Panthers GM on summer plan: ‘I owe it to that room ... to try to keep everybody together’
The Florida Panthers made it to the Stanley Cup Final for only the second time in their history this year, but didn’t give the Golden Knights much of a challenge once they got there.
Still, the Panthers don’t feel a pressing need to make sweeping changes after they fell three wins short of hoisting their first Stanley Cup and with the vast majority of the roster under contract through next season, they won’t have to, either.
“I owe it to that room to do everything I can to try to keep everybody together,” Bill Zito said. “It’s going to be daunting.”
With just a week until the 2023 NHL Entry Draft and only 10 days until the start of free agency, the general manager finally laid out some of his vision for another important Florida offseason Wednesday and the initial instincts, he said, are to take another swing at a championship with a similar roster to the one the Panthers had this year.
Of the 18 skaters to play the most games for Florida in the regular season, only four are set to become free agents next month — defensemen Radko Gudas and Marc Staal, and centers Colin White and Eric Staal — and none of them ranked among the team’s top eight forwards or top three defensemen in average time on ice.
The core is fully intact — although there are challenges to go along with that, too — and the Panthers have about $10 million in cap space to keep some of those free agents around, if they so choose.
“A significant part of the success of this group was they’re a team and it was the character, it was the graciousness of the guys in the room toward each other and it’s maybe not measurable, but it’s real, it’s tangible and it’s not something to be played with,” Zito said, adding the team chemistry was “unilaterally” brought up by players in exit interviews in the last week. “One player said, ‘I’ve never been in an NHL locker room where there were no complaints during the year.’ ... It was just this group that invested themselves fully in each other and it’s very, very important.
“Now with all that said, my job is to try to get the best team that we can get and that, at some point, becomes the sum of the pieces and if there’s a move that we think will make us better, then we’ll pursue it, but it can be hard. It certainly forces you to really, really be diligent and approach the situations with rigor.”
As he pointed out, there were no plans to trade star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau and star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar for superstar right wing Matthew Tkachuk at this time last year. Plans can change quickly, especially when a team is so close to a Cup.
“There could always be trades. You never know until it happens,” Zito said. “About a year ago, it kind of happened.”
Two major factors will play a role in Florida’s offseason thinking.
The first is injuries. Star defenseman Aaron Ekblad already expcts he’ll miss the start of the 2022-23 NHL season and the Panthers are operating under the assumption there could be others, including perhaps star defenseman Brandon Montour, who tore his labrum, ESPN reported.
If these injured players will only miss a few weeks at the start of the year, Florida will try to get by with internal or low-cost replacements. If those injuries could linger into the winter, then “now you’re saying, Uh-oh,” Zito said. “What are we going to do?”
The other component is the long-term cap situation. It’ll be easy for the Panthers to keep their roster intact for next season, but wingers Anthony Duclair, Sam Reinhart, Nick Cousins and Ryan Lomberg, and Montour and fellow defenseman Gustav Forsling will all become unrestricted free agents next year. Florida has extensions to discuss.
If they can lock up a few of them on long-term deals, the Panthers will have better clarity about what sort of free-agent contracts they can hand out this summer. If it finds it won’t be keeping certain players around beyond next year, Florida could opt to trade them, just like it did with Huberdeau and Weegar last year.
“When you win, people get paid and the coffers have limits,” Zito said. “Even if we spend it all, there are certain players who we may not be able to retain, and they didn’t do anything wrong and they’re not disloyal. It’s just the way the system works, so we’ll do our best and I’ve warranted to our team that I feel like I owe it to them to try to keep them together and give them a chance.”
This and that
▪ Goaltender Spencer Knight, who went into the NHL’s and NHL Players Association’s joint player assistance program in February, is “doing well,” Zito said, and the Panthers “expect him back in the fold in the fall.”
▪ “There’s interest” from both Florida and Alex Lyon, who began the year as the third-string goaltender and wound up starting the first three games of the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, to make a reunion happen next year, Zito said. Both sides know it could be tricky, though, with Lyon making a strong case to be a full-time NHL goalie, and both Knight and star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky under contract. “What we have to do is we have to figure out do we have the right situation for our team and the individuals also have to figure out what works for them,” Zito said.
▪ The decision to let Tkachuk play through a fractured sternum in Game 4 of the 2023 Stanley Cup Final was strictly a medical decision, Zito said. The All-Star winger’s inability to play in Game 5 was strictly a matter of pain tolerance and discomfort. “We’ll never do anything that’s irresponsible for the player’s health,” Zito said.
