Florida Panthers Free Agency Day One

Recap

With around 10 million dollars to spend and some holes to fill we knew the Panthers would have a much more active start to free agency than they did last year. The day started with the announcement that Oliver Ekman-Larsson would be signing a one-year deal with the Panthers worth 2.25m. Bill Zito stayed busy throughout the day and brought in three more left-handed defenseman along with OEL. Mike Reilly and former Panther Dmitry Kulikov both signed one-year one million dollar deals and the most lucrative deal was signed by Niko Mikkola for three years with an AAV of 2.5m. A new fourth line center was brought in as the Panthers signed Kevin Stenlund to a one-year deal worth a million dollars. The Panthers also brought back a left-handed defenseman, Lucas Carlsson resigned for two years on a two way contract. In the midst of all the additions to the defense Grigori Denisenko resigned for two years at .775m AAV as well as brought in veteran backup goalie Anthony Stolarz for one year at 1.1m. Perhaps the biggest Panthers news of the day was the trade that sent Panthers forward Anthony Duclair to the San Jose Sharks for forward Steven Lorentz and a 5th round pick. 

Breakdown

Making Sense of the New Additions on Defense

Today was a difficult day to understand for the Panthers. Each time I thought I had the path figured out another left-handed defenseman came in and ripped apart the plan that I had. The two additions I feel I have nailed down pretty good are the signings of OEL and Mikkola. Both Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour are expected to miss the beginning of the season with injuries they sustained in the playoffs. These are the two defenseman the Panthers used on their power play, OEL has a lot of experience running an NHL power play and will most likely be tasked with that when the season begins, when the two return I expect him to play a majority of his games on the third pair as well as the second power play unit. Mikkola will assume the role previously played by Marc Staal as the big left-handed defenseman next to Brandon Montour and be one of the defenders the Panthers rely on to kill penalties.

The Mike Reilly signing I believe that GM Bill Zito sees as good value. Reilly has been an analytics darling for years and will help the Panthers defense out a lot at even-strength, especially while Ekblad and Montour are on the shelf. When they return I expect him to split time on the third defense pair with OEL, he will be better than OEL in that role but we will see who actually gets it more often.

Dmitry Kulikov, a player I have been critical of dating back to his first stint with the Panthers, I expect is strictly a depth pickup for the Panthers. Kulikov will have to play a decent number of minutes while Montour and Ekblad are out but I think there is a good chance he goes on waivers when they return. I expect OEL and Reilly to split playing time on the bottom pair leaving Kulikov as the odd man out. There's a decent chance he gets claimed, but I don't think that will keep Bill Zito up at night.

I was surprised to see that Lucas Carlsson resigned with the Panthers after never getting a shot with the NHL club last year. Carlsson played 40 games with the Panthers in 2021, and played pretty well on the third pair with Montour. Last season though he was strictly an AHL player and was one of the best defenseman in the AHL with 20 goals and 54 points in 61 games. This was a pretty smart signing for the Panthers as Carlsson provides organizational depth on defense for the next two seasons, he will play some games for the Panthers at the beginning of the year and then go back down to the AHL freely thanks to his two-way contract.

Analyzing the Duclair Trade

During the many times throughout the offseason that I built a potential 2023 Panthers roster it really made sense to me why the Panthers were shopping Duclair. You know he is going to have some success playing next to Barkov but if he did not get back to pre Achilles injury form you were really running a lot of risk trusting him with such a role. Lorentz should help the Panthers penalty kill and should settle into an every day role with the Panthers either on the third or fourth line. Lorentz carrying an AAV of 1.05m is well worth that price tag as a good fourth line player and penalty killer. The real reason this trade was made by the Panthers though was the 1.9m in cap space that was cleared. You could say the Panthers are short a top 6 winger now after the trade and with the roughly 2.5m in cap space projected by Cap Friendly, the Panthers have some options. The player probably out of the Panthers price range without other transactions is Tyler Bertuzzi, the Panthers have rumored interest in him but with the way the books currently look it's not really an option. The two options currently jumping off the page for me are Tomas Tatar and Vladimir Tarasenko. Tatar is an excellent even strength player and would be a good fit on either of the top two lines. Tarasenko would be the flashy signing, he is not the play driver that Tatar is but he's a finisher that could also play on either line as well as get you some points on the power play. When you look at the Duclair trade as Tatar/Tarasenko and Lorentz for Duclair, it makes a lot of sense that the Panthers believe this helps the team and I would tend to agree.

Grading the Day

The first day of free agency did not at all go as I expected. Thanks to the cap space the Panthers had this year they could not really go backwards from the roster they had last season and this team is shaping up to be a much deeper team than they had, which really is what ended up being their demise in the Final. With that being said, I am a bit underwhelmed that the top part of the roster has not really seen any improvement. No player added today really projects as an important part of the Panthers moving forward and you see Zito believes the same thing with the type of contracts that were given out. I will give the Panthers a C+ grade for day one of free agency. I think they avoided giving out any disastrous long-term contracts, which is a win, and they did build a deeper team without really hurting the top end talent to do it. I cannot give anything higher than a C+ though because I don't think anything really struck me as great value or potentially really impactful that brings the Panthers up a tier as contenders.

Projected Lineup

Verhaeghe - Barkov - Reinhart
Thachuk - Bennett - Tatar/Tarasenko
Luostarinen - Lundell - Cousins
Lomberg - Stenlund - Lorentz
Denisenko

Forsling - Ekblad
Mikkola - Montour
Ekman-Larsson/Reilly - Mahura