The 2024-25 season has officially ended, with the Florida Panthers repeating as Stanley Cup champions against, yet again, the Edmonton Oilers, this time in six games. They are enjoying a run of utter dominance with three straight Cup Finals appearances, and it is no surprise when you look at how incredible their roster is.
The league has been one where usually, the most successful teams have had many of their core contributors through the draft, as teams like Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Tampa Bay can attest.
The Panthers of this year and last are an exception to that norm, however, as two of their top guys, Aleksander Barkov and Aaron Ekblad, are homegrown, but almost all of their other key guys were acquired through trades and free agency.
The Nashville Predators were the biggest spenders on July 1 last year, so many fans might wonder if the Panthers can do what they have done, why has it not worked out for the Predators? The answer is some fundamental strategic differences between the two organizations, and more importantly, where the Panthers have an edge on the rest of the league.
They are not out here acquiring guys just because they are good players and are available, there are deeper purposes and motives behind their moves. Everyone always says to take a page out of the book from the best, and Barry Trotz could stand to learn a thing or two about how to aggressively, but smartly build a roster.
Florida Panthers have avoided one fatal mistake in player acquisitions
As much as free agency and trades are the "flashy" moves in terms of building a roster, you have to remember that oftentimes, there is a reason those players were not retained by their former teams.
So many teams go wrong when they do not truly think about why a player is available to sign or trade for, and it is a brutal trap that the Panthers have not fallen into over the past few years.
Besides Barkov and Ekblad, who were drafted, their core contributors are Sam Bennett, Sam Reinhart, Matthew Tkachuk, Carter Verhaeghe, Brad Marchand, Seth Jones, Sergei Bobrovsky, and Gustav Forsling. None of those seven guys were drafted by the Panthers, yet they were incredibly strategic in bringing them to Florida.
Reinhart and Bennett were the second and fourth overall picks in the 2014 draft respectively, and while Reinhart was still considered a good player, Bennett had struggled up to that point. Both players had talent that was being wasted by other organizations, so the Panthers paid decent, but not exorbitant sums to bring them to Florida, and they struck gold.
Tkachuk was considered one of the league's showcase forwards when he was dealt, and it certainly was not the choice of his former team to part ways. He would not re-sign in Calgary, so the Flames had no choice but to cut their losses, and the Panthers took advantage of a superstar wanting to play for them.
As important to the Panthers as Verhaeghe is now, he was not considered to be a major buy when he was brought to Sunrise. He was a lottery ticket, as he was a former top 100 pick who had talent but did not impress his former team enough to keep him, so the Panthers gave him a chance for super cheap, and the best case scenario panned out.
Marchand and Jones were trade deadline acquisitions this past year, and Marchand's fit with the Panthers was obvious, with his skill and overall tenacity. They got him right at the deadline for a second round pick that turned into a first, which was well worth it even before the Cup run.
Jones is a great player who was stuck on a terrible team, but the Panthers were still never going to take on his full contract. They got the Blackhawks to retain $2.5M of his cap hit for the remainder of the deal, so the Panthers were able to get him for a much more reasonable $7M per year.
Now, Bobrovsky and Forsling are exceptions to the rule, and Bobrovsky's case, in particular, is complicated. He was acquired in free agency, and him hitting the open market might have had more to do with him wanting out of Columbus more than the Blue Jackets willingly letting him go.
But there was a time where his contract looked terrible, and he was known for having his struggles in the playoffs before he signed it. It has obviously worked out for the Panthers, but it was not always pretty, and you have to wonder if him being available was partly because of his prior struggles. It is also interesting to note that Dale Tallon was GM when this contract was signed.
Forsling, on the other hand, was a waivers claim for the Panthers, so it is fair to say they just got extremely lucky with him. Even still, you are allowed an exception or two, and when you consider the big picture, you can sense a theme with their moves.
They are taking chances on young guys with legitimate talent and upside, or acquiring bonafide talents who are perfect fits for their team. And they are not letting themselves get screwed over either, consistently avoiding grotesque overpayments in the trades they make.
If you want to build outside of the draft, you can clearly do it, but it will not happen simply by giving out the most amount of money in the offseason. Bill Zito knows that and has mastered the art of right player, right place, right time, something Barry Trotz still has to prove he can learn.
Barry Trotz took too many irresponsible risks with big moves
Every Predators fan was ecstatic the afternoon of July 1, 2024, when they dominated free agency by signing Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault, and Brady Skjei. But Trotz did not think hard enough about truly why each player was available, and it came back to bite him.
Stamkos, as legendary of a career as he has had, was aging and had severely declined at even strength, and the Lightning deliberately let him walk. The Predators payed him $8M per year, and it is clearly an overpayment, as he is not the franchise altering player he once was.
Marchessault's contract is actually not that bad at all from that standpoint alone, but he too was let walk by his former team, as he was aging and not a fast skater at all. The lack of speed really has made him a poor fit on the Predators, and rumors are already swirling that he could be on the way out.
Skjei's contract was seen as scary to many even at the time of signing, and those fears have been proven right so far, as he struggled mightily in his first year in Nashville. Noticeable overpayments usually do not work in free agency and Trotz did it anyway, and of course it is not working out so far.
You can clearly see what Trotz and the Predators are missing here, as their risks are not nearly as calculated and strategized as Zito's. What is also notable is that Trotz is fairly selective in his moves but for the wrong thing, as you have to be selective primarily for talent, not playoff pedigree.
Trotz is still relatively new as a GM, and it is not impossible or too late to turn the Predators in the right direction, but he has to make some serious changes to how he operates. And that does not mean he cannot be unconventional, he just has to do it a different way, and he can learn from a team that has done it right.