They went all in last year.
The Tkachuk trade cost the depth, but made the core younger.
They have nearly $12 million in wasted space this year in Yandle, Darling and Hornqvist. That drops to $1 million next year.
I see it as short term pain, but they reset their window of contention a bit.
I said exactly this in the summer and panthers fans said I was a moron. Feeling vindicated about 35 games in.
It all boils down to three key issues,
The cap situation
Tkachuk for huberdeau and weegs
And the injuries
With a sprinkle of pomo
From a cap perspective this was the messiest year florida will have for quite a while. The darling and Yandle buyouts spike to $6M from 2M. They also resigned barkov, giving him a 4m raise and had hornqvist Still eating like $4-5M as well but being clearly in the downhill part of his career. What’s important though is that this basically meant that they needed to play this year without 10% of the same cap as everyone else. Then
Tkachuk for huberdeau and weegs in isolation is a fantastic trade for Florida,
Long term. Short term however Huberdeau and weegar would have been making less the tkachuk is this season. In the long run tkachuk will be the better player but for this season this makes their messed up cap situation even messier as they now lose a top 4 D as well and replace him with Marc staal.
All of them could still be overcome, we see it every year where teams with great top talent find a way but later on the injuries with no depth to cover it up and it’s a fire storm.
I’m still quite bullish on the panthers long term and will see next season them come rolling when they can rebuild the D and add a depth forward again but I want to add another caveat now. Last summer I said I expected the panthers pick had as much of a chance to be 10-15 as it did to be 20+. If the injuries continue and it doesn’t get better this season there is a real chance that pick could win the lottery. If the panthers have given the habs a bedard or fantilli with their pick within two years it shifts the balance of power in the Atlantic pretty drastically and the cats could be facing a division with Buffalo, Montreal, Detroit, Ottawa all who are on the rise and Toronto, tampa who don’t look like there getting worse.