Florida Panthers: Three Options To Get Rid Of Dave Bolland
How The Florida Panthers can save up to 5.5 million dollars per season and survive the expansion draft
On July 16th, we finally got an answer for what the Florida Panthers intentions were as far as dealing with Dave Bolland. Bolland has not played since December of 2015 and had been spinning his wheels since his arrival to the club years ago.
Florida had taken my advice, as well as everyone’s advice and tried to buy out the horrendously overpaid and under performing Dave Bolland from his contract. Bolland, who I imagine is sitting at home right now with a beer in his hand counting the money he had already raked in and plotting ways to keep the cash flow going, failed a physical exam which meant the Panthers weren’t allowed to buy him out. I exaggerate for effect, because I’m sure he is a very nice man, and in all honesty if I had been offered the money he was to play hockey for a living Id have taken it without even thinking about it. When you are making more than players like Reilly Smith, Vincent Trocheck and Jaromir Jagr and putting up a fraction of the points, its pretty easy to make you out as the bad guy in the situation.
This means I had to think of other solutions to remove this horrid contract, and there’s actually more than one option. Removing it is the best solution, especially when you look ahead to the next off season and see Jonathan Huberdeau hitting restricted free agent status. Currently, the Panthers have just over 4 million dollars to work with in cap space, which is some good news, but Huberdeau could likely command as much as 7.5 million per year, which would leave the Panthers in a situation where they may be unable to sign Jaromir Jagr, if that option is available to them next season.
Florida Panthers
Trade the Contract (With Incentives)
The worst case scenario would be to do what Detroit would have potentially done with Pavel Datsyuk‘s large contract. Originally, the Red Wings had been rumored to be willing to trade talent on top of the contract in exchange for either a draft pick, or a lower tier player in hopes of freeing up the 7.5 million dollars in cap space. Detroit was one of the teams interested in Steven Stamkos and with Datsyuk’s contract hitting their salary cap for such a large amount, it was impossible to take them seriously as contenders in the hunt. Detroit lucked out and managed to move Datsyuk during the NHL Draft to Arizona, who needed to hit the cap floor and was able to use the expensive cap hit to their advantage. The move ultimately cost the Red Wings the 16th spot in the first round of the draft, and left them with the 20th spot.
Florida isn’t in nearly as bad of a situation, as Bolland could potentially return at some point, but with so little news about his injury, no timeline for him to return and given his performance when he was healthy its unlikely that Florida can move Bolland without sacrificing someone else in the deal. In a perfect world, the deal would play out similar to what happened between Detroit and the Arizona Coyotes where Detroit gave up their 16th draft pick for Arizona’s 20th pick and didn’t have to dip into their existing talent pool.
The other problem that arises is that Bolland has a no trade clause, which means he is going to have final say in the deal even happening. Bolland may be willing to take a trade, and given the fact that the Panthers are already loaded with forwards, he will most likely be doing conditioning in Springfield if he does return. There are teams that could take the contract and work with it, but it would probably hinge on them taking on draft picks, or a player like Logan Shaw, or Corban Knight to sweeten the deal.
The Expansion Draft
For some teams, its cause for their fans to sweat when they hear the words expansion draft, but the Panthers could find themselves on the winning end of next years expansion.
Las Vegas will have to fill a large amount of cap space with 30 teams to choose from for picks. With these teams, each has a variety of issues that they are hoping the expansion draft will solve. Some are in situations where there are players who are eating up large chunks of salary cap and not performing, like Jimmy Howard of the Detroit Red Wings, or situations where a player is interfering with long term plans, and isn’t worth the money they are being paid like Marc-Andre Fluery. The Chicago Blackhawks are in a spot where they could lose their star rookie in Artemi Panarin due to nine no movement clauses in their roster, four of those being defense men.
The good news for Florida is that if they can get approval from the league, Bolland could potentially be one of those players left open in hopes that Las Vegas will absorb him. Dave isn’t a horrible player, and the expansion teams have been known to be a place where players like former Panthers captain Scott Mellanby find new life. Mellanby was a average player on the Edmonton Oilers roster until his arrival in Florida during the 1993 expansion draft. From there he had his two best seasons in Florida. When he was selected again to go to the Atlanta Thrashers (now the Winnipeg Jets) his career found another bright spot before his retirement from hockey.
There are a lot of moving parts to making something like this a reality, such as who ends up being protected in the expansion draft by each team. Florida has the option of saving 7 forwards, 3 defensemen and 1 goaltender, or 8 players and one goaltender. If I were betting money on the picks that Florida will protect, Id be guessing the following players
While this looks bad, the expansion draft carries several rules that play into the Panthers favor that will actually protect some players naturally. The first being that the players Las Vegas drafts will have to have played two professional seasons in the NHL. A professional season is more than ten games in one 82 game season. This will protect players like Lawson Crouse and Michael Matheson. Some players like Jared McCann and Johnathan Marchessault could also fall under that category if they play less than ten games next season.
The other rule that can come into play is that Las Vegas must select 20 players who are under contract for the 2017-2018 season. With Jaromir Jagr, Jonathan Huberdeau, Shawn Thornton, Jakub Kindl, Alex Petrovic, Mark Pysek and Greg McKegg all having contracts that expire at the end of next season, Las Vegas will most likely be wary of drafting any of those players during the expansion draft.
With this in mind, you are left with a very limited amount of players to nab from the Panthers roster. Those players are
Derek Mackenzie
Dave Bolland
Bolland barely made it past the rule that he had to play 20 games last season and depending on the severity of his injury, he could potentially be healthy enough to play next season. This would make him available to move by the time the expansion draft rolls around. The worst possible scenario that could play out in this situation is that Roberto Luongo is the decided pick by Las Vegas, although this could be a solution to a potential problem if Luongo decides to retire before his contract expires.
In the end, how Las Vegas decides to draft will have its own variables attached to it, including what other teams will make available to them and the strategy they decide to go with as far as what they want the teams structure to look like. Florida may be willing to offer more to Las Vegas to sway their decision towards Bolland.
Wait him out until next season
Bolland knows that Florida wants him gone, and he knows that if he could have passed his physical he was getting bought out. Florida is unfortunately at the mercy of Bolland and his lower body injury. We can only speculate that its a lingering issue with his ankle, which he injured back in his days in Toronto after severing a tendon. If this is the case, his hockey career is likely over and the team will have no other option than to put him on log term injured reserve.
If he does eventually pass a physical and the buyout becomes an option, it will cost them $1,833,333 per year for four more years on their cap hit instead of the two options I laid out earlier which would be a less painful option to endure as it would be a one time cost of another player or hopefully just a straight removal. The good news of this is that it will still free up just over four million dollars to resign Jonathan Huberdeau, and that Brad Boyes is the only other person who is eating cap space from a buyout with $833,333 left to pay this year from his buyout back in June of 2015.
In the short term, the buyout is a realistic option as trying to sell the contract to another team is a hard sell without parting ways with someone else of value to the Panthers long term future. Getting Bolland to remove his no trade clause becomes another issue to deal with as far as trading him and trying to off him to Las Vegas means you would have to jump through the NHL’s hoops as far as clearing him to even be eligible to be drafted, which you would then have to hope there would be someone who would make such a bad decision as GM of the Las Vegas team. Panthers fans can rest easy for now though, as the team has just under a year before they really have to pull the trigger and make a decision.