No team in the NHL has spent more this offseason than the Florida Panthers.
That's noteworthy considering Sunrise, Fla., is hardly the hockey hotbed that traditionally finances such transactions, and the Panthers in their brief history are almost never among the NHL's biggest spenders. But money proved no obstacle in shoring up one of the league's most promising young cores for years to come.
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The Panthers' latest move came Tuesday with a reported six-year extension for Jonathan Huberdeau, the third overall draft pick in 2011 who has blossomed into one of the team's top scoring wingers. The deal, worth $35.4 million total ($5.9 million average annual value), kicks in starting in the 2017-18 season and includes an eight-team no-movement clause, according to Sportsnet.
That brings the Panthers' total offseason expenditures north of $160 million between free-agent signings and extensions — by far tops in the NHL since last season ended.
Florida general manager Dale Tallon entered the summer knowing he'd have his hands full locking up his young talent, which helped lead the franchise to its second first-place finish in 22 years, while remodeling a defective blue line and making other roster tweaks. It wasn't going to be cheap.
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Tallon traded for the rights to veteran defenseman Keith Yandle in June and handed him a hefty seven-year, $44.45 million deal to keep him off the open market. He signed free-agent goalie James Reimer (five years, $17 million) and defenseman Jason Demers (five years, $22.5 million).
Then came lucrative multiyear extensions for Vincent Trocheck (six years, $28.5 million), Reilly Smith (five years, $25 million) and, most notably, Aaron Ekblad. The 2014 top overall pick inked an eight-year, $60 million deal on July 1, which figures to make him the NHL's sixth-highest paid defenseman when it kicks in to start the 2017-18 season.
To make room, gone are the cap hits of Dmitry Kulikov ($4 million), who was traded to Buffalo; Brian Campbell ($7,142,875 million), who signed with Chicago; and Dave Bolland.
In Bolland's case, Tallon paired top prospect Lawson Crouse to pawn the veteran's $5.5 million cap hit off on the Coyotes last month.
That trade likely helped facilitate an extension for Huberdeau, who wasn't set to become a free agent until next summer. The 23-year-old finished last season with a career-high 59 points, good for third on the team, and will begin his fifth NHL season on the Panthers' top line alongside Aleksander Barkov, who got his long-term deal midseason.
Huberdeau's signing caps of an impressive offseason of wheeling and dealing for Tallon, who has navigated the perils of the salary cap to assemble a roster that has eight players signed to deals that should age well through at least 2021. Not many teams can say that.
