In battle of Stanley Cup winners, Panthers announce return in OT win against Hurricanes

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The Carolina Hurricanes gathered at the blue line, the Stanley Cup sitting on a table a few feet away, and watched a championship banner rise to the rafters amid roaring home fans.

From the visiting bench, the Florida Panthers — the team that had won the Cup the two years before Carolina’s June breakthrough — patiently waited through that 15-minute ceremony to remind everyone that they’re fully back from an injury-hammered year.

It added up to a tight-checking, goaltender-dominated and sometimes testy reunion between title winners with playoff history between them. And it took a blue-liner in Gustav Forsling to finally end it by blasting a one-timer past Brandon Bussi with 4.3 seconds left in overtime that pushed the Panthers to a 1-0 season-opening win.

“Playoff-style hockey,” Forsling said. “That felt like a playoff game to me. It was awesome, really fun.”

The NHL said it marked the third time in its modern era (since 1943-44) that the two previous Cup winners met in a season-opening game, the others coming in 1962-63 and 2019-20.

The Panthers remind everyone of their championship credentials

The Panthers had reached the Stanley Cup Final for three straight years and won it all in 2024 and 2025, twice eliminating the Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference Final in that run. But injuries last year derailed any chance to contend, notably with captain Aleksander Barkov going down with a knee injury to open preseason camp.

Getting Barkov back, along with Panthers star Matthew Tkachuk welcoming brother Brady as an offseason addition to an already deep lineup, had offered plenty of reason to believe Florida is back among the league’s best. They also brought in Jacob Markstrom to take over the crease anchored by Sergei Bobrovsky during those title runs.

That’s why Florida coach Paul Maurice pointed out it’s a new team, even with so many championship holdovers. And why the Panthers sat on the bench to watch the Hurricanes’ pregame ceremony.

“You get a chance to see what you want so bad,” Maurice said. “We think it’s really important that the teams respect each other for those achievements, whether it’s an individual player hitting a milestone or certainly a Stanley Cup. They’ve earned the right to have as long of a ceremony as they wanted, and it was well done.”

Markstrom was a standout in making 15 saves, including stopping Carolina top-line center Sebastian Aho on a short-handed breakaway in the second period. Forsling also stepped up beyond his walk-off winner, blocking a shot by a trailing Jackson Blake in the crease to help Markstrom in turning away a four-on-one rush late in the second.

Sequences like those were magnified on a night with the teams going a combined 0 for 13 on power plays.

“I thought we played a great game — everyone, the whole lineup,” Markstrom said. “All four lines and all six D played really good, making my job a lot easier.”

The Hurricanes fall short in a top-tier test

Bussi nearly matched Markstrom in making it through regulation and overtime unscathed. The waiver-wire wonder from last year, who posted a shutout in Carolina’s Cup-clinching win against Vegas on June 14, made 19 saves.

But Forsling’s blast from inside the blue line, off a feed from Carter Verhaeghe, zipped past Carolina forward Taylor Hall and beat Bussi to the glove side just as it seemed the game was headed toward a shootout. It left the goaltender crumpling forward to his pads and gloves, a disappointing end to his first game as the top starter since veteran Frederik Andersen’s departure in free agency.

“It was far enough out I should kind of found it, for some reason I didn’t get a good visual on it,” Bussi said, uncertain if the puck clipped Hall on its way in. “And it’s 4 seconds left, trying to get to a shootout. I think on my standards it’s a bad goal.”

It was a damper on a jubilant night for the Hurricanes, who had reached the Eastern final three times in the seven years before going 16-3 on the way to the franchise’s second Cup. The Hurricanes return with a largely intact roster beyond Andersen’s departure, top-line forward Seth Jarvis still recovering from shoulder surgery and third-pair defenseman Alexander Nikishin unsigned as a restricted free agent.

But having that cohesion back didn’t eliminate rust, nor the ability to push past a tested Florida team in what could be a preview of yet another postseason reunion.

“I think it’s a good game for us,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “The offensive guys got, ‘OK, well now we’ve got to get going here with the way the game is played.’ Like I said, it wasn’t a lot of room and the little plays you normally make, we weren’t making them tonight. Or seeing them.”

___

See AP’s full NHL coverage here