Panthers Set a Hat-Trick Pace Nobody Has Matched in 104 Years, But the Crease Is Shaky

Florida's opening month was loud in the scoring column and quiet in the standings. The Panthers beat the reigning Stanley Cup champions 1-0 on opening night, then spent the rest of October piling up goals in bunches. The problem is that the same month exposed two areas that will decide whether this team stays a real Atlantic Division contender: the goaltending and the health of its top two veterans.

The hat-trick run is the headline, and it's a rare one

Five hat tricks in the first month of a season is not something you see often. According to the team's own accounting as shared online, the Panthers became the first team in 104 years to reach that number in their opening month. Four of the top six goal scorers on the roster have already completed at least one hat trick, which tells you the production isn't coming from one hot line.

The most interesting piece is Brady Tkachuk's start. He went six games without a goal after arriving in Florida with heavy expectations, then broke through with back-to-back natural hat tricks, first against Columbus and then Vancouver. That made him the first player in franchise history to record natural hat tricks in consecutive games. Plenty of players would have started pressing after a stretch like that. Tkachuk instead turned his drought into a streak of stacked nights, and that's the sort of swing that changes how a team looks in the standings.

The celebrations didn't stop there. In the very next game, against Seattle, Carter Verhaeghe and Sam Bennett each recorded hat tricks. Two players doing it in the same game is rare enough on its own, and doing it the night after a teammate's own pair of hat tricks is the kind of run that makes opposing coaches reach for the video.

Florida still fell short of one record. It did not tie the NHL mark for hat tricks in four consecutive games, a standard held by the 1982 Edmonton Oilers and the 1992 Calgary Flames. That's a high bar, and the Panthers' three-game stretch was already a remarkable thing to pull off. The month closed on another milestone for a developing player, with Anton Lundell scoring the first three-goal game of his career on Oct. 30.

The real concern is the crease

Here's the thing about a hot offence: it can hide goaltending problems for a while, but not forever. The Panthers were not supposed to lean this hard on Akira Schmid. Bill Zito brought him in over the summer with the expectation that he'd be the backup to Jacob Markström. Instead, Markström, who is 36, has already been injured twice, and Schmid has ended up starting the majority of the team's games.

Schmid isn't a poor pick for that role. He's an NHL-caliber goalie who has earned a real opportunity, and a 5-2-1 record is respectable for a player taking on a heavy load. His 2.86 goals-against average is also reasonable. The number that stands out is his .889 save percentage, which is a little concerning over a sample of eight games. That save percentage ranks 35th in the league, tied with Carter Hart, and it's the kind of figure that can slide quickly if a few soft goals pile up in one stretch.

Markström's numbers aren't much more reassuring. His .897 save percentage ranks 26th in the NHL. Neither goalie is clearly ahead, and together they're being asked to fill the net that Sergei Bobrovsky held for seven seasons in Florida. Bobrovsky's tenure also came with a revolving door of backups around him, so the Panthers are trying to rebuild that stability with two players who haven't fully settled into the job.

That's why the standings picture is more mixed than the scoring suggests. Several Eastern Conference teams already have eight wins, Florida included, and the Panthers were hanging around a wild-card spot at the close of the month. In a league this tight, a team winning on the strength of offence has to make sure the goaltending doesn't turn a close game into a loss. My read is that Schmid's ability to handle a full-time starter's workload will decide how realistic a run at the Atlantic Division crown is.

Barkov and Marchand are the missing pieces

Aleksander Barkov's absence is the bigger long-term story. The captain sat out the entire 2025-26 season, didn't play hockey until the spring, and then helped Finland win the World Championship. He came into this season fully healthy for the first time in a year and had a decent preseason. Then he suffered another lower-body injury in just the second game of the campaign.

There were early concerns the injury could be season-ending, but the recovery timeline pointed toward a possible return by Christmas. More recent reports indicate Barkov is skating on his own and could be back as early as December. If that holds, the Panthers would get their No. 1 centre back in time to reset their top-six balance before the new year. Teams in this position typically benefit from a few weeks of game reps before they're back at full speed, so the first few games after a return will tell you more than the date on the calendar.

Brad Marchand's situation is just as frustrating. In his first full season with Florida, he played only 52 games because of various injuries, and he still produced 27 goals and 54 points. That production has fans wondering what a healthy Marchand over 82 games would look like. He was expected to be in the opening-night lineup until a last-minute surgery delayed his debut, and he has appeared in only two games this year after a lower-body injury.

Florida's injury situation looks better than it did last season, when the Panthers struggled to absorb one absence after another. This year, the depth has carried more weight, and that's a credit to the organization. But if the team wants to stay among the division's top contenders, it needs Barkov and Marchand back sooner rather than later. A deep forward group can cover for a while, but the playoff picture usually depends on whether the best players are healthy when the schedule tightens.

What to watch next

The next month will be a test of whether October was a sign of a balanced, dangerous team or a streaky start propped up by a few special nights. Watch Schmid's save percentage over the next several starts, because a sustained climb would ease a lot of concern about the crease. Track Markström's health, since every game he misses puts more pressure on his partner. And keep an eye on Barkov's return timeline, which will show whether the captain can slot back into the middle without losing a step. If the goals keep coming and the goaltending steadies, Florida looks like a team that can fight for the top of the division. If not, the five-hat-trick month will look like a highlight reel with a leaky back end.