"I felt good," said Bobrovsky, who set a franchise record with 39 wins in 2021-22. "I thought the guys did a great job to let me see the puck. I had good control. I saw the puck very well. It was a complete 60-minute effort and a solid game. It was a great start for us, and we're going to build on it."
After Bobrovsky turned aside a whopping 16 shots in the first period to keep the Islanders off the board, the Panthers rewarded him with a much-deserved goal in the second when Eetu Luostarinen tipped a point shot from Radko Gudas past Ilya Sorokin to make it 1-0 at 12:45.
"It felt good to score," Luostarinen said. "A big win."
Moments earlier, Bobrovsky denied Nikita Soshnikov with an incredible save on the doorstep.
"That's kind of the style of the game," Bobrovsky said when asked about goals being hard to come by. "You just stay patient, stay together and have wait for a mistake from the opponent."
Getting the game all squared up for the Islanders early in the third period, Noah Dobson picked a corner on the power play to make it 1-1 at 3:13. Answering immediately, Patric Hornqvist beat Sorokin with a wrap-around goal just 30 seconds later to put the Panthers back up 2-1 at 3:43.
"You're saying all the right things on the bench - next shift, next shift," said Panthers head coach Paul Maurice, who picked up a win in his debut behind the bench. "Then they come back out [and score]. You don't want the crowd to get back in it. The bench is back up and excited."
With time winding down in regulation, Matthew Tkachuk, who was flying from the moment the puck dropped, capped off his first game with the Panthers by depositing the puck into New York's empty net to put the Panthers on top 3-1 with just 1:15 left on the clock in regulation.
Coming out hot, the feisty forward had four shots on goal and more than a dozen attempts.
Two of those attempts were on between-the-legs shots.
"It's nice to get the first one, but goal or not that's how I want to play," said Tkachuk, who was acquired in a trade with the Calgary Flames in the summer. "That's the team I want to play on. The style we played, everything was pretty amazing. I was just saying earlier how quick it's taken us to gel as a team. After one game, I feel like I've played with these guys for 10 years."
