With the draft and free agency just around the corner, Daily Faceoff’s own insider Frank Seravalli had some more rumors to throw our way on what to expect in the upcoming offseason with Ice Breakers, including how the Florida Panthers may be on the market for a couple of big-name defensemen in buy-low scenarios to offset the injuries to Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour to start the season.
Frank Seravalli: They’d like to be aggressive. Here’s the thing though, they have some really significant injuries that are looming for this team that will prevent both Ekblad and Montour from being ready for Game 1 of the regular season. I don’t have exact timelines on both of those guys yet, but they could be out for a couple months into next season.
So yes, they have some contracts coming off the books like a Patric Hornqvist and some dead cap space as well that will provide the Cats with some fresh cap space to go out and acquire a couple players, and/or try and bring in players on the free-agent market, but nonetheless, they can’t go out and spend that money for Ekblad and Montour for instance because they know that they need to account for them early into next season. So, the Cats are in an intriguing spot where they want to be aggressive, but might not be able to be as fully aggressive as they’d like to be because of the injury situation.
And on top of that, I think they’re going to try and convince a couple defensemen. I don’t know if they’re going to be successful or not, but maybe coming off that run to the Stanley Cup Final, and some of the players that they have up front including Matthew Tkachuk and someone like Alexander Barkov, is to take one of these defensemen that has fallen on some hard times in the NHL, whether it’s Oliver Ekman-Larsson coming off of the buyout, or it’s Matt Dumba after his tough season in Minnesota, or John Klingberg after a tough year that ended in Minnesota.
Maybe get one of those guys, see if you can convince them to play on a short-term, short-money deal to step into the Panthers lineup, and as mentioned with Ekblad and Montour out, get a chance on the power play to start the year, and really go after some of those guys to see if they can make some smart moves in that sense to improve their D-core, because I think that’s really the push. They’d like to go out and get a couple top four defensemen if they can find them and, more importantly, if they can afford them.
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