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Bruins drops season opener to Panthers
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Bruins drops season opener to Panthers

It was the season opener for each team.

Sam Bennett scored twice, and Sam Reinhart and Evan Rodrigues each had a goal and an assist for the Panthers, who raised their Stanley Cup championship banner to the rafters before the game. Sergei Bobrovsky made 24 saves.

“You’d like to think you know what your team will look like in the opening game, but you never know,” Florida coach Paul Maurice said. “That’s what keeps you up the night before the opener. But we looked hard, and fast, and fast. … We skated well, and that was definitely the banner. But it was also the fans, right? They were wired and there was a lot of buzz in the building. We played on that. There was a lot of energy in that.”

Charlie McAvoy had a goal and an assist for the Bruins. David Pastrnak, Pavel Zacha and Trent Frederic also scored.

Jeremy Swayman didn’t play after missing all of training camp before signing an eight-year, $66 million contract on Sunday. Joonas Korpisalo, acquired in a trade with the Ottawa Senators for goaltender Linus Ullmark on June 24, allowed six goals on 35 shots.

“We weren’t good enough in so many areas tonight,” Boston coach Jim Montgomery said. ‘They were. Their performance was really good and ours was really bad. “I can’t pinpoint why we looked slow, but we looked slow the whole game, not just the first ten minutes.”