The Florida Panthers kicked off their 2026-27 preseason action on Sunday night with a 6-3 thumping of the reigning Stanley Cup champions, the Carolina Hurricanes, at Amerant Bank Arena. It was a special evening for several reasons, including the return of captain Aleksander Barkov and the debut of Brady Tkachuk. Overall, there were a lot of talking points from the Panthers' first game, so let's get into three of them.
Brady Tkachuk is going to be a force to reckon with
Brady Tkachuk didn’t waste any time introducing himself to Florida fans, scoring the Panthers’ first goal at 12:02 of the first period on the power play. He’d pick up an assist on Barkov’s first NHL goal since the Stanley Cup Final in 2025 in the second period. Then, to finish earning his First Star honors, he fought against Charles Alexis Legault in the third period before firing a shot into the empty net. Even though this game will never count in the annual record books, it was quite a spectacular debut for the younger Tkachuk, who is skating with a new team for the first time in his career.
As a former 30-goal scorer, Brady will be another scoring threat on an already deep lineup. He showed up in a big way in his first-ever NHL game alongside Matthew, giving the fanbase hope that these two can keep aggravating opposing teams and winning games. Hopefully, when the schedule for real games begins next week, Brady continues to do what he does best: hit, fight, and score goals.
Panthers are going to play some run-and-gun hockey all year long
Six goals in a preseason game will never make headlines because, most of the time, teams don’t ice their full lineups. On Sunday, the Panthers were at almost full strength, just missing Brad Marchand, who could be back sooner than expected. Meanwhile, Carolina didn’t have a few impactful players in their lineup, including Conn Smythe Trophy winner Jordan Staal and Sebastian Aho. Still, Pyotr Kochetkov is slated to share the crease with Brandon Bussi and gave up five goals on 33 shots.
The Panthers may have given up the game's first goal, but they were firing on all cylinders, getting goals from forwards and defensemen. It is only one game, and they won't be scoring six every night, but Sunday night gave fans a glimpse of how powerful the Florida lineup is. This year's Panthers lineup looks capable of inflicting plenty of damage on the scoreboard when everyone is healthy and contributing.
Fans need to embrace sub .900 SV% nights from Markström
Last year, Jacob Markström played 44 games for the New Jersey Devils and finished only 16 with a SV% over .900, accounting for just 36.3% of his games. On Sunday against the Hurricanes, he finished the night with three goals against and a .875 SV%, which Florida fans should start to accept as the best they can get from the Swedish netminder in 2026-27. For comparison, last year, Sergei Bobrovsky posted an SV% above .900 in 22 of 52 contests, or 42.3%.
The last time Markström recorded more games with a .900 Sv% than not was in 2024-25 with the New Jersey Devils, who made the playoffs. That year, he reached that total in 28 of 49 appearances, which was good enough for 57.1% of his games. To show how important those percentages are, last year Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy produced that total in 67.2% of his games, while Scott Wedgewood, who led the NHL in SV%, achieved it in 73.3% of his games.
Sunday may have just been preseason jitters, but the statistics don’t lie: Markström is going to win games, but his final stat line won’t always be pretty.
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