Barring a weather-related cancellation, there is just one more sleep until the Florida Panthers open the 2024-25 season against the Boston Bruins at Amerant Bank Arena.
The Panthers wrapped its preseason schedule with a 4-2 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday in Quebec City night to finish with a 5-3 record.
With the roster currently at 28, the Cats will need to cut at least five more players by 5 p.m. to get down to the NHL-mandated maximum.
Current roster:
Forwards: Sam Bennett (9), A.J. Greer (10), Jonah Gadjovich (12), Sam Reinhart (13), Anton Lundell (15), Aleksander Barkov (16), Evan Rodrigues (17), Matthew Tkachuk (19), Carter Verhaeghe (23), Justin Sourdif (24), Mackie Samoskevich (25), Eetu Luostarinen (27), Patrick Giles (36), MacKenzie Entwistle (44), Jesper Boqvist (70), Tomas Nosek (92), Sandis Vilmanis (95)
Defensemen: Aaron Ekblad (5), Dmitry Kulikov (7), Uvis Balinskis (26), Adam Boqvist (34), Gustav Forsling (42), Nathan Staios (61), Niko Mikkola (77), Nate Schmidt (88)
Goalies: Spencer Knight (30), Chris Driedger (60), Sergei Bobrovsky (72)
The Panthers cancelled the Champions Ring Ceremony that was scheduled for tonight due to the weather conditions.
Sportsnet’s Justin Bourne had this to say about the Cats in his article Two sentences on every NHL team’s expectations for 2024-25 season:
Everything went right last season for the Panthers (Sam Reinhart scored 57 times!), and they stayed true to their unquestioned identity of being extremely un-fun to play against. But they lost a couple good defencemen in Brandon Montour and Oliver Ekman-Larsson, they lost several physical players, and they got the second-best goaltending in the league last year in team save percentage, and so I think it’s possible they take a step back into the low-100s for points and will have their hands full trying to stay healthy and go deep for a third straight season.