Florida Panthers
Early Peek at How the Florida Panthers Could Look on Opening Night
It has not even been a month since the Florida Panthers saw their season come to a close but yet many changes have already been made to the team and who will be on it for the 2023-24 season.
With injuries to a number of key players — Aaron Ekblad, Brandon Montour and Sam Bennett among them — the Panthers will look different when training camp opens in September.
But how different?
The core of the Panthers will return with a number of key players although the blueline will be retooled.
Florida moved on from Eric and Marc Staal, Colin White and Givani Smith.
Radko Gudas left to sign with Anaheim, Anthony Duclair was traded to to San Jose and Alex Lyon left for the Red Wings.
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Florida did, however, did add a number of players.
Let’s take a look at what the Panthers’ opening night lineup could look like.
With some salary cap breathing room — Florida still has about $400,000 under the salary cap with at least one of its two injured defensemen likely starting on long-term injured reserve allowing the Panthers to have 23 players on the roster.
The Panthers open their new season on Oct. 12 against the host Minnesota Wild.
FORWARDS
Florida has a couple of newcomers to give themselves some depth with Kevin Stenlund expected to center the fourth line with Steven Lorentz playing on the right side.
The Panthers also signed Grigori Denisenko to a two-year, one-way deal so he may have a spot in the top-9 if Bennett is unable to start the season.
In this scenario, Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen would center the second and third lines; since we do not know Bennett’s status right now, we’ll keep him in the opening night lineup.
Evan Rodrigues, signed to a four-year deal after the Duclair trade, is capable of playing throughout the lineup but we’re going to give him a shot to play with Sasha Barkov and Carter Verhaeghe right away.
Carter Verhaeghe — Sasha Barkov — Evan Rodrigues
Eetu Luostarinen — Sam Bennett — Matthew Tkachuk
Nick Cousins — Anton Lundell — Sam Reinhart
Ryan Lomberg — Kevin Stenlund — Steven Lorentz
Extras: Grigori Denisenko, Aleksi Heponiemi
In the Mix: Rasmus Asplund, Mackie Samoskevich, Zac Dalpe, Alexander True
DEFENSEMEN
Both Ekblad and Montour will miss the start of the season with at least one of them likely to begin on LTIR for the cap relief.
Still, with four defensemen signed — and Lucas Carlsson brought back — on July 1, the Panthers now have plenty of depth to work with.
Florida should be fine defensively.
Now, who goes where?
We expect coach Paul Maurice to mix-and-match throughout the preseason to try and find some chemistry among his defensemen but here is what we’ve got:
Gus Forsling — Oliver Ekman-Larsson
Dmitry Kulikov — Mike Reilly
Josh Mahura — Niko Mikkola
Extra: Lucas Carlsson
In the Mix: Matt Kiersted, Uvis Balinskis
Injured: Aaron Ekblad, Brandon Montour
GOALIES
This is actually a pretty interesting situation for the Panthers as there is no doubt who comes into the season as the starter, but who is the backup?
Florida signed Spencer Knight to a three-year extension which pays $4.5 million but he stepped away from the team in February.
If he comes back in a good frame of mind and looks good — starting in development camp this week — one has to think Knight has the advantage over newly-signed Anthony Stolarz.
But we’ll see.
Starter: Sergei Bobrovsky
Backup: Spencer Knight
No. 3: Anthony Stolarz
FLORIDA PANTHERS ON DECK
- Now: Free agency period is open
- Monday-Friday: Development camp, Coral Springs
- Mid-September: Training Camp, South Florida
- Sept. 25: Preseason starts; Doubleheader v. Nashville @ Sunrise
- Oct. 7: Preseason ends; v. Tampa Bay Lightning @ Sunrise
- Oct. 12: Start of 2023-24 Regular Season at Minnesota Wild
- Oct. 19: 2023-24 Home Opener vs. Toronto Maple Leafs
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What injury does Bennett have ?
Something with his left leg/foot
First I’ve heard about a Bennett Injury possibly keeping him out of the start of the season. That will hurt. His absence was noticeable last year just due to the fact that it shuffled everybody throughout the lineup, forcing guys into roles that maybe they weren’t used to or ready for, heck, It’s going to be tough enough just trying to teach four new defenseman Maurices system. As I recall, I think it took us more than two and a half months before the team appeared to fully grasp it. That was with, of course, only the coaches teaching, now… Read more »
I think the system is more difficult for the forwards than the D-men, to be honest. It’s a man-on-man system so the D just need to make sure they stay on their assignment.
I hear what you’re saying but there are still defensive systems to learn, they don’t necessarily play a true “man on man” in hockey, guys “switch” all the time, and knowing when to make that switch and when to stay on a guy is different in each coach’s system, plus each specific player is going to be different in there tendencies, obviously , like when do guys tend to pinch and when do the decide to hold the line as opposed to dropping back, all that has got to be learned by their defensive partners,which usually doesn’t happen overnight, granted… Read more »
Well I was only speculating. He’s in a walking boot; Panthers have given us zero injury updates despite it being the offseason. So I was just mentioning it as a possibility.
Questions: Why, on your lines, did you inexplicably break up Cousins/Bennett/Tkachuk? Luostarinen needs to be on that 3rd line with Lundy & Reino. Please, explain…
Also, I do not understand what problem this organization has (and it goes back to the D.T./Coach Q days) with Lucas Carlsson… He needs to be on the opening night roster and is a MUCH BETTER D-man than Josh Mahura. It is a real head scratcher, that’s for sure.
I never thought that was a forever thing, did you? They may start the season back together or Eetu goes back there. Don’t know. We’ll see.
Assuming that the team thinks that starting in the A is a better plan for Knight, how much of his cap hit gets buried?
Maybe $1m of it — and I’m not sure about that.
$1.15 million would be the cap relief if sent to the AHL, So still 3.35m on the cap basically making enough room for Stolarz 1.1m.
One of the most interesting things to watch will be who makes it to the top 6 on D once Ekblad and Montour come back. With Forsling and Mikkola, 4 of the positions are pretty much locked. We will see who succeeds from the remaining 5, but I think Reilly will be another Zito reclamation project that will prove fruitful
Should make for great competition, knowing your spot is not guaranteed. My guess (or hope) is we get the version of OEL that’s closer to his last year in Phoenix than what we saw last year in Vancouver. He is healthy, for now anyway, something that eluded him most of last year. If he stays healthy we should get the best version of him, which isn’t too bad. He, and Reilly for that matter, will be eager to prove they belong in this league. All of that should make for some great competition and probably some pissed off healthy scratches… Read more »
That defensive unit will be one of the worst in Panthers’ history. They went shopping for bargain bin players, but got the leftovers from a month old going-out-of-business sale.