Panthers’ core of mid-20s stars appreciates bold, ‘all-in’ moves
These days, Aleksander Barkov does not think too much about the past or too far ahead into his future. He has had more than enough time during too many long offseasons to think back to his fraught early days with the Florida Panthers and try to chart a path to a better way forward.
There were times when his name — and Jonathan Huberdeau’s and Aaron Ekblad’s, and anyone else worth anything to the Panthers — was in the middle of occasional trade rumors, with teams around the league wondering if Florida’s core of former top-five picks was ever actually going to accomplish anything together in Sunrise.
There were moments of promise, too — a firstplace finish in the Atlantic Division in 2016 and, of course, the best regular season in franchise history a year ago — only those were traditionally blips for a franchise without a win in a single postseason series since 2016.
Barkov, whether or not it’s something he’s thinking about right now, knows his Panthers have come a long, long way.
“We have a great group of guys,” the 26-year-old captain said Tuesday. “Every day you come to the rink, you just look forward to the next day.”
Florida was especially eager to return to practice Tuesday in Coral Springs and to get back to game action Thursday against the Montreal Canadiens. No one was a more active buyer ahead of the trade deadline than Florida and the stars who have suffered through close to a decade with the Panthers are appreciative of general manager Bill Zito’s “all-in” moves, as interim coach Andrew Brunette termed them last Sunday.
On March 16, Florida sent a first-round pick to the Canadiens in exchange for defenseman Ben Chiarot, and then did the same thing with the Philadelphia
Flyers to land All-Star forward Claude Giroux on March 19. On the eve of the trade deadline last Sunday, the Panthers also made a smaller trade with the Buffalo Sabres for defenseman Robert Hagg.
In the span of five days, Florida added three new pieces who could all be part of its lineup in the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs.
“You know what it says,” said Barkov, who signed an eight-year extension in the preseason. “It’s a huge message, big message for us that we really want to win here and we have a really
[good] group here. We can do it and now we have an even better group here.”
Barkov is poised to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Giroux trade. The star center has anchored the top line all season and hasn’t had a steady right wing to play alongside. In his first game with the Panthers, Giroux slotted right in on the right side, next to Barkov and fellow forward Carter Verhaeghe.
Even though he spent the bulk of his career at center and mostly played left wing this year, Giroux is in Florida to complement Barkov and Co.
“Barkov,” the 34-yearold Canadian said Thursday, “can do pretty much anything you want a player to do.”
For Barkov, recognition as a no-doubt star came last season when he led the Panthers to the fourthbest record in the league and won the Frank J. Selke Memorial Trophy for the first time.
Huberdeau, 28, also earned All-Star recognition. Star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar, 28, got James Norris Memorial Trophy votes. Ekblad, 26, was a contender for the trophy, too, before a season-ending injury.
When they took the eventual-champion Tampa Bay Lightning to six games in the first round of the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs, Barkov and Florida brought even more leaguewide attention to a traditionally irrelevant franchise.
The all-in moves started almost exactly two months later, when the Panthers traded a first-round pick to the Sabres for Sam Reinhart. Florida doesn’t have a first-round pick in any of the next three NHL Entry Drafts, unless its 2024 first-round pick falls in the top 10, in which case the Flyers will get the Panthers’ 2025 first-rounder.
The Reinhart trade was different, though. Florida quickly signed the forward to a three-year extension. The Panthers traded a first-round pick to make Reinhart, 26, part of their core, rather than a oneyear rental for an immediate Stanley Cup chase.
Giroux and Chiarot are both in the final season of their contracts. Although Zito said he hasn’t ruled out long-term deals for either, both are in their
30s and Giroux, in particular, could command more money this offseason than Florida can give him, especially because it needs to start working on an extension for Huberdeau, whose contract runs through next season.
“It does speak volumes of the organization,” interim coach Andrew Brunette said last Sunday, “management kind of just saying, ‘We’re all in,’ or, ‘We’re going for it here.’ ”
Even though there are long-term risks Zito is accounting for, the Panthers have never had the luxury of being in this position.
For Barkov and all the other stars whose early
20s were wasted in Florida, it’s what they needed to do.
“It feels good. It’s exciting times down here in South Florida,” Weegar said Wednesday. “It’s nice to see that Zito and the Violas, and the whole organization are bought into this group and really believe in us.”
David Wilson: 305-376-3406, @DBWilson2