Panthers raise Stanley Cup banner, beat Blackhawks to start quest for three-peat
The Florida Panthers spent a few final moments recognizing the past before shifting their focus to the present.
With captain Aleksander Barkov sidelined following major knee surgery, it was defenseman Aaron Ekblad — the team’s second-longest tenured player — who brought the Stanley Cup to the ice pregame Tuesday before the second championship banner in as many years went into the Amerant Bank Arena rafters.
“That’s obviously Barky’s spot,” Ekblad said. “I was just filling in.”
There will be a lot of players filling in a lot of roles this season as the Panthers seek a third consecutive title. Barkov’s out for at least the regular season following ACL and MCL surgery. Star winger Matthew Tkachuk is out until at least December recovering from surgery to repair a torn adductor muscle and sports hernia.
“Grind it out and compete,” veteran winger Brad Marchand said.
And that’s exactly what the Panthers did Tuesday to start their quest for a three-peat.
Jesper Boqvist scored the game-winning goal with 10:20 left in regulation as the Panthers opened the 2025-26 season with a 3-2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday at Amerant Bank Arena.
It wasn’t the prettiest of performances, especially against a Blackhawks team expected to be among the NHL’s worst this season, but the Panthers aren’t expecting things to be easy or pretty this year.
They will be tested all season.
They passed their first one on Tuesday.
“This is going to be harder than the last two,” Marchand said. “This season, there’s going to be a lot of different adversity that we’re going to go through. We’re going to completely change the mindset again and start from ground zero. We’re going to get everybody’s best. You’re not going to get any easy games, which is good for us through the year. It’ll make us better come playoff time, but there’s a long road to get there.”
That long road started Tuesday, with Florida pulling out a close win by getting contributions from up and down the lineup.
There was Boqvist, who found himself in and out of the Panthers’ lineup when the postseason began but managed to come up clutch when his name was called. All five of his postseason points last year came in games when he filled in for big players — going to the top line for Evan Rodrigues in Game 5 of the second round against the Toronto Maple Leafs and then for Sam Reinhart in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference final against the Carolina Hurricanes.
On Tuesday, he scored the game-winner on a pass from Mackie Samoskevich from across the goalie crease, batting the puck past Chicago goaltender Spencer Knight.
“He has this consistent game in an uncertain role, which is where the value is with him,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said.
There was Samoskevich, who had a pair of primary assists to begin his second full NHL season. Samoskevich thrived offensively as a rookie, but knows there’s still more to build on in Year 2.
There was A.J. Greer, a fourth-line winger who scored Florida’s first goal on a wrist shot off a Jonah Gadjovich pass from the slot 11:06 into the first period to erase an early one-goal deficit. Carter Verhaeghe scored on a snap shot from up close on the power play 3:02 later to take a 2-1 lead.
And there was Sergei Bobrovsky, who stopped 17 of 19 shots he faced including the final 15 to pick up his 430th career win, seven shy of tying Jacques Plante for ninth overall in NHL history.
“There was lots of good for our first game,” Maurice said.
They will need that to continue. Even with the injuries and the uncertainties and the challenges this team will face, expectations are high internally and externally.
As the Panthers watched the championship banner rise pregame, their fans began to chant.
“We want three!”
Their quest to do just that is starting on the right note.
“What I love about this group is just a hard work mentality, and they want to grind, and that’s what everybody wants from the top to the bottom,” Marchand said. “That’s just going to make us hard to play. Hopefully everything lines up.”
This story was originally published October 7, 2025 at 7:54 PM.
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