Oh yes - I saw that article today in the Athletic. I'm not sure how much trust to place in the model they use is to assign values to certain players, but it's always nice to see us at number 1 with a gorgeous A+. So we're first in the league from a long term perspective and 2nd (after the Oilers) for next year. I'll take that. What's more interesting about the article is how bad the situation is for other teams, and how easy it is to go badly wrong.
For those without a subscription - here's the blurb on the panthers:
"For the second year in a row, the Florida Panthers finished first in the cap efficiency rankings and that’s not something that should be up for debate. It’s not even close. No other team is set up better for the long haul than the Panthers who are sitting on $125 million in surplus value — $75 million more than the next-best team. That’s not a no-income-tax state advantage, it’s a best-managed team in the NHL advantage.
Almost every deal on the books is cheaper than it should be, so much so that we can pretty much ignore the cap disaster happening between the pipes. It simply doesn’t matter when the Panthers have four core pieces locked up for a long time at
well below market rate. Two of those (
Gustav Forsling and
Matthew Tkachuk) landed on the top 10 contracts list and another (
Sam Reinhart) was an honorable mention. Most teams would love to have
Aleksander Barkov at only $10 million for the next six years and that only registers as the fourth-best deal of the bunch.
Combined, the quartet makes just under $34 million. That should be closer to $50 million — how do you even begin to compete with that? If that’s not enough, pretty much every other skater deal on the books is a winner too. And several by a significant margin. For the rest of the league, it just doesn’t feel fair.
The Panthers won the 2024 Stanley Cup and their financial acumen was an immensely important reason. No team gets more out of their dollar than the Panthers and it now shows in their trophy case. With the gold they have on the books, it probably won’t be their last."
