The Panthers will wrap up the 2024-25 preseason tomorrow night when they take on the Los Angeles Kings in La La Land.
It’s been a rough preseason for the Cats, but whatever…it’s preseason. The main win here is the lack of injuries to Florida’s roster. I mean, look around the league at all the injuries sustained to major players throughout preseason:
- Panarin
- Lindgren
- Reinbacher
- Laine
- Celebrini
- Stutzle
- Chabot
- Tkachuck (Brady)
- Doughty
Knock on wood, the Cats have so far dodged the injury bullet…
As we inch closer to Tuesday’s regular season opening game, let’s review the roster changes Florida has gone through this summer:
After the above changes, many people (fans/experts) are saying this is a watered-down version of the Cup-winning Panthers. While they did lose some key guys on the blueline (Montour, OEL), I’m in the camp that they might not be hurting as much as some think.
Re-upping Kulikov and Forsling was a must, and veteran depth signings like a Nate Schmidt, Jaycob Megna is going to help. Add in the potential upside of an Adam Boqvist as a low-risk-high-reward guy, Tobias Bjornfot who showed potential with LA, and young guns like Matt Kiersted looking to make the leap to a regular, Florida’s blue line won’t be flashy, but I think it has the potential to be defensively sound.
When I look at the forwards group…Tarasenko was a rental and nothing to be upset about losing. Lomberg was a solid energy/pest guy, but I believe that element will be replaced by Gadjovich getting an expanded role. The guy I’m most bummed about losing (along with Stolarz) is Kevin Stenlund. Not only a faceoff ace, but Stenlund was extremely consistent in his game; sort of that perfect fourth center. We’ll see how Tomas Nosek fills those skates.
I’m not going to judge the moves/roster until we get a nice sample size of games. I need to see what the roster will be, as I’m guessing the first couple weeks will see some juggling going on – both with guys moving around and in/out of it.
This is still very much a competitive team – no reason to think otherwise.
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Go Panthers!
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