SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) — Jaccob Slavin scored the go-ahead goal to lift the Carolina Hurricanes over the Florida Panthers 3-1 on Thursday night.
Florida's Anton Lundell tied it at the beginning of the second before Slavin got one past Sergei Bobrovsky with about seven minutes left in the third.
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Florida Panthers center Aleksander Barkov (16) attempts a shot at Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov (52) during the second period of an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Florida Panthers center Anton Lundell (15) scores against Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov (52) during the second period of an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Carolina Hurricanes center Sebastian Aho (20) and Florida Panthers left wing Matthew Tkachuk (19) shuffle as linesman Tommy Hughes intervenes during the second period of an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Carolina Hurricanes center Martin Necas (88) skates against Florida Panthers center Aleksander Barkov (16) and defenseman Gustav Forsling (42) during the first period of an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Florida Panthers center Carter Verhaeghe (23) attempts a shot against Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov (52) during the first period of an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Brent Burns (8) celebrates with teammates after scoring during the first period of an NHL hockey game against the Florida Panthers, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov makes a save during the first period of an NHL hockey game against the Florida Panthers, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Pyotr Kochetkov made 26 saves, and Slavin also had an assist. Martin Necas added an empty-netter.
Brent Burns gave Carolina a 1-0 lead 35 seconds into the game with a shot that bounced off Florida's Aleksander Barkov and into the net. Bobrovsky stopped 37 shots.
It was the last matchup of the regular season between the two teams. Florida swept a home-and-home set earlier this season, beating the Hurricanes 6-3 on Nov. 29 and 6-0 on Nov. 30.
Hurricanes: Weren't able to cash in on their many chances in the first period to build on their early lead. They had 16 shots on goal compared to Florida's six in the opening frame. Kochetkov made some big-time saves to keep his team in it.
Panthers: Bobrovsky was nearly perfect after Burns' early shot got past him, but the Panthers missed on too many opportunities down the stretch to capitalize on his stellar performance.
Bobrovsky pleaded with the official that the play should have been blown dead on Slavin's go-ahead goal because the goalie was pinned in the crease. It was upheld after the referee said Florida's Matthew Tkachuk wouldn’t let Jesperi Kotkaniemi up out of the crease after he collided with Bobrovsky.
Bobrovsky played in his 269th career game for Florida, which is the second-most all time for a Panthers goaltender.
The Hurricanes host Minnesota on Saturday, while the Panthers remain home against Pittsburgh on Friday.
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Florida Panthers center Aleksander Barkov (16) attempts a shot at Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov (52) during the second period of an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Florida Panthers center Anton Lundell (15) scores against Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov (52) during the second period of an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Carolina Hurricanes center Sebastian Aho (20) and Florida Panthers left wing Matthew Tkachuk (19) shuffle as linesman Tommy Hughes intervenes during the second period of an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Carolina Hurricanes center Martin Necas (88) skates against Florida Panthers center Aleksander Barkov (16) and defenseman Gustav Forsling (42) during the first period of an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Florida Panthers center Carter Verhaeghe (23) attempts a shot against Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov (52) during the first period of an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Brent Burns (8) celebrates with teammates after scoring during the first period of an NHL hockey game against the Florida Panthers, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Carolina Hurricanes goaltender Pyotr Kochetkov makes a save during the first period of an NHL hockey game against the Florida Panthers, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
ATLANTA, Ga. (AP) — Jimmy Carter 's extended public farewell began Saturday in Georgia, with the 39th U.S. president’s flag-draped casket tracing his long arc from the Depression-era South and family farming business to the pinnacle of American political power and decades as a global humanitarian.
Those chapters shone throughout the opening stanza of a six-day state funeral intended to blend personalized memorials with the ceremonial pomp afforded to former presidents. The longest-lived U.S. executive, Carter died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100.
“He was an amazing man. He was held up and propped up and soothed by an amazing woman,” son James Earl “Chip” Carter III, told mourners at The Carter Center late Saturday afternoon, referring to his father and former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023. “The two of them together changed the world. And it was an amazing thing to watch so close.”
Grandson Jason Carter, who now chairs the center's governing board, said, “It's amazing what you can cram into a hundred years.”
Carter’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren accompanied their patriarch as his hearse rode first Saturday through his hometown of Plains, which at about 700 residents is not much bigger than when Carter was born there Oct. 1, 1924. The procession stopped at the farm where the future president toiled alongside the Black sharecroppers who worked for his father. The motorcade continued to Atlanta, stopping in front of the Georgia Capitol where Carter served as a state senator and reformist governor.
Finally, he arrived for his last visit to the Carter Presidential Center, which houses his presidential library and The Carter Center where he based his post-White House advocacy for public health, democracy and human rights, setting a new standard for what former presidents can accomplish after they yield power.
“His spirit fills this place,” Jason Carter told the assembly that included some of the center's 3,000 employees worldwide. “You continue the vibrant living legacy of what is my grandfather’s life work,” he added.
Pallbearers on Saturday came from the Secret Service that protected the Carters for almost a half-century and a military honor guard that included Navy servicemembers for the only U.S. Naval Academy graduate to reach the Oval Office. A military band played “Hail to the Chief” and the hymn “Be Thou My Vision” for the commander in chief who also was a devout Baptist.
His longtime personal pastor, the Rev. Tony Lowden, remembered not a president but the frail man who spent the last 22 months in hospice care, “wrapped in a blanket” that included the words of Psalm 23.
Chip Carter recalled “the boss” he had to make an appointment to see in the Oval Office, but also the father who spent an entire Christmas break learning Latin and teaching his 8th-grade son who had failed a test. When he took that test again, the younger Carter said, he aced it. “I owed it to my father, who spent that kind of time with me.”
Jimmy Carter will lie in repose at the Carter Presidential Center from 7 p.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Tuesday, with the public able to pay respects around the clock. National rites will continue in Washington and conclude Thursday with a funeral at Washington National Cathedral, followed by a return to Plains. There, the former president will be buried next to his wife of 77 years near the home they built before his first state Senate campaign in 1962.
The Carters lived nearly all their lives in Plains, with the exception of his Naval service, four years in the Governor's Mansion and four years in the White House. As his hearse rolled through the town, mourners lined the main street, some holding bouquets of flowers and wearing pins bearing images of the former president and his signature smile.
“We want to pay our respects,” said 12-year-old Will Porter Shelbrock, who was born more than three decades after Carter left the White House in 1981. “He was ahead of his time on what he tried to do and tried to accomplish.”
Porter Shelbrock came from Gainesville, Florida, with his grandmother, Susan Cone, 66. He said he admires Carter for his humanitarian work building houses and waging peace, and talking about a warming planet before the climate crisis was part of routine political discourse.
Willie Browner, 75, described Carter as hailing from a bygone era of American politics.
“This man, he thought of more than just himself,” said Browner, who grew up in the town of Parrott, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Plains. Browner said it meant “a great deal” to have a president come from a small Southern town like his — something he worries isn’t likely to happen again.
Indeed, Carter helped plan his own funeral to emphasize that his remarkable rise to the world stage was because of — not despite — his deep rural roots.
Over the course of a few blocks in Plains, the motorcade passed near where the Carters ran the family peanut warehouse, and the small home where his mother, a nurse, had delivered the future first lady in 1927. The hearse passed the old train depot that served as Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign headquarters — a barebones effort that depended on public financing, dwarfed by the billion-dollar U.S. presidential campaigns of the 21st century.
At the Carter farm, a few dozen National Park Service rangers stood in formation in front of the home, which did not have running water or electricity when Carter was a boy. The old farm bell rang 39 times to honor Carter's place as the 39th president.
Beside the house, there remains the tennis court that Carter's father, James Earl Carter Sr., built for the family — a nod to the blend of privilege and hard rural life that defined the future president's upbringing. Carter worked the land throughout the Great Depression, but it was owned by the elder Carter, who employed the surrounding Black tenant farmers during the era of Jim Crow segregation.
Carter wrote and spoke extensively on those formative years and how the abject poverty and institutional racism he saw influenced his policies in government and human rights work.
Calvin Smyre, a former Georgia legislator, remembered that legacy Saturday at the state Capitol. Smyre, who is Black, said Carter’s repudiation of racial segregation allowed Black people to wield power in Georgia.
“We stand on the shoulder of courageous people like Jimmy Carter,” Smyre said. “What he did shocked and shook the political ground here in the state of Georgia. And we live better because of that.”
Payne reported from Plains, Georgia.
Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.
People watch from an overpass as the hearse containing the casket of former President Jimmy Carter drives on I-75 through Forsyth, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025, en route to Atlanta. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
Children watch as the hearse carrying the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter pauses outside the State Capitol in Atlanta, Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
James "Chip" Carter speaks during a service for former President Jimmy Carter at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
A military body bearer team carries the casket of former President Jimmy Carter into the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum to lie in repose in Atlanta, Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, Pool)
People wait for a funeral procession for former President Jimmy Carter to move through downtown Plains, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
A U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the Carter detail, places his hand on the hearse containing the casket of former President Jimmy Carter, at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
The hearse containing the casket of former President Jimmy Carter moves toward Plains, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
Former and current U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to the Carter detail, carry the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter, at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
The flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter is placed into the hearse before it departs Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
Karen Barry, left, and Randy Dillard, the longest serving NPS Plains staffers, ring the farm bell 39 times as the motorcade with the flag-draped hearse of former President Jimmy Carter stops in front of the Boyhood Farm, where Carter grew up, Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025, Plains, Ga. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
NPS employees, based out of Sumter County, Ga., salute the hearse carrying the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter as the motorcade stops in front of the Boyhood Farm, where President Carter grew up, Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025, in Plains, Ga. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
The hearse containing the casket of former President Jimmy Carter moves toward Plains, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
Former and current U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to the Carter detail, walk with the hearse carrying flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter, at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
Former and current U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to the Carter detail, move the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter, at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
People watch as a hearse carrying the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter moves through downtown Plains, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
A person holds signs as the hearse containing the casket of former President Jimmy Carter, pauses at the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm in Archery, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
Former and current U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to the Carter detail, move the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter, at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
A young boy salutes as the hearse carrying the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter moves through downtown Plains, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
People wait for a funeral procession for former President Jimmy Carter to move through downtown Plains, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/)
People line the road before the hearse with the casket of former President Jimmy Carter departs Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
Former and current U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to the Carter detail, move the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter, at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
FILE - Former President Jimmy Carter welcomes visitors to Maranatha Baptist Church before teaching Sunday school in Plains, Ga., June 8, 2014. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File)
FILE - People wait in line outside Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., to get into a Sunday school class taught by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on Aug. 23, 2015. It was Carter's first lesson since announcing plans for intravenous drug doses and radiation to treat melanoma found in his brain after surgery to remove a tumor from his liver. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
People line the street in Plains, Ga., before the hearse carrying the casket of former President Jimmy Carter passes through the town Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
FILE - Former President Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown, Aug. 23, 2015, in Plains, Ga. The 90-year-old Carter gave one lesson to about 300 people filling the small Baptist church that he and his wife, Rosalynn, attend. It was Carter's first lesson since detailing the intravenous drug doses and radiation treatment planned to treat melanoma found in his brain after surgery to remove a tumor from his liver. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
