Luca Cagnoni scored his first career goal 3:14 into overtime as the San Jose Sharks won their season opener on Thursday, beating the visiting Florida Panthers 4-3.
Smith’s cross-ice pass connected with Cagnoni, whose shot from close range slid under the right pad of Panthers goalie Akira Schmid for the game-winner.
Will Smith had two goals and an assist and Mason Marchment scored in his San Jose debut. Macklin Celebrini notched three assists, and Cagnoni added an assist. Sharks goaltender Yaroslav Askarov made 23 saves.
Eetu Luostarinen scored twice and Matthew Tkachuk scored a goal for Florida, which fell to 1-0-1 on a season-opening four-game road trip. Schmid stopped 28 shots.
The Panthers pulled even with two goals in a 17-second span in the third. Dmitry Kulikov’s shot deflected off Luostarinen and into the net at 5:01 before Tkachuk rifled a shot past Askarov to tie the game 3-3.
San Jose went ahead 1-0 in the first on Marchment’s wrist shot through traffic from outside the faceoff circle at 14:20.
Early in the second, Sharks left winger Kiefer Sherwood received a four-minute double minor for high-sticking Aleksander Barkov and drawing blood.
However, the Sharks doubled the lead with a short-handed goal after Celebrini created a turnover in the defensive zone and raced into a 2-on-1 with Smith. Celebrini pulled a defender in before setting up Smith for a top-shelf wrister.
Smith’s second goal gave the Sharks a 3-0 advantage just past the game’s midpoint. On a power play, he stuffed home the rebound of Celebrini’s wraparound attempt to beat a lunging Schmid.
Florida cut its deficit to 3-1 when Luostarinen roofed the rebound of Ekblad’s shot from the point at 17:10 of the second.
Barkov exited in the second period after going down awkwardly while battling for the puck along the boards, and he did not return. Barkov missed all of last season following surgery to repair the ACL and MCL in his right knee.
Panthers defenseman Gustav Forsling was scratched after warmups because of an upper-body injury.
–Field Level Media
