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First Round Pick Options For The Florida Panthers

By Zachary Korcok

Jun 26, 2015; Sunrise, FL, USA; Florida Panthers general manager Dale Tallon addresses the crowd with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in the first round of the 2015 NHL Draft at BB&T Center. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
Jun 26, 2015; Sunrise, FL, USA; Florida Panthers general manager Dale Tallon addresses the crowd with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman in the first round of the 2015 NHL Draft at BB&T Center. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports /
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As 2017 the NHL Entry Draft looms closer, the Florida Panthers have to start deciding what to do with their first round pick. Trade it? or keep it? Those will be the questions management will be asking themselves.

 Why Trade It?

In most cases, a team wouldn’t usually trade their first round pick, as there are enough young, talented players with potential to go to 30 teams (well 31 now) at least once. Some more than others, but you get the gist of it.

But this season, the draft class is extremely weak, with only four players really standing out in Nico Hischier, Nolan Patrick, Gabriel Vilardi, and Timothy Liljegren. So unless you have a top 3 pick, you probably aren’t going to find a solid player.

While the Panthers do have a chance at the top 3 pick, even the first overall pick, it probably isn’t going to happen as those picks are going to someone like Colorado, Vancouver, and Arizona.

So if the Panthers do not get a top 3 pick, it may be wise to trade it. But for who? One option could be packaging the pick with one of our bottom 4 defenseman such as Alex Petrovic or Jason Demers for a good goaltending prospect as we’re probably going to lose one of them to Las Vegas at the expansion draft, so we might as well trade one of them to get something back. Another options is trading the pick by itself for either a solid bottom 6 player who can still put up decent points (since the Panthers’ bottom six was absolutely atrocious at times this season), or trading it for more picks, like a couple of second round picks or a couple third or fourth round picks. Finally, we can always package this year’s draft pick with another future first round pick. With that, we can trade the two first round picks and hopefully land ourselves a goal scorer, in which we desperately need. Matt Duchene is someone who I would go after.

Why Keep The Pick?

Even though it would be wise to trade it, there could always be some talented player who could fly under the radar and drop down to the Panthers’ pick. (Which is probably going to be around 8-10) And if anybody is going to find talent where no one else can, it’s Dale Tallon. Heck, Tom Brady was overlooked for 198 picks and he’s now the greatest football player of all time. A few names that could “fly under the radar” could be guys like Nicolas Hague, Owen Tippett, and Lias Andersson.

If the Panthers don’t find anybody like that though, they could still pick someone, who they could later use as trade bait in a future trade. At this point, the Cats will look to keep all their options open regarding our first round pick. If they feel they can trade it for a player who will benefit the team in both the present and the future, then don’t be surprised to see Dale pulling the trigger on a deal.

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