It’s never too early to start thinking about next hockey season.
Sure, the Stanley Cup Final ended less than two weeks ago, and the new league year has yet to arrive, but that doesn’t mean we can’t start looking ahead to when NHL players will be back on the ice battling one another.
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On Thursday, the Florida Panthers announced their 4-game 2026 preseason schedule.
Unlike in past years, the NHL shrunk its preseason schedule to just four games to accommodate for the league expanding the regular season schedule to 84 games.
What that means for the Panthers is that they will be facing only two teams in those four games, and since both are geographically close to the Cats, there is quite a bit of familiarity with each of them.
Florida’s preseason slate will begin on Sunday, Sept. 20 when they host the Carolina Hurricanes at Amerant Bank Anena.
Two nights later, the Panthers will travel up to Raleigh for a rematch with the Canes at Lenovo Center.
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Later that week, Florida will make a stop at Benchmark International Arena for a matchup with the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday night.
The Panthers will then wrap up their exhibition slate against the Lightning back in Sunrise on Saturday, Sept. 26.
As many of you will recall, the Panthers and Lightning wrapped up the 2025 preseason by facing each other three consecutive games; one in Orlando, one in Tampa and one in Sunrise.
After a fairly mild first night in Orlando, things went a little bonkers during the final two games.
During the second-to-last game in Tampa, the Panthers and Lightning combined for 186 penalty minutes.
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That might seem like a lot, but then two nights later in Sunrise the Cats and Bolts took things up a few notches, ultimately being called for an eye-popping 322 penalty minutes throughout the course of the evening.
We’ll see if we get any kind of a repeat performance this year, but the schedule-makers sure put the bitter rivals in a position to continue their penalty box-filling tradition.
The full schedule can be seen below:
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Photo caption: Oct 2, 2025; Tampa, Florida, USA; Florida Panthers center Luke Kunin (71) and Tampa Bay Lightning center Jack Finley (62) lock up in the third period at Benchmark International Arena. (Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images)
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