They don’t pick until Round 3, but Panthers still could be one of busiest teams at Draft
The Florida Panthers will not pick until the third round — No. 93 overall — on Day 2 of the 2022 NHL Entry Draft on Friday, yet there still might not be many teams busier than them once league converges on Montreal on Thursday for the two-day event.
The Panthers have less than $4 million in cap space available and legitimate Stanley Cup aspirations, and those two, when combined, create a complicated picture. Florida, after winning the Presidents’ Trophy and then getting swept out of the second round of the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs, knows it needs to get better, but there aren’t many straightforward ways to do so.
Any high-profile free agent the Panthers like to add will cost more than they have to spend — even once they put Anthony Duclair on long-term injured reserve for some short-term flexibility — and they’re not exactly swimming in future draft picks to perhaps attach to a cumbersome contract in a cap-clearing trade.
“You never know what can happen, right?” general manager Bill Zito said.
It all means the actual drafting part of the NHL Entry Draft will probably be a secondary concern for Florida this weekend in Canada.
As of now, the Panthers won’t pick at all in the first and only round Thursday — Day 1 of the NHL Draft starts at 7 p.m. — and will wait until more than 50 more selections have been made Friday to finally make their first choice.
Florida Panthers’ 2022 Draft picks
In all, Florida goes into the 2022 NHL Draft with just six total picks — one each in the third, fourth, fifth and seventh rounds, and two in the sixth; Nos. 93, 125, 157, 186, 189 and 221 overall — because of a pair of trades made last year to acquire a pair of top-six forwards.
For the Panthers, the lack of picks this year really isn’t much of a concern. The trades — a first-round pick sent to the Buffalo Sabres for Sam Reinhart during the 2021 NHL Entry Draft and a second-round pick sent to the Calgary Flames for Sam Bennett ahead of the 2021 trade deadline — are moves Florida would readily make again and the two forwards, who combined for 131 points last season, are both locked up beyond next season on reasonable contracts.
The tricky part of Zito’s week will be figuring out what to do with the players entering the final years of their deals to ensure the Panthers will both improve next season and remain a contender for years to come.
Effect of in-person Draft
It’s good timing, then, for the draft to return to an in-person format. For the first time since 2019, officials from every NHL team will be gathered in one spot to make picks, clustered together on the floor of the Bell Centre, where they will hand index cards to commissioner Gary Bettman with their selections and also be in close proximity to talk face-to-face about potential trades. Agents are in Quebec, too, and Zito said he had “nice talks” with representatives for All-Star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau and star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar, who are both entering the final years of their deals.
Considering Zito’s track record when he has worked remotely, it’s fair to assume he will be active when he has chance to talk face-to-face with executives and agents from all across the league.
“We’re always aggressively looking to improve the roster and improve our position with regard to where we sit in the league, both from personnel and from cap,” Zito said, although he didn’t go so far as to say he was looking into trades specifically intended to clear cap space.
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What Panthers need this offseason
Somehow, Florida needs to come out of the offseason with replacements for the four forwards and one defensemen who were in the lineup for its last game of the 2022 Cup playoffs — centers Joe Thornton, Eetu Luostarinen, Claude Giroux and Noel Acciari, and defenseman Ben Chiarot — and are about to become free agents.
Thornton could probably be had for a minimum contract if he opts not to retire, Luostarinen is just a restricted free agent and should be able to return on a relatively inexpensive deal, and winger Mason Marchment, who was hurt then, is a wild card because of how massively he outperformed his previous contract; there’s a chance Florida could fit all three within their current cap space, which would already basically guarantee the Panthers at least get to run it back.
Their ambitions, however, are grander.
Panthers’ trade chips? Hornqvist, Bobrovsky
It could make someone like right wing Patric Hornqvist, who’s entering the final year of his deal, a casualty of a potential trade. Florida would love to bring back Giroux, for example, and sending Hornqvist’s $5.3 million cap hit elsewhere would make it much easier.
As important as Hornqvist has been to the their turnaround after they traded for him in Zito’s first move back in 2020, the Panthers are deep enough to survive without the winger and — they hope — now experienced enough now to not need his leadership quite as much as they did two years ago. An active Draft cold also give Florida its best opportunity yet to deal star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky elsewhere.
The goal is to keep the star-studded core of 20-somethings — which includes center Aleksander Barkov, defenseman Aaron Ekblad, goaltender Spencer Knight, Huberdeau and Weegar — together as the foundation for long-term contention. The moves around the edges, however, will determine whether it’s possible and what the ceiling can be.
“We feel pretty strongly that our core and our group is going to be together for a while,” Zito said, “and that we’re going to be able to sustain the progress.”
