SUNRISE, Fla. — The night started with the Florida Panthers’ Matthew Tkachuk and Toronto Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews at center ice, set to take an honorary puck drop from Panthers president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Zito and head equipment manager Teddy Richards.

The four were part of the United States men’s hockey team that won gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, the run capped by a 2-1 overtime win over Canada.

A photo montage recognizing the rest of the Panthers’ Olympians — Florida sent an NHL-high 10 players, plus five more members of the organization to Italy — came during the first television timeout Thursday.

The tributes were meaningful and a reminder of the talent the franchise has accumulated.

And it showed on the ice on Thursday as well.

The Panthers dominated wire-to-wire for a 5-1 win over the Maple Leafs at Amerant Bank Arena in their first game back following the NHL’s Olympic break. Brad Marchand, Carter Verhaeghe and Evan Rodrigues scored goals in the first period to give the Panthers a commanding lead they would never relinquish, and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 28 shots.

It was a needed showing for the Panthers (30-25-3), who need to go on a significant run over this final stretch of the season for a chance to get into the Stanley Cup playoffs and contend for a third consecutive championship.

“We understand the importance of every day here moving forward,” Marchand said pregame. “We understand the position we’re in and the fight that we’re going to need to have to claw our way into the playoff spot. But this team showed a couple years ago that they can do that and they can be a force when they get in there. It’s just going to come down to making sure we don’t have any bad games or we don’t have any nights off. If we lose, teams are gonna have to hurry. We’ve been through a lot together, been through very tough situations and been through adversity. There’s a lot of character in that room. We believe we can come out of it.”

They got off to the right start on Thursday, playing one of their most complete games of the season.

Marchand opened scoring 3:18 into regulation with a wrist shot from up close against Toronto goaltender Joseph Woll after he cleaned up a rebound from an Anton Lundell shot.

Verhaeghe made it 2-0 5:13 into the period with a power-play goal from the right circle created by a no-look pass from Rodrigues in the slot.

And then Rodrigues scored himself on the penalty kill, turning a William Nylander turnover in the neutral zone into a breakaway opportunity. As Rodrigues raced to the net, he showed some nifty stickwork, dangling and dekeing the puck before getting the puck past Woll with 3:20 left in the opening frame.

Florida outshot Toronto 16-6 in the first period and had a 32-9 edge in shot attempts in those 20 minutes.

The score remained the same after the second period before Toronto (27-23-9) broke up Bobrovsky’s shutout bid on a John Tavares power-play goal 47 seconds into the third period on a shot that bounced off Florida defenseman Gustav Forsling and into the Panthers’ net.

Marchand and Tkachuk then sealed the game with empty-net goals. For Marchand, it’s his fifth multi-goal game of the season and he now has 27 goals on the season, tying Marchand with Jaromir Jagr for the most goals in a season by a Panthers player age 37 or older. Tkachuk’s goal was his fourth of the season.

Florida plays the second night of a back-to-back on Friday against the Buffalo Sabres (7 p.m., Scripps Sports).

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