother Markstrom on Tuesday. Although he faced only 15 shots, he stopped all of them, including a short-handed breakaway by Carolina center Sebastian Aho<\/a>\u00a0in the second period.<\/p>\n

Asked if he\u2019d have to get used to games like this, he laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I mean, I would love to,\u201d he said. \u201cLike, this was great. I mean, we played a great game.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was Barkov\u2019s first game since he hoisted the Cup on June 17, 2025. He missed last season after sustaining a right knee injury on the first day of training camp and having surgery to repair his ACL and MCL.<\/p>\n

He returned for the IIHF World Championship and had 11 points (three goals, eight assists) in 10 games, leading Finland to gold, and he looked like himself Tuesday, playing 20:32 on the first line, first power play and first penalty kill.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe looks powerful and strong,\u201d Maurice said.<\/p>\n

Barkov said he felt good even though the pace was fast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t had any problems about, like, overthinking or anything like that,\u201d he said. \u201cJust trying to play my game, trying to do my things. I\u2019m playing with really good players. They help me a lot. I\u2019m playing on a really good team. They help me a lot.\u201d\u200b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the big questions facing the Panthers is how they will fare without goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-414357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}