Florida Panthers
Panthers 2026-27 Season Preview: The Tkachuk Brothers, and a Franchise Getting Its Health Back
Florida won back-to-back Stanley Cups and went to three straight Finals. Then last season the bill came due.
The Panthers finished with 84 points — third-fewest in the Eastern Conference, ahead of only Toronto and the Rangers — and it wasn’t a mystery why.
What actually happened last season
Captain Aleksander Barkov missed the entire season after a serious knee injury in the preseason. He wasn’t alone on injured reserve:
- Matthew Tkachuk — 51 games missed
- Seth Jones — 30 games
- Brad Marchand — 30 games
- Sam Reinhart — 18 games
- Anton Lundell — 18 games
Add Sergei Bobrovsky’s .877 save percentage and the math writes itself. Three consecutive Final runs took a physical toll, and the roster that had absorbed it finally couldn’t.
The move that reframes everything
Florida acquired Brady Tkachuk from Ottawa, uniting him with older brother Matthew.
Brothers on the same NHL roster is rare enough. Brothers of this caliber, on a team with two recent championships, is the kind of transaction that changes a season’s expectations before a puck drops. Brady registered four goals and seven points in five games for Team USA during the international break.
General manager Bill Zito went into the summer with roughly $15 million in cap space and the No. 9 pick as trade currency, and he used it aggressively. That’s the pattern with this front office.
The goaltending problem
It isn’t often you see a team with genuine Cup aspirations enter an offseason needing two goaltenders. Florida did — both Bobrovsky and Tarasov were unrestricted free agents.
For a roster that’s otherwise largely set for the next two seasons, especially at the top of the depth chart, the crease is the position where this season can quietly come apart. Bobrovsky’s .877 last year is the cautionary number.
The schedule opens hard
Florida starts against Carolina — the defending champions.
Zito’s framing was straightforward: they’re the team to beat, you have to play them anyway, so you might as well do it in the opener.
The larger scheduling problem is October. The Panthers have only four home games that month against nine on the road, which makes early points away from Amerant Bank Arena essential rather than optional.
That road stretch includes a West Coast swing through San Jose, Anaheim and Los Angeles. Florida has historically done well in California — they won eight straight in San Jose between 2017 and early 2025 and are 11-9-3 in Los Angeles, though they’ve been roughly even in Anaheim at 11-11-1 with two overtime losses.
What success looks like
The bar here is different from every other team in the network. Florida isn’t trying to make the playoffs — it’s trying to reclaim a spot as the best team in hockey.
The markers:
– Barkov’s return. A captain who missed an entire season with a knee injury is the single biggest variable on this roster.
– Goaltending. Two new starters or a Bobrovsky bounce-back. There is no third option.
– October road points. Nine of thirteen away from home is a bad month to start slowly.
– The Tkachuk pairing. Whether two brothers in the same top six is a genuine competitive advantage or just an excellent story.
Healthy and reinforced, Florida enters the season as a renewed contender with a real case for a third Cup in four years. The word doing the work in that sentence is healthy — and last season is the reminder of what happens when it doesn’t hold.
Miami Sports Wire covers Panthers news, schedules and game coverage all season. See the Panthers schedule for puck drop times and broadcast info.