George Richards, FHN Publisher
The Florida Panthers open their defense of their Stanley Cup championship on Oct. 8 when they kick off the 2024-25 NHL season with a nationally-televised game against the Boston Bruins in Sunrise.
There will be plenty of pomp and circumstance that night as the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference championship banners are unveiled before the big one hits the rafters.
The Panthers have gone through some changes since free agency opened Monday, yes, but the champs will still be very recognizable.
The question is: How would the Panthers line up if Opening Night was on the 4th of July and not the 10th of October?
They definitely will look different.
Free agency opened on Monday, less than 24 hours after the team celebrated their championship in a thunderstorm on Fort Lauderdale Beach.
The Panthers took some hits, but they hope they are not mortal wounds.
Florida locked up Sam Reinhart with an eight-year contract, and signed Dmitry Kulikov for four more seasons.
Wednesday, Anton Lundell re-upped for six years and $30 million.
But the Panthers could not compete with the financial windfall that Brandon Montour, Ryan Lomberg, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Kevin Stenlund, Vladimir Tarasenko, and Anthony Stolarz got elsewhere.
As of Wednesday night, Florida could still bring back Steven Lorentz, Nick Cousins, and Kyle Okposo.
With just $800,000 under the cap, barring a trade, the Panthers may just be done.
We’ll see.
For the purposes of looking ahead to the Florida lineup on Oct. 8, we will assume those three are elsewhere.
They may just be back, and, by the time you read this perhaps they are.
For now, we will only look at the players on the roster as of 8 p.m. on July 3.
FORWARDS
Florida’s top-9 — with the exception of Tarasenko, who got two years and $9.5 million from the cap-flush Red Wings — are all back.
With Tarasenko off to the Motor City, we will pencil in rookie Mackie Samoskevich on the third line with Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen.
Samoskevich is very talented player, but still needs some work on the defensive side of things. Playing with those two will help immensely.
With Stenlund off to Utah, Tomas Nosek or Jesper Boqvist will be the fourth-line center; A.J. Greer, Jonah Gadjovich, Justin Sourdif, and Will Lockwood will battle for one of the two forward spots.
Carter Verhaeghe — Sasha Barkov — Sam Reinhart
Evan Rodrigues — Sam Bennett — Matthew Tkachuk
Eetu Luostarinen — Anton Lundell — Mackie Samoskevich
Tomas Nosek — Jesper Boqvist — Jonah Gadjovich
Spares: A.J. Greer, Justin Sourdif
DEFENSEMEN
Barring injuries we have yet to hear about, the Panthers will be back with a top pairing of Gus Forsling and Aaron Ekblad.
After that, who knows?
Niko Mikkola had a strong first season with the Panthers and very well could be paired up with veteran Nate Schmidt who signed on Tuesday night.
Schmidt, 32, was bought out by Winnipeg on Sunday and took $800,000 to play for Paul Maurice again, trying to catch that Florida lightning and get things going again.
We will put Uvis Balinskis with Kulikov on the third pair.
Toby Bjornfot, Matt Kiersted, Mikulas Hovorka, Mike Benning and whomever signs between now and then will fight for the seventh spot.
Our bet: It’s Bjornfot or Kiersted.
Gus Forsling — Aaron Ekblad
Niko Mikkola — Nate Schmidt
Uvis Balinskis — Dmitry Kulikov
Spare: Matt Kiersted
GOALIES
With Stolarz off to Toronto, it seemed pretty clear Spencer Knight would be back with the Panthers with Sergei Bobrovsky.
Then Chris Driedger came back to town on a budget deal.
Driedger will battle for a spot as the backup, but the Panthers seem pretty happy with the season Knight had in Charlotte — and the work he did helping out during the playoffs.
If Knight has a strong camp, he will get the backup job and may just start in the second game of the season Oct. 10 in Ottawa.
Whomever is Florida’s backup could get the start in two of Florida’s four-game road trip following Opening Night.
Sergei Bobrovsky
Spencer Knight