Florida Panthers: What The Future Holds

There are so many adjectives you could use to describe this season for the Florida Panthers, but sadly with few high points and many low points they’re mainly negative. After being eliminated from playoff contention Thursday night in Montreal, it’s no longer avoidable that the Cats won’t “be there” will they Mr. Rowe?

In the offseason the Panthers “revamped” the defense and made a series of trades and signings that were, and still are widely disputed between Cats and hockey fans in general. On paper this was a much better team going into the season. Some of the departed players may have been fan favorites, brought different elements of their game to the team but expectations were higher than ever coming off the best regular season in franchise history.

As for the results, they just weren’t there for a team that was injury plagued early and lacked in on ice chemistry. Tack on a coaching change 22 games into the season and you see the mess we are now left with.

What’s next?

After such a grueling season a lot of us fans are wondering what’s next for our favorite team, well here’s my take. This season was a huge hit to the progression of a young core but they will not look back.

The mental capacity of some of the younger guys on the team is very impressive, Vincent Trocheck, Aleksander Barkov and Aaron Ekblad will make bouncing back from such a tough season just a little bit easier. They never get too low on themselves when the going gets tough.

I can’t imagine guys like Reilly Smith and Nick Bjugstad struggling to the same magnitude as they have this season either. Barring the few bad plays I believe Smitty really stepped up his game on the PK/ defensive side of the puck this season. If Big Nick could just stay healthy and in front of the net next season the points should surely come.

A big question mark at this point is who may we see departing this offseason? Jaromir Jagr, Thomas Vanek, Jakub Kindl and Reto Berra are all UFA’s and as we know, the expansion draft is coming up in June (we’ll have a dedicated article to that). I for one would like to keep Vanek around if there’s mutual interest and it’s definitely not easy but it may be the right time to part ways with the ageless one.

The one thing that goes without even saying really is we NEED a coach, like badly. Hopefully Dale Tallon will be leading the search and can find the right guy to put behind the bench. I could throw names out there and get in-depth but again, this will be something we write a whole piece on in the offseason, once the search has officially started.

All in all, one bad season will not make or break this team. Next season is very crucial however, if the players are stuck in an environment that’s not conducive to their success again, the Panthers could set themselves back even further. Let’s all hope we don’t make too many moves this offseason, just the right ones!