NHL Trade deadline

[Brian Fein]

With the NHL trade deadline looming in about 2 hours, the Panthers have been having a good old-fashioned firesale.  Of the last 8 NHL trades, the Panthers have been involved in 5 of them.

So far, Stillman, McCabe, Dvorak, and Wideman have all been shipped off, mostly for prospects.  Its clear to me that the team has mailed it in this season and is reloading for the future.  They're getting younger, and building up the farm system and stockpiling draft picks.

There's discussion that Stephen Weiss, Tomas Vokoun and David Booth could be names we hear mentioned in the next 2 hours, but these guys are the nucleus of the team.  I could see Vokoun going, because the team is high on Clemmensen and has a lot of talent at goalie in the farm system.  I could see a violent fan uprising should they end up dealing Booth, though.

So, how is your favorite hockey team approaching the trade deadline?

[Brian Fein]

Add Bryan Allen to the list of guys on their way to the airport.

So, of all the defensemen the Panthers had, Weaver is the guy they decided to keep.

[TonyB0D]

the panthers won't even be playing in florida in 3 seasons.

clemmenson is a good goalie, probably overrated because he played with a great devils team in front of him, but he definitely saved our season a few years back.

the devils traded arnott to the caps, sad to see him go, but we're not making the playoffs and had to get back some of the assets we lost in the kovalchuk trade/league penalty

[Brian Fein]

Arnott was probably the most-anticipated trade of the day. 

I hope you're wrong about the Panthers.  I'd be upset.

[wyvernmcd]

the panthers won't even be playing in florida in 3 seasons.

I was talking to some of my hockey buddies about the finances of the Panthers and from what he was telling me they are not dead last in finances, as we are led to believe. I believe he told me out of all the teams in the league (30 teams) they ranked 16th in income revenue. I don't see them going any time soon. I see most of their income coming from the fans of the opponents coming into the stadium more than the fans down here and as long as they are not in the bottom 5 in revenue, they wont move. It is bringing in money and the league commissioner will not walk away from money that is already coming into an arena even if they are the bottom 5 in the league in record.

As I have stated before in discussions like this, North of the Border (Canada) would suggest that all teams that have no snowfall should not have Hockey. Well, they consider Tampa Bay to be one of the teams as well. Now despite all the good they have done, short of winning a cup in the next 3 years, they are on the same chopping block as the Panthers.

Food for thought.

[wyvernmcd]

I see Clemmenson leaving if he does not get more playing time. He used to be a great 1 to 1B goalie; now he is a #2. If you ever see him in game warm-ups where he is not the starter, a lot of times I have seen him move with very little effort (sometimes in net as well). This is sad and I still hate that the Panthers are nothing better than the NHL's "launching pad" for players who want to hide out from committing a crime (like Todd Bertuzzi), getting out of a bad contract to milk an more expensive one out of the Panthers and then play worse than the AHL player standing beside him, or people who have potential and we trade them for the 6-pack in the locker room and a random pick that we don't know anything about.

The "farm" teams are not better; the AHL Rochester Americans is last in their division, and the ECHL Cincinnati Cyclones are 9th out of 11 teams in their division, so being so bad is not really a shock to me at all. Mind you that in the minor leagues, some teams have multiple NHL affiliates but for the most part the Florida farm system is just like the team, right near the bottom. I don't see a major organizational lift so until they can really just jump from a terrible farm team to a major NHL team and turn the entire picture around, I see too many long seasons before this "Blueprint" can get to fruition.

I think the things that irritate me the most (Brian knows about this) is that a lot of the players are not doing fundamentals. If an attacking player is anywhere near the net, the stick head is DOWN!!! I have always seen the Panther players raise it when they are around the net and most of the more successful teams put the sticks down. It is the basic fundamentals that they seem to not show and as much as I applaud their efforts to be within 1 goal in most of their games, they seem to mostly be on the wrong side of that coin. I think they need to work more on getting the basics down (and not shooting at the center of the net all the time) before they try bringing on an expensive veteran because it will feel like they are just throwing away their money for a veteran who will not teach basics to the bad players who get paid million dollar contracts and then want to leave the team.

I'm frustrated at this because at the beginning of the season, they played better than in previous seasons and then after the trade deadline they have lost 8 of their last 9 games virtually eliminating any mathematical possibilities of squeaking into the 8th slot. Other than "trying" to win a better lottery pull for the draft picks, I just don't get why the players that remain (most of them) are laying back. If the GM is sticking by his word about keeping the players who show effort, he really needs to drop some of them after the end of the season because they have quit showing an effort while being on the job; a luxury I am sure none of us have while keeping their employment.