The draft is upon us this week and the questions are as follows
1. What deals Will Tallon make to bring players on to the roster?
2. Will the Panthers move up in the draft like many are speculating they will to take Ryan Nugent-Hopkins?
3. Will the Panther move to acquire additional draft choices?
The Panthers have to be looking at all options at this point to be adding talent to the team. With the team having so many roster holes and not so many high quality free agents willing to go to Florida Dale Tallon has to be looking for roster players that draw considerable cap space. Remember, the estimated cap upper limit is $64 million. The lower limit, or floor, will be around $48 million. This means the Panthers HAVE to spend at least $29,709,166 just to get to the cap floor to be eligible to play in the NHL next season. That’s enough for quite a few good players and/or Ilya Kovalchuk…hehe This means that Tallon will be needing to acquire some higher salaried players just to get through next year.
"“Have now heard from two sources that Edmonton may trade down from No. 1 pick. Florida a likely partner.” – Ryan Kennedy of The Hockey News"
This deal would make sense on a lot of levels. Edmonton has been collecting forwards in the draft for years and is probably more in need of a defenseman at this point. Last year they were adamant about picking Taylor Hall 1st overall but this year it seems the are giving a little more leeway. We keep hearing that Dale Tallon thinks very highly of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and he may be willing to give up a prospect or a pick to draft him.
Also will the Panthers move to acquire new/more draft choices. Mike Santos talked last year about how they felt they had gotten two drafts done in one with so many picks. I would expect to see the Cats trying to draft more potential talent this way as well. This is how you build a solid team.
One of the obvious problems in my opinion is goal scoring. The Panthers ranked just 25th in goal scoring this season and coming out of last season in 28th place I think it’s safe to say that the Panthers are struggling to score goals both home and away.
Part of the problem is not carrying any legitimate goal scorers on our roster. Sure Booth, Weiss and others get their goals in here and there, but overall the team doesn’t normally have anyone who scores 30 or more goals in a season. The last few seasons the Panthers have made a point of saying that we will score by committee and that the team will have multiple 20+ guys instead of one 40+ guy. Well the reality is that this plan isn’t working and we are not seeing production out of guys that quite honestly on any other team would be 3rd or 4th liners 2nd at best…not guys that are counted on to score every night.
So what’s the solution? Draft goal scorers who can contribute night in and night out but the only way to do that is with additional draft choices. Hopefully Tallon is working on some deals.
Question of the Day: Are you excited for the Draft?
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