What Direction Will the Florida Panthers Choose?
Dave Pagnotta of The Fourth Period joined TSN Radio in Montreal and was asked about what the Florida Panthers will do at the NHL Trade Deadline.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
Host: “Dave, what about teams like the Leafs and the Panthers that you know, Panthers coming off the three consecutive final appearances. The Leafs, with all that pressure. Two organizations, two front offices that simply don’t want to tap out. But you expect these teams to maybe just move on from some players at some point, and say, just too many bodies between us and a wild card spot.”
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Dave Pagnotta: “I think Florida is more there. I’m curious to see how healthy this group is coming out of the Olympics, especially, you have (Brad) Marchand, you have (Sam) Reinhart and (Sam) Bennett. Their usage kind of raised a little bit of eyebrows, wondering what their health status really was. There’s some question marks and some rumblings surrounding Marchand. Does he need some work to be done? Is he going to play right out of the gate? I think Paul Marice said that they expect him to play, but we’ll see kind of where that goes.
But if they don’t gain immediate ground, they’ve got some strong depth pieces that some teams would love to get their hands on, like a guy like AJ Greer, for example. He’s a glue guy, great fourth-line type player. Physical guy for a championship calibre team that has done it with the Panthers. There are going to be others, and he’s a pending UFA. So there are going to be other teams that are going to look at him, wondering, is he the kind of guy that I can pry away and help stabilize my bottom six?”
NHLRumors.com Note: There is a lot of speculation surrounding the two-time defending Stanley Cup Champion Florida Panthers and their plans. GM Bill Zito met with the media last week and said he has different scenarios mapped out. This week will determine a lot, and he will know the real direction by Thursday night/Friday morning.
Florida has lost two of their first three games out of the break. They lost late against the Buffalo Sabres and even later against the New York Islanders on Sunday. They remain eight points out of the final wild card spot with five teams to jump. And are they better than the teams in front of them? Which means players like Jesper Boqvist, Greer, and others could be gone.
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And while there are reports about a gap between goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and management on a new deal, history says he doesn’t negotiate during the season. But the contract starts at $6 million, similar to the Jacob Markstrom deal in New Jersey. Given how the Panthers want to win now, are there better options out there?
They have a lot of injuries this season to key players. Florida has played a lot of hockey. It might be one of those seasons to reset and do it again next year. It will be interesting to see where they finish and if they have a top-10 protected pick they can use in the future to acquire something.
But the new LTIR rules and salary cap in the playoffs are making things difficult for them to make moves.
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