The Florida Panthers are in the hunt again. After a trip to the Stanley Cup Final last season, they’re back in the final four looking to finish the job. Their window is wide open. What will they add next?
Roster Ruminations
NHL Roster
The Panthers have been one of the top teams in the model for the past two seasons. A slow start put them behind the 8-ball in 2022-2023 but they surged just in time to make a long playoff run. This season, they were near the top of the standings all season. The 2024-2025 season looks likely to be more of the same. The Panthers profile shows a dominant 5v5 possession team next season. This is with UFAs stripped from the rosters, of which the Panthers have a pile.
Salary Cap Management
The Panthers have started to commit to core for a long contention window with Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk and Gustav Forsling already on long term deals. They’ve left themselves room to maneuver though, with roughly 20% of next season’s cap space available. Anton Lundell and Josh Mahura are their most notable RFAs, so they should have some extra resources available after dealing with them. They have a handful of notable players set to hit UFA status in the summer of 2025, making their long term cap outlook quite malleable.
Future Assets
Like most of the other current contenders, the Panthers have depleted their prospect pipeline to build their current roster. Hockey Prospecting ranks the Panthers prospect pool 25th in the NHL and they have a draft success probability profile well below baseline.
What’s Next?
The Panthers started their current contention cohort with homegrown talent. They drafted Barkov 2nd overall in 2013 and Aaron Ekblad 1st overall in 2014. Barkov is one of the best two-way forwards in the game, with strong impacts at both ends of the ice. Ekblad contributes at both ends as well and the pair provide a solid base to build around.
The Panthers have been aggressive on the trade market in recent seasons, adding key pieces to their roster from an age group that fits with their anchor talents. They’ve targeted star players who were high picks in drafts near Barkov and Ekblad. They now employ three of the top four picks from the 2014 draft. Sam Bennett, the 2014 4th overall pick, was acquired when he fell out of favor in Calgary and Sam Reinhart, the 2014 2nd overall pick, after the Sabres rebuild failed to gain traction. Then they landed one of the leagues top players, 2016 6th overall pick, Matthew Tkachuk when he maneuvered his way out of Calgary. All three are impact players that are key to the Panthers success. And while those three are the marquee trade acquisitions, the Panthers have added more to this cohort via other means including Carter Verhaege (2013 draft) and Gustav Forsling (2014 draft).
The Panthers have done an excellent job of putting together a contention cohort that has a large contingent of core players in their prime together. It won’t power them forever though, so they would be wise to start building a new wave of players that can take over as the current group starts to age out of their prime. Barkov, Tkachuk and Ekblad or Forsling are a strong set of anchor talents to continue to build around. Others should be phased out in favor of a younger group coming into their prime. 22 year old Anton Lundell has already made an impact at the NHL level and represents the start of that group.
The Panthers have done an excellent job of piecing together a contention cohort. The next challenge is building the next group that they can transition to to extend their window.
