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 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.”

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.”

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Florida Panthers' Brady Tkachuk (8) watches the puck against the Carolina Hurricanes during the third period of an NHL hockey game in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker)

Carolina Hurricanes' Sebastian Aho (20), Jackson Blake (53) and Shayne Gostisbehere (4) talk during the second period of an NHL hockey game against the Florida Panthers in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker)

Florida Panthers goaltender Jacob Markstrom (25) guards the net against the Carolina Hurricanes during the second period of an NHL hockey game in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker)

Carolina Hurricanes pose for a group photo as the championship banner is raised during the team's Stanley Cup celebration before their season-opening NHL hockey game against the Florida Panthers in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker)

Florida Panthers' Sam Bennett (9) collides with Carolina Hurricanes' Jackson Blake (53) during the third period of an NHL hockey game in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Karl DeBlaker)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Wednesday rejected South Korean findings that North Korea planted land mines that injured three South Korean soldiers last week. She threatened to retaliate if the South fires at North Korean troops conducting border fortification work.

Three South Korean military officers were injured in two consecutive explosions Sept. 21 near the military demarcation line in the western section of the Demilitarized Zone, a heavily fortified border buffer zone between the Koreas.

The statement by Kim Yo Jong came after South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff on Monday announced a preliminary assessment that the blasts were caused by North Korean mines following a joint inspection of the site with the U.S.-led United Nations Command.

The South Korean joint chiefs said South Korean and U.N. investigators discovered another North Korean mine Tuesday during a follow-up inspection, and the U.N. Command said Wednesday it had determined that North Korea violated the armistice agreement that ended fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. The command said it was addressing the violation through established mechanisms but didn't elaborate.

South Korean Defense Minister Kang Shin-chul has said the South would consider unspecified “corresponding measures” if a complete investigation confirms the North was responsible for the blasts.

Kim Yo Jong, a top foreign policy official for her brother and possibly the second-most powerful figure in Pyongyang, called the South Korean assessment a “conspiratorial farce” and accused Seoul of making groundless claims to create a pretext for military provocation against the North.

North Korea in recent years has added mines, anti-tank barriers and other front-line fortifications as relations between the Koreas have sharply deteriorated, raising concerns in the South about the growing presence of North Korean soldiers near the border zone, commonly known as the DMZ.

Reading a statement on television, Kang Hyunwoo, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff’s chief director of operations, said the military “strongly urges” North Korea to apologize for the blasts and take “responsible measures” to prevent a recurrence. He called on North Korea to immediately halt its border fortification work and other actions that raise tensions.

“We clearly state that North Korea bears full responsibility for any future developments,” he said.

Kim described North Korea’s efforts as a rightful exercise of its sovereignty to strengthen the border and accused the South of escalating tensions by broadcasting warnings and firing warning shots at North Korean troops involved in front-line fortification work, insisting that “our soldiers have never crossed the border.”

“When a single bullet is hit on our land, they must be prepared for a lot,” she said. “If the (South Korean) military gangsters fire at our soldiers carrying on the permanent project for the southern border, not warning shots, our border units will take immediate and merciless retaliatory action."

The recent explosions, which took place about 10 meters (yards) south of the military demarcation line, came during an operation to establish a patrol route through a densely vegetated area rarely visited for decades. The route was intended to allow future inspections with the U.N. Command after South Korea since last year detected “terrain changes” that may have resulted from North Korean minelaying.

Kwon Dae-won, vice chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there was a “very high possibility” that North Korean mines caused last week’s explosions, noting that there was no record of South Korean or allied forces laying mines in the area. Blast marks, forensic analysis of explosive substances and what appeared to be a third North Korean mine at the scene also pointed to the North, he said. Kang said South Korean and U.N. investigators found a possible fourth mine during a follow-up inspection Tuesday.

The DMZ, which is 248 kilometers (155 miles) long and 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) wide, is one of the world’s most heavily fortified borders. An estimated 2 million mines are buried in and around the zone, which is also guarded by barbed-wire fences, tank traps and combat troops on both sides. The zone is a legacy of the Korean War, which ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

The latest explosions came more than a decade after South Korea blamed the North for land mine explosions that maimed two South Korean soldiers and sharply raised tensions between the countries in August 2015.

The Koreas then traded threats, staged weapons demonstrations and resumed border propaganda broadcasts, before days of marathon talks eventually pulled them back from the brink. North Korea issued a vague expression of regret over the soldiers’ injuries but never clearly accepted responsibility.

Last week’s explosions came as South Korea’s liberal government sought to help revive diplomacy between Pyongyang and Washington as part of broader efforts to reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Since early 2024, North Korea has taken an increasingly hard-line stance toward South Korea, declaring its neighbor a permanent enemy and abandoning the concept of shared statehood in favor of a hostile “two-state” system. The North has so far rejected U.S. calls to revive diplomacy between the countries that collapsed in 2019, insisting that Washington must first drop its demand for the North’s denuclearization as a precondition for talks.

Visitors watch the North Korea side from the Unification Observation Post near the border with North Korea, in Paju, South Korea, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A North Korean military guard post, top, and a South Korean post, bottom, are seen near the border with North Korea, in Paju, South Korea, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

South Korean army soldiers patrol along the barbed-wire fence near the border with North Korea, in Paju, South Korea, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)