What I'm Actually Excited About on Opening Night

September 29. Panthers in town. Banner going up.

I've been thinking about this game since June and I keep landing on the same thing, which is that I don't really care about the hockey that night. Not at first anyway. I care about standing there while they raise it.

The banner is the whole thing for me. I've watched this team be good for a long time. Really good. Good enough that it started to feel like a personality trait, being the fan of the team that wins a bunch and then goes home in May. And now there's going to be a second banner in the rafters that says otherwise, permanently, and I get to be in the building when it goes up. I don't know how I'll feel. Probably a little dumb about how much it means. That's fine.

Then there's the part where Florida has to stand there and watch it.

I'm not going to pretend that's not part of the appeal. They've been the wall. And now they open their season standing on the blue line watching somebody else's banner go up. That's not nothing.

But here's what I actually can't wait to see once the puck drops, and it's the goalies.

Both of these teams are starting over in net on the same night. That almost never happens.

We let Freddie walk. He's an Oiler now, one year, 2.8 million, and I have complicated feelings about that even though I understand it. The guy went 13-2 in the playoffs with a 1.89 and three shutouts and then got pulled in Game 3 of the Final and never got the net back. Now it's Bussi's crease. Brandon Bussi, who went 31-6-2, came in cold in the Final, won all three of his starts and shut the door in Game 6 to clinch the whole thing. That's the most incredible run I've ever seen from a Carolina goalie (I didn’t watch Cam Ward). Now he has to do it for 82 games as the guy. With Kochetkov behind him coming off hip surgery, which is its own question.

I believe in Bussi. I also know that a month is not a season, and opening night against Florida is exactly the kind of test that tells you something.

And on their end, Bobrovsky is gone. Toronto. After seven years and two Cups and three straight Finals, they let him walk and traded for Jacob Markstrom instead. Markstrom is 36 and coming off an .883 and a 3.07 in New Jersey, which was the worst year he's had in a decade. He was also drafted by Florida back in 2008, so this is a homecoming, which is a nice story.

Here's the part I love though. The last playoff hockey Jacob Markstrom played was losing to us in five.

So on opening night we get our unproven guy who just won a Cup against their proven guy who has been trending the wrong way, in a building that's going to be absolutely unhinged. If you don't think that matters in the first game of a season, you haven't watched enough of these.

The one thing that stinks is Jarvis. He finally got the shoulder fixed after playing on a torn labrum and rotator cuff since 2023, which is insane when you think about it. Four to six months, so late October at the earliest and maybe longer. He led us with 32 goals and scored the overtime winner in Game 2 of the Final. That's Aho's winger. That's a real hole.

And Florida's the opposite. They missed the playoffs last year because they were falling apart, Barkov went down in camp and it never stopped. Now they're healthy and they added Brady Tkachuk, who Staal put on the ice three seconds into our series last spring. So they get to show up whole and angry while we're short our leading goal scorer.

Fine. I'll take it. We're the champs and everybody gets our best shot now, starting with the first one. That's new for us and I want to see how it feels.

Mostly though I just want to be there and point at the ceiling. Everything else is a bonus.

Puck drops eventually. Banner goes up first.

Go Canes.