The Florida Panthers will be in the building Tuesday when the Carolina Hurricanes hang a Stanley Cup banner, and Matthew Tkachuk expects the moment to sharpen an already heated season opener.
Florida opens the 2026-27 NHL season against Carolina at Lenovo Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, with puck drop set for 5 p.m. ET on ESPN. Before the game, the Hurricanes will commemorate their 2025-26 championship, earned with a 3-0 win over the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final.
It will put the League’s last three champions in the same rink. The Panthers won the Cup in 2024 and 2025 before injuries and a seventh-place finish in the Atlantic Division sent them out of the playoff picture last season.
A banner night with an edge
- Carolina will raise its championship banner before the opening faceoff, a final celebration of the club’s title run.
- Florida, which went 40-38-4 last season, will watch after losing the Cup it had held for two years.
- The teams will then launch the NHL schedule in a matchup Tkachuk expects to carry plenty of emotion from both benches.
“It has been a long offseason,” Tkachuk said before the Panthers left for Raleigh on Monday. “We’re happy to start the year, happy to be the first game of the NHL season. We have been the first game of the season the last three years, but we’re on the other side of the celebration this time.”
Tkachuk called Carolina a powerhouse and said the circumstances give Florida an added push. The reminder of what slipped away has already been hard to miss: an NHL Network replay of the Hurricanes’ Cup-clinching victory was playing on a television in the Panthers dressing room Monday.
“When training camp starts, it’s a whole new year, but you have that one last memory,” Tkachuk said. “It’s going to be an emotional night for them and their fans. It’ll be emotional for us too. They took the Cup after we had it for two years. It’s going to be intense on both sides.”
Panthers trying to turn the page
Florida’s title defense unraveled early last season when captain Aleksander Barkov suffered a knee injury on the opening day of training camp. He missed the entire 2025-26 campaign. Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Brad Marchand and defenseman Seth Jones also lost significant time to injuries.
Marchand is expected to be unavailable for roughly the first month after offseason surgery. Otherwise, the Panthers enter the opener healthy and looking to move back into the Stanley Cup conversation.
The club reshaped key spots during the summer:
- Florida acquired forward Brady Tkachuk from the Ottawa Senators on June 21.
- Jacob Markstrom takes over in goal after Sergei Bobrovsky’s departure.
- Defenseman Radko Gudas returned after previously spending three seasons with the Panthers from 2020 through 2023.
Barkov said Florida cannot let the pregame ceremony distract from the opening shift.
“We want to have a good start,” Barkov said. “We know what it feels like to have that kind of a ceremony. For us, we just want to play our game right from the start. We know they’re going to be ready. They’ll be excited seeing the banner raised. We have to be ready. Extra ready.”
Maurice weighs a place on the bench
Coach Paul Maurice has a long Carolina connection. He coached the Hurricanes in two stints, from 1999-2003 and again from 2008-10, and coached current Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour as a player. Brind’Amour begins his ninth season behind the Hurricanes bench.
Maurice welcomed the atmosphere awaiting his club.
“They just won the Stanley Cup and they are going to get their banner raised in their building, rightfully so,” Maurice said. “There will be juice. It will be exciting. It will be great.”
Whether Florida watches the ceremony from its bench remains unsettled. The visitors’ bench at Lenovo Center is not directly linked to the visiting dressing room, meaning the Panthers would need to come onto the ice early from an arena corner if they are to be in place for the banner raising.
Boston stayed in its room when Florida raised its 2024 banner, and Chicago did the same for the Panthers’ ceremony a year later. Maurice said his teams generally prefer to witness another club’s celebration, though he understands Carolina may want the moment to remain private.
“We believe it’s important for the League, for our players to appreciate the successes of the other players,” Maurice said. “But sometimes the other team doesn’t necessarily want you on the bench; it’s kind of a private thing. So, we’ll check with Carolina.”
He added that staying off the ice would not be intended as a slight. Tkachuk sounded ready either way.
“We will have enough motivation, whatever we do,” he said. “We have not talked about it, but we will be champing at the bit to get out there.”
