The Florida Panthers are about to enter the most important offseason in franchise history.
Hyperbole we’ve heard before, right? This will be a narrative surrounding the Cats going into the 2023-24 season. Was last year’s Stanley Cup Final appearance a fluke? Did Florida simply ride a pair of hot goaltenders? First to a playoff spot, then to a three consecutive and convincing series victories. Were the Panthers “pretenders” or are they truly in a Stanley Cup window?
The sense from the general hockey media is that this team was a Cinderella story. An anomaly. The exception that proves the rule that once you get into the Stanley Cup Playoffs “anything can happen.”
And, to be fair, there is quite a bit of evidence to support this stance. The Panthers were the team with the lowest regular season point total (92) to reach the playoffs. They were the worst defensive team in the postseason by goals allowed (272). The Panthers had the third-lowest team save percentage (.896) of the teams that advanced beyond the regular season and the second-worst penalty kill (75.95%) to go along with the most minor penalties (336).
There is also some evidence to suggest that the Panthers underachieved during the regular season. Florida was unequivocally one of the best 5-on-5 teams in the NHL. The Cats were a plus-32 when skating five aside and were third in the NHL in Corsi percentage for (54.33) and fifth in Fenwick percentage for (53.45). Florida was top three in the league in creating high danger chances. Now, there are ways to pump the analytics, but the Panthers were a much better team in nearly every category after January 1 and put up 50 points in 39 games – a 105-point pace.
So, who were the real Panthers? Was it the team that struggled in November and December as a new system and mentality was being put in place? Was it the team that produced after the calendar turned to 2023? Was it the team that played in front of two blistering goaltending stretches from Alex Lyon and Sergei Bobrovsky? Or was it the team that broke down in the Cup Final and had its lack of depth gruesomely exposed by the Vegas Golden Knights?
Expect to hear a lot of this during the offseason in season recaps and 2023-24 previews from all of your favorite national hockey media outlets. The answer is all of the above. But, none of that should matter to the Panthers organization. The real question we need to ask this offseason is – are the Cats closer to winning the Stanley Cup?
The easy answer is yes. A resounding yes. Hell, we just finished watching the Panthers in the Stanley Cup Final, of course they are closer. But, it doesn’t work that way in the NHL. As of now, the slate is wiped clean. 30 other teams already have a head start building up their rosters for another crack. Paul Maurice already appears to be metering expectations for Panther fans after laying out the extensive laundry list of serious injuries many players fought through to continue an improbable run to the Final. Maurice knows that his team plays in a division with perennial point harvesters like Boston, Toronto, and Tampa Bay. Buffalo, Detroit, and Ottawa appear to be on the up.
The Panthers will have their own roster decisions to make this summer. Radko Gudas is a free agent. So are the Staal brothers. Lyon too. General manager Bill Zito will have a little bit of dough in his pocket to help fill out a mostly complete roster, but one that still has many needs. $10.2 million doesn’t stretch quite as far as it used to in July and the free agenty market is thin.
And then there is the question of how to approach the players that will be going into the final year of their contracts. Right now, Zito is projected to have $35.3 million for the 2024 offseason, if the salary cap rises to $87.5 million as projected, to ice his team. Sam Reinhart, Brandon Montour, and Gustav Forsling will all command significant raises. Anthony Duclair may require a wait-and-see approach. Anton Lundell and Eetu Luostarinen are a year from restricted free agency and should also see a pay boost.
It is pretty clear that Bill Zito is eventually going to have to make some difficult choices. So far in his tenure, Zito has signed more players to lucrative extensions or sign-and-trade deals than he has spent on the free agent market. In fact, Zito’s largest free agent signing in his tenure was Gudas’ three-year pact worth $7.5 million in the summer of 2020. Is this the year he makes a big splash? Or will he remain conservative on July 1 and seek options through trades? Will some of those big names above – Reinhart, Montour, Forsling – be dangled? It seems as if that will almost certainly be the case. Panther fans witnessed the lack of depth and investment in the bottom six and bottom three blueline spots lead to an ugly Stanley Cup Final clincher.
This team isn’t built to just run it back. So, here is why the first sentence of this article may not just be hyperbole. The Panthers are building momentum. Four consecutive postseason appearances. A deep run. A Presidents’ Trophy. Last year’s team may have been a fraud in the eyes of the hockey world, but it may also have been a massive stepping stone. The experience these players just went through resonated with the city and the region. Florida has an opportunity to capitalize on this run, to build a fanbase that doesn’t just show up to a miracle run in the waning months of the season, but is there from day one, game one next October.
The Panthers nearly blew a similar chance last year. After the Presidents’ Trophy, confidence in the team seemed at an all-time high. The patience the organization showed with Maurice appears to have worked, but again, wipe the slate clean for next year. If the Panthers don’t perform, South Florida will forget all about that Cup run. They’ll lap up the national media drivel and terms like “fluke,” “Cinderella,” and “anomaly” will follow the most successful season in franchise history in perpetuity.
Vincent Viola, Zito, Maurice, Tkachuk, Barkov… they cannot let that happen. In the wake of the hurt, physical and emotional, the Panthers feel now, this must be a motivational pillar of the offseason. The wind nearly went out of the sails last year. Matthew Tkachuk, Alex Lyon, and Sergei Bobrovsky and the rest of the team course corrected in the nick of time.
This is the most important offseason in the history of the Panthers franchise – unless they get it right.