In a manner somewhat akin to the Vegas Golden Knights in 2023 (their adversaries who defeated them in the finals that year, which truly made it a matchup of kin souls), the strong Atlantic Division’s best squad the Florida Panthers won their first ever Stanley Cup in 2024, defeating the Edmonton Oilers in one of the best Stanley Cup Finals in possibly history while utilizing a roster that flew in the face of expectations and established norms of team-building in the NHL’s salary cap era. Just three players (Sasha Barkov, Anton Lundell, and Aaron Ekblad) arrived in Florida by the draft (not counting their reunion with Dmitry Kulikov who they took 14th overall in 2009 and kept in their ranks until 2016 before he was traded to Buffalo, launching an effective journeyman arc for him before he came back this past year – More on his return in a bit), with the rest of the group acquired by trade, free agency, and the waiver wire. As is inevitable with any Cup winner, guys’ asking prices are going to go up in the ensuing offseason, making it nigh impossible to run it back with a group of identical strength the next season. However, if anyone is equipped to handle this scenario, it’s the man who made this victory possible: Bill Zito. Let’s see how he and the rest of the front office did this summer.

This strays from traditional article formatting for us, but with the context, it makes the most sense to address departures first. Florida’s losses were not totally insignificant, but they were not backbreakers that derail their chance to be a threat at a repeat, either. Observing D Oliver Ekman-Larsson to start off, the veteran blueliner did function as a fairly successful one-year reclamation project last season in limited minutes, being healthy enough to be on the roster throughout the year (missing just two regular season games), see his WAR percentiles go up, and have respectable productivity at 32 points. However, I cannot possibly justify the deal Toronto gave him at this stage of his career, so Florida can live with this one. LW Ryan Lomberg also departed north of the border, signing with Calgary to the tune of two years, $4M. He was a fairly serviceable fourth liner for Florida, excellent at drawing penalties and injecting some energy, but he is definitely replaceable. I feel a similar sense to OEL when it comes to LW Vladimir Tarasenko, as well. As I declared in my Detroit article, I commend him for having a bounceback year, but I think, at this point, investing in him for more than one season at a time is somewhat foolish, so Florida most likely got everything that they were going to get out of him. C Kevin Stenlund also left for Utah Hockey Club on the same terms as Lomberg to Calgary and that is even a similar situation. He is effectively a very good PK player who possesses pretty good finishing capabilities for your fourth line (the latter evidenced by his metrics and his 11 goals on their own standing), but not much else. Not that you ask for more from those sort of players, but it’s just not a backbreaker.

Now this is where we start to get into interesting territory. G Anthony Stolarz headed back to the region (no, London is not part of the GTA) he played major junior hockey in, signing with Toronto on a two-year deal. His sole season as a Panther was successful. He played just above enough games to qualify he and Sergei Bobrovsky as a proper tandem and thrived in the backup role, registering a record of 16-7-2 with a 2.03 GAA and a league leading .925 SV% in 27 games played. He was another fantastically done reclamation project, as well as demonstrative of Zito’s phenomenal asset management capabilities in contrast with the rest of the league (the irony of the Bobrovsky/Stolarz tandem is that not only did both initially start off in Philadelphia, but that Stolarz was drafted with the selection that the Flyers acquired in the trade that sent Bobrovsky to Columbus to cement Ilya Bryzgalov as their starter – Ouch!). That said, the development of Spencer Knight has been on a good track, and if this is the year where his flashes of brilliance we saw in his NHL stints become more consistent (we can’t hold it against him that these were short-lived due to the difficulty of developing the position). He was a prime blue chip and still effectively is and it may just be his time to shine. Secondly, there is the D Brandon Mountour loss, with him leaving for Seattle on a deal worth $50M over the course of seven years. There’s no doubt about it: Montour reached inconceivable highs, particularly relative to his career output, in the Sunshine State, especially in his 2022–23 season wherein he was destroying his previous top marks in basically every category, be they counting stats or underlying data (though his possession metrics ended up being better this past season). However, age is definitely a big consideration here at 30, and it’s also arguable that his whole tenure in Sunrise was an outlier when you put his prior seasons into perspective. Florida should be grateful for what they got out of him, but they can’t be too sad to see him chase the payday he has always craved elsewhere.

Zito made some respectable depth signings, bringing on both Jesper and Adam Boqvist, Chris Dredger, and Tomas Nosek on one-year contracts, as well as A.J. Greer on a two-year deal. Most importantly, however, they did well with their extensions. RW Sam Reinhart has ascended to true star status in the NHL since arriving in Sunrise in 2021 and last year demonstrated that in spades. He was ruthlessly effective on the power play, with his efficiency there having played a big role in his 57 goals as he established himself as one of the league’s best snipers. This mark was a team high, as was his 94 points. As such, Zito considered it wise to give him a max term deal, inking him to an eight-year extension worth $69 million. This was a masterstroke by Zito and the FO, as they not only kept him off the free agent market, but did so at a pretty low cost, all things told. C Anton Lundell (ironically something of an old guard player for them now at the young age of 22 by virtue of being one of their very small number of homegrown players and having started right as they were hitting their stride with the Presidents’ Trophy win in 2021–22, being a consistent presence since) was also retained to the tune of six years, $30M. His depth scoring presence was felt last season during the playoffs, with him putting up 16 points in the run to the Cup. In a sense, one could argue that Lundell and Sam Bennett (despite the latter playing on line two, notably alongside Matthew Tkachuk) function as dual 3Cs via their ATOI tending to hover around the 16:00 mark (though Bennett has shown he can punch above his weight and play a more “burdensome” role, as evidenced by his good statistical output particularly at 5v5 in his 20:52 ATOI during the run to the finals in 2023, but it seems the forward group hits more of a sweet spot with this distribution of deployments while letting Barkov be Finnish superman). Both have thrived in such a capacity and I have to praise Florida for keeping part of that dynamic in their system long-term. I wasn’t as thrilled about D Dmitry Kulikov getting a four-year extension at age 33 (he’ll turn 34 early into the season), but at $1.1 million and with his pretty successful reunion with the club last year in mind (registering 20 points during the regular season), it can definitely be lived with and won’t be an anchor.

With no first round pick due to the Claude Giroux trade (a selection which the Flyers, in a twist of irony, also flipped, to Edmonton in exchange for a conditional first rounder in 2025 as an indicator of their intent to focus on next season’s deeper class), the Panthers were pretty quiet at the draft, and they could afford to be. They still did alright for themselves, landing C Linus Eriksson of Djurgårdens IF at 58th overall. He has a decent track record, having performed respectably in the Allsvenskan with 11 points in 29 games last year and served as captain for the Swedish U18 team in their bronze medal campaign in Finland this spring. He is a solid TWF who will likely have a pro career that is nothing to sneeze at. Their only other selection in the top 100 was D Matvei Shuravin, who plays in CSKA Moscow’s system. Akin to countryman Timur Kol, he is a DFD with good skating ability. His development could be fun to track. Outside the top 100, the most noteworthy pick by Zito and the draft room was C Simon Zether. He’s an older player in this class, but as Chris Peters notes, it must count for something that he played 42 SHL games last year, and at 6’3″, he has a build a lot of teams covet at that position (even if size might actually be more helpful on the wing, but I digress). Not a ton of impact selections from the incumbent champions as you’d expect, but that’s a good headlining crop for a team that’s gone all-in on the present.

Florida took the sort of lumps you’d expect a champ to take, but they weren’t unbearable, and their supplementary moves weren’t bad. I also mostly really respect what they did to keep the group together and their additions to the pipeline in the Vegas Sphere weren’t bad at all. As such, I’ll give the Florida Panthers an A for this summer. I usually don’t do that for teams just going through the motions, but it seems to fit contextually. The most important thing for them to do this offseason was remain in Stanley Cup contention and they did. In fact, don’t be surprised if they do what their in-state rivals Tampa Bay did at the beginning of the decade and repeat as champs as part of a three consecutive Finals appearances run that was preceded by a Presidents’ Trophy win. It’s hard to build and maintain a dynasty, but this team might just have done it – in the most aggressive and unorthodox way possible.