Florida Panthers Waive Fitzgerald, Dalpe and Ludvig

The Florida Panthers placed forward Zac Dalpe and defenseman Casey Fitzgerald and John Ludvig on waivers on Sunday afternoon.

All three are expected to report to AHL Charlotte if they clear waivers.

Sunday was the final opportunity teams had to place players on waivers prior to the submission of their 23-man opening day rosters, which are due on Monday at 5 p.m. EST.

As things stand, the Panthers have 23 players under contract on their roster, plus Brett Ritchie who is on a professional try-out but has yet to ink a deal, with a few of them dealing with injuries.

With Sam Bennett likely to miss the first few games of the season and possibly be a candidate to be placed on injured reserve, Florida’s opening-night roster is nearly finalized.

The biggest question remaining being whether the Panthers end up signing Ritchie.

Ritchie played in three preseason games without registering a point without missing the remainder of the preseason with an injury.

“He is close to playing again,” coach Paul Maurice said. “He couldn’t go tonight and then we will kind of making a going-forward plan with him.

If Ritchie is not signed, rookies Justin Sourdif and Mackie Samoskevich will have made the opening-night roster.

But one or both could be sent back as soon as Bennett returns to play a top-six role back in Charlotte.

“Both of those young players have come in and put up some numbers, which is nice,” Maurice said.

“They played hard and they played well for us, but they won’t watch hockey. They have to play, so that is part of the decision process. If you can find meaningful minutes for them, I think it makes sense, but if not, they can’t just sit and watch.

“If they do, maybe it might be for the opening weekend or maybe they’ve earned a place to be there but they won’t be watching hockey long-term.”

The Panthers look to be set at defense, with six starting defensemen and a back-up to boot.

Uvis Balinskis, a 26-year-old Florida signed from the Czech league this summer, turned heads and beat out Fitzgerald, Lucas Carlsson and Matt Kiersted to earn the role as Florida’s seventh defenseman.

“He just built his game from Day 1,” Maurice said.

“I saw him play in Europe on video but that doesn’t give you a great feel. And then there was so much thrown at him. Completely different style of game, training camp was harder than last year, so there were five brutal days for everybody.

“And then each day off after that first block, he got better and better and he’s quicker than we saw in the first few days and his game has really stood out for us.”

FLORIDA PANTHERS ROSTER

FORWARDS (14): Sasha Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Carter Verhaeghe, Evan Rodrigues, Anton Lundell, Sam Bennett, Eetu Luostarinen, Kevin Stenlund, Ryan Lomberg, Nick Cousins, Mackie Samoskevich, Justin Sourdif, Steven Lorentz

DEFENSEMEN (7): Gus Forsling, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Mike Reilly, Josh Mahura, Dmitri Kulikov, Niko Mikkola, Uvis Balinskis

GOALIES (2): Sergei Bobrovsky, Anthony Stolarz

INJURED RESERVE (2): Aaron Ekblad, Brandon Montour

PTO (1): Brett Ritchie