Free agency guide: Panthers’ focus on long-term certainty will dictate this offseason
If they really want to, the Florida Panthers would not have much trouble bringing back basically the entire roster they had last season when they went to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 1996 and came three wins short of winning their first championship. Only five of the Panthers who dressed for the final game of the 2023 Stanley Cup Final will become free agents this weekend and Florida has about $10 million in cap space to spend.
The problems start once the Panthers try to look a little further into the future. A year from now, eight everyday players will be getting ready to become free agents, including two of Florida’s top three defensemen and three of the Panthers’ seven highest scoring forwards.
After getting all the way to the Cup Final last year, Florida wants to contend for the Stanley Cup again in the 2023-24 NHL season, but it also wants to contend for years beyond this next one.
Once free agency opens at noon on Saturday, the Panthers will be operating on two different tracks with one ultimate goal.
Panthers have immediate defensive needs
Even before injuries piled up during its run through the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, Florida needed a little bit more help on defense. When they dealt star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar to the Flames as part of the trade to get superstar right wing Matthew Tkachuk, the Panthers knew they’d be thin on defense this year. Tkachuk was a one-for-one replacement for star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau in the lineup, but Florida had no easy way to replace Weegar, especially with a roughly $5.4 million cap hit for buying out former All-Star defenseman Keith Yandle in 2021.
Ultimately, the Panthers played all year with defensemen Marc Staal and Josh Mahura on minimum salaries—$750,000 each—just to fill out the roster.
Staal and fellow defenseman Radko Gudas are set to hit free agency this week. Star defensemen Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour are both expected to miss the start of next season with injuries they sustained during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Florida needs to find some stability on defense before the start of next season.
It’s why the Panthers are one of the teams most interested in Calgary defenseman Noah Hanifin, who’s entering the final year of his contract and unlikely to re-sign. Right wing Anthony Duclair — another player entering the final year of his deal — is at the center of those trade talks, The Athletic reported, and is the player most likely to move if Florida feels the need to make a trade to clear more cap space.
As valuable as he has been to them, the Panthers are going to have a hard time keeping everyone around beyond next year and Duclair could be a casualty with centers Sam Reinhart, Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen — all of whom are younger and scored a higher rate than Duclair last year — also poised to become free agents next year.
If it can’t get a deal done for Hanifin, Florida will probably have to turn its attention to bolstering its depth on the blue line. All those soon-to-be free agents means there’s only so much long-term money the Panthers can spend this summer, and they need to come out of the offseason with seven or eight NHL-caliber defensemen because of the injuries to Ekblad and Montour.
Much will be determined by whatever Gudas chooses to do. Florida values him and would love him to return, but the 33-year-old Czech could be on the lookout for one last long-term payout, which could price out the Panthers.
Extensions looming for key defensemen
Florida’s issue, again, is not its cap situation right now, but its potential problems next year and beyond.
With about $10 million to spend and only a handful of roster spots to fill, the Panthers could easily field a more talented team next year by spending big with no regard for the future.
They’re not going to operate this way. They’re looking at their $35 million in projected cap space for next offseason and thinking about how Reinhart, Lundell, Luostarinen, Montour and fellow defenseman Gustav Forsling might fill it.
Lundell and Luostarinen will be easier to keep because they’ll just be restricted free agents next year, so set those two aside to focus on the other three, all of whom are core players. All three are due for raises and could be worth about $9 million — or more, in Montour’s case — on the open market, according to The Athletic’s statistical model.
Even in the most conservative predictions — where Montour more than doubles his salary and matches Ekblad at $7.5 million per year, Forsling more than doubles his salary to $6 million or so and Reinhart’s salary bumps up from $6.5-$8 million —would have Florida spending about $21 million on just those three alone and a figure like $25 million is probably more realistic, especially with the cap finally set to increase by $4 million.
Extensions for Forsling and Montour should be a priority for the Panthers in July, although they likely won’t get done Saturday.
Are there any free agents?
The focus on the future is especially prudent because of how weak this crop of free agents is, anyway.
Bruins defenseman Dimitry Orlov, 31, is the only true top-pairing defenseman available and it means he’s probably going to get overpaid. Hanifin, 26, is a much better fit, if Florida can swing it.
Ultimately, it means most moves will probably be depth additions based on fit, although Boston winger Tyler Bertuzzi is tantalizing and the Panthers have expressed interest, Bally Sports Midwest reported.
Still, Florida has a rock solid top nine intact — Duclair, Reinhart, Lundell, Tkachuk, Luostarinen and centers Sam Bennett, Aleksander Barkov, Nick Cousins and Carter Verhaeghe — and would probably be better served by trying to creatively improve the defense.
“We’ll see what’s possible,” general manager Bill Zito told reporters after the 2023 NHL Entry Draft on Thursday in Nashville. “It should be an interesting and exciting free agency period. There are a lot of teams up against the cap. There are a lot of players. It’ll be interesting to see what happens on Saturday.’’
