Florida Panthers Deadline Review

The Florida Panthers used to be a contender year after year so, most of the times, they’ve been buyers at the trade deadline. This year was very different for GM PKayne. He’s not sure himself what happened to his team but without many roster changes, the team went from contender to bottom feeder.

“I think it’s a matter of starting the season the right way. We couldn’t get any momentum for the first quarter of the season and then, it was already too late. So we had to prepare ourselves as sellers instead of buyers this season and we’re not used to that. I still believe in this group, in this core, I’ll have to work hard this summer to fix some things in the line-up but for the moment, we were focused on the trade deadline.” said PKayne in an interview with the Miami Herald.

And the Panthers were indeed very active at the deadline, closing a total of 5 deals, not counting the Connor Ingram trade that occured in January.

The most important trade of them was obviously the deal that sent Victor Hedman (along with prospects Jared Woolley, Filip Nordberg and a 2026 4th round pick) to the Seattle Kraken. In exchange, the Panthers got back star prospect David Reinbacher, a 1st round pick in 2026 and pending UFA Sean Couturier.

“That wasn’t an easy move to do. Victor (Hedman) has been with this group for a long time, like 8 seasons if I remember correctly. With that “1 UFA re-sign rules”, we had to chose between Victor and Josh (Morrissey) and we consider them to be very similar impact players. But considering Josh is 5 years younger, we had to think long term and that’s why we went with him. We had many discussions involving Hedman, many GMs were interested, of course. We had many great offers but decided to go with the top value. Adding Reinbacher to our pipeline is huge, we think he’s gonna be an important piece of our blueline down the line. The 1st round pick in a good draft was indeed a big part of this trade too and we were happy to take Sean Couturier too to make it work salary wise (plus retaining 50% of Hedman’s salary) because we thought we could flip him before Sunday’s deadline too.”

And it’s indeed what happened. From the 5 trades, 3 of them were with the Calgary Flames. The Kraken acquired Sean Couturier for a 2026 3rd round pick and Mackenzie Entwistle. They’ve also paid a 2025 3rd round pick (plus a 2025 7th round pick) for Kiefer Sherwood and a 2026 3rd round pick (and Dman Noah Laaouan) for Brendan Smith.

“Adding these picks to our cupboard was great for us. We never like trading good guys like them but they were UFA-to-be and not returning so we had to do it. All these picks could be useful different ways, either picking with them, help us trade up in the draft or even use them to acquire some immediate help before the draft.”

In the 5th deal, the Panthers sent giant Dman Jani Hakanpaa along with center Nico Sturm to the San Jose Sharks for a 2025 3rd round pick, 2025 4th round pick and farm forward Angus Crookshank. PKayne told me was happy to add Crookshank to his farm team, he brings good depth and the Charlotte Checkers are currently sitting at the top of the league’s standings. They won back-to-back championships in 2021 and 2022 and they’d sure love to win it all again in 2025.

With that being said, it should be an interesting summer in Miami. They will need to add some blueliners to their team to be able to climb back to the contender tag. They still have a solid core with Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Artemi Panarin, Tim Stützle, Josh Morrissey and Cole Caufield but adding some depth should provide them the tools to get back on track.

Stay tuned!

Mark Kandy
Miami Herald

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