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The Florida Panthers are off to the second round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs to take on the Toronto Maple Leafs, and they’ve done so with significant contributions from their midseason trade additions.
Defenseman Seth Jones, who was acquired from the Chicago Blackhawks in March in a trade for goaltender Spencer Knight and draft picks, has settled into a key role over the last few months and is proving important in the playoffs.
In 21 regular-season games, the 30-year-old blueliner scored two goals and nine points before adding a goal and an assist in the five-game first-round victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning.
On Monday’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, Florida Hockey Now’s George Richards joined Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk to discuss Jones’ rise as a key contributor and the Panthers’ playoff journey.
Seravalli: I want to ask you about Seth Jones because you mentioned after round one that he felt like he had been with Florida for four years, and it hasn’t even been four months. At the beginning, his play was probably a little bit up and down. What have you seen from him of late?
Richards: I like what Seth has done. The numbers may not bear that out when you look at all the analytics and stuff, but Paul Maurice said the day they got him, that it was going to take a year for him to figure out this Florida Panthers system.
This is completely foreign to the way Seth Jones played in Nashville, Columbus, and then with the Blackhawks, and they were going to ease him in, right? And then two games into it, Aaron Ekblad gets suspended for 20 games, and all of a sudden, Seth Jones is put up on the first defensive pairing, and he’s got to play 25 minutes a game.
It might have been a blessing in disguise, because now it’s basically a baptism by fire. He had to come in and figure it out, and he did, and he was terrific in the Tampa Bay Lightning series. I was a gigantic fan of that move the minute it happened. I think Seth Jones is perfect for the Florida Panthers. He’s a terrific defenseman and has a great offensive side to his game, but he can play the defensive side as well, and I think he’s been really good.
You can catch the full segment and the rest of Monday’s episode here…
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