Both the Florida Panthers and Nashville Predators dressed two completely separate teams for their 4:30 and 8:00 P.M. Eastern puck drops, with neither team featuring their true key players.
For Florida’s perspective, none of the top six forwards from last season, Aaron Ekblad, Keith Yandle, Anton Stralman, or Sergei Bobrovsky played in this two-game set. This gave a lot of opportunity for some of the young prospects and PTOs to get their first big chances against opposition that isn’t their teammates.
There were still plenty of new faces that made their first appearances for Florida, with 18 debutants seeing the ice for Joel Quenneville, who debuted his first two games as Cats coach.