Florida Roll Call: Future of Jonathan Huberdeau with the Panthers

After 10 seasons with the Florida Panthers, Jonathan Huberdeau holds the franchise record for games played, points and assists.

The 2013 Calder Trophy winner whom Florida picked third overall in 2011, Huberdeau will almost certainly have his No. 11 raised to the rafters not long after he calls it a career.

Which, of course, is a long ways away.

Huberdeau, who turned 29 last Saturday, is coming off the best season of his career — all of which has been in a Florida sweater.

He led the NHL with 85 assists (most by a left wing in NHL history), tied a career-high with 30 goals and his 115 points set a franchise record — blowing past Sasha Barkov’s 96-point campaign with weeks remaining in the season.

Huberdeau will enter this upcoming season in the final year of a contract he signed back in 2016, the $5.9 million average and six-year term a direct match to the contract Barkov had signed months prior.

The Panthers can ink Huberdeau to a contract extension as early as July 13 although — as we saw in Barkov’s case last summer — sometimes these things take a little longer than Day 1 to get sorted out.

Or maybe it will not.

Huberdeau will be getting a big raise come the start of the 2023-24 NHL season and it will probably come from the Panthers.

Yet nothing is certain.

Does Huberdeau sign what will almost certainly be his last big contract to remain with the Panthers — perhaps through the end of his career?

Do the Panthers have the financial means to accomplish this?

Do they want to?