Panthers address some needs — with focus on toughness — on quiet 1st day of free agency
The first day of NHL free agency was mostly uneventful.
Alex Pietrangelo and Taylor Hall — the two best skaters in the class — are still both the market. Mike Hoffman and Evgenii Dadonov, two of the Florida Panthers’ free agents and two off the top forwards available, still haven’t signed. Aside from a few star goaltenders, most of the players who signed contracts Friday were role players, expected to fill out middle and bottom lines for teams once the new season begins in 2021.
These are the sort of players Bill Zito feels can reshape the Panthers’ identity after they once again fell short of the traditional 16-team Stanley Cup playoffs last season. On Friday, the general manager was busy, signing five of these sort of players, including Radko Gudas.
“My long-term vision — it’s started on the journey,” said Zito, who took over as the GM last month. “How far along that journey I am, I can’t really answer, but I hope and I think that, after today, we’re a bit more driven, a bit more competitive than we may have been yesterday. I certainly hope so.”
Gudas was the headliner and the lone defenseman Florida added after finishing among the league’s worst teams in goals allowed per game. The other four are all forwards 26 or younger — Vinnie Hinostroza, Alexander Wennberg, Carter Verhaeghe and Ryan Lomberg — and give the Panthers potential replacements for Hoffman, Dadonov and the rest of the forwards Florida could lose.
None of the Panthers’ free agents, however, signed contracts Friday and Zito didn’t rule out a reunion with Hoffman, Dadonov, forward Erik Haula or anyone else.
“We’re still open-minded. We’ll still continue to work the market. We’ll still continue to try to improve the team every single day in every way that we can,” Zito said. “We’re working.”
The slow market, particularly for the star players, isn’t particularly surprising. The COVID-19 pandemic means the NHL’s cap is staying flat from last season to this coming year, which means the high-profile free agents mostly aren’t commanding the sort of money they anticipated they would nine months ago. There’s even a line of thinking that suggests some top players, particularly Hall, could sign a short-term or even one-year deal and hit the open market again once the world’s economy has hopefully stabilized.
Still, Florida entered Friday with only 13 players under contract and about $19 million in cap space available, which meant the Panthers were one of the few teams who could maybe give an All-Star the sort of deal he hoped for. Given its defensive struggles in recent seasons, Florida was commonly linked to Pietrangelo and Torey Krug, who ultimately signed with Pietrangelo’s St. Louis Blues.
Zito said he did text with Pietrangelo’s agent Friday, “Just to see where things were at and that was about the extent of it.”
“It was a little silly, to be honest,” Zito said of the rumors tying Florida to stars like Pietrangelo. “We were speculated to be in on so many different things. Our salary cap would’ve been like $200 million.
“They still may come to fruition at those higher numbers and, indeed, I think some of those higher numbers have come in, but for us, we were targeting the players that we thought could help us, that made sense and we started the day, we made the calls right away, we previously identified those guys that we wanted to call and worked together.”
The Panthers still have about $11 million in cap room, which leaves them as a potential contender for some of the top defensemen. They still need to fill out a good chunk of the roster, though, and Gudas can potentially slot into Florida’s second defensive pairing.
“He’s a guy that you hate to play against,” Zito said. “Generally, that means you want him on your team.”
The forwards mostly all give Florida versatility, and middle- and lower-line depth. Hinostroza, who scored five goals with 17 assists for the Arizona Coyotes, can play center and right wing. Wennberg, who also had five goals and 17 assists for the Columbus Blue Jackets, can play center and left wing. Lomberg is a left wing who didn’t appear in the NHL last season.
Verhaeghe, who can play both center and left wing, is one of the most intriguing additions. He scored just nine goals with four assists for the Tampa Bay Lightning, but was buried on the depth chart of a Stanley Cup champion.
“That was something that we targeted,” Zito said. “Our scouts worked very hard, spent a lot of hours together looking for younger talent who might have some upside, might be buried, might be behind opportunities in the clubs that they were on and is a guy we’re real excited about seeing what he can do and maybe providing some opportunity here to grow.”
This story was originally published October 9, 2020 at 8:03 PM.
