Panthers have draft options

After just missing playoffs, team will pick 15th in first round

The Panthers’ weekend should be a lot less busy now. Ahead of this weekend’s draft in Dallas — first round today at 7:30 p.m. (NBC Sports Network), rounds 2-7 on Saturday at 11 a.m. (NHL Network) — the team only has two of the first 169 selections and addressed a major need with a Tuesday trade for winger Mike Hoffman.

Florida will pick 15th in the first round by virtue of missing the playoffs by just one point. It also owns a second-round pick (No. 34), a sixth-rounder and two sevenths.

The addition of Hoffman — and San Jose’s seventh-rounder for this year’s fourthand fifth-round picks and a second-rounder next year — impacts the Panthers’ weekend in a couple different ways.

It gives Florida a top-six forward, lessening the chance they chase another one through draft-day trades. It also increases the importance of the team’s first- and second-round picks since the franchise’s core was built primarily through the draft.

Who the Panthers choose at No. 15 is a mystery, though. The franchise has not selected a defenseman in the top two rounds since it selected Aaron Ekblad with the No. 1 pick in 2014, leaving their prospect pool heavily tilted to talented forwards and creating a vacuum for defensemen.

Josh Brown played the entire season in the AHL. Max Gildon, Riley Stillman and Ben Finkelstein are still developing, though

the Panthers did house Mike Matheson (2012 firstround pick) and Ian McCoshen (2013 second-round pick) on the NHL roster this season.

“We want a balanced depth chart, so we went defense early and then now we’re adding forwards, and now we probably have to revert back to D eventually,” Panthers general manager Dale Tallon said on a Tuesday conference call. “Fortunately for us, Matheson, Ekblad, [MacKenzie] Weegar all these guys, McCoshen, are all good young players. They’re at the early stages of their careers. All those guys are young.”

Led by presumptive No. 1 pick Rasmus Dahlin, this year’s draft is deep on defensemen, with NHL Central Scouting ranking eight defensemen in the top-17 North American players. Various mock drafts have connected the Panthers to defensemen Bode Wilde (US Under-18) and Ty Smith (Spokane in the WHL).

The Panthers could also target available forwards like centers Rasmus Kupari (Karpat in Finland) and Joe Veleno (Drummondville in the QMJHL) or wingers Serron Noel (Oshawa in the OHL), Martin Kaut (HC Dynamo Pardubice in the Czech Republic), Grigori Denisenko (Lokomotiv Yaroslavl in the KHL) and Vitali Kravtsov (Traktor Chelyabinsk in the KHL).

Florida can also likely select a player that doesn’t have to contribute immediately. With Henrik Borgström and Owen Tippett likely to join the Panthers’ forward group, and the team eyeing experienced defensemen in the NHL, the Panthers can afford to draft a project and allow him to develop.

“We look at our needs,” Tallon said. “We look at what’s available and we try to match and make sure that our depth chart is balanced. We look at a lot of different variables, but our philosophy hasn’t changed that much. It’s pretty standard in what we’ve been doing over the past few years. We’ve had success with it, so why change it?”

Should Borgström and Tippett make the roster in training camp, the Panthers would have six of their past seven first-round picks in the NHL.

“We want a balanced depth chart, so we went defense early and then now we’re adding forwards, and now we probably have to revert back to D eventually.” Panthers general manager Dale Tallon