Fill In The Blank: Florida Panthers

It’s the dog days of summer when the NHL Draft is long since past, the bulk of Free Agency has been taken care of and with most NHL news having slowed to a slow trickle, we now sit watching days go by waiting for the start of training camps.

We already know how most of you feel about your Winnipeg Jets, so we wanted to ask you all about the other 30 teams in the NHL. This summer we’re going to ask for your feedback on our Twitter and Facebook on each NHL club.  Your replies can be complementary, they can be all-in-good-fun (or not) roasts, your reply can be a single word or it can be a statement.

The best replies will be gathered up and collected here for everyone’s viewing pleasure.

Today… The Florida Panthers are: ________

They’ve Had A Less Than Ideal Summer

It seems like only a couple of seasons ago the Panthers were everyone’s darling/secret crushes. They had Jaromir Jagr, they traded for Roberto Luongo, they made the playoffs for the first time in forever, they had some good young up and coming talent on the way, they were the “Computer Boys”.. But they got off to a rough start to start the 2016-17 season, fired Gerard Gallant and turmoil seemed to hang around them all season.

Then this summer happened…

It’s hard to fault just the Panthers for this, but how is Jagr still not signed to an NHL contract? We’ve already gone over how he’d still be a great depth forward even at the ripe old age of 249..

Things only got worse though.

The Vegas expansion and following draft forced a lot of teams into touch decisions, but no team made more head scratching ones than the Florida Panthers. Giving up Reilly Smith was one thing and you could understand not wanting to pay a 5 million dollar cap hit for 15 goals (although he’s hit 20+ twice) .. But leaving Jonathon Marchessault (he of 30 goals this past season) unprotected seemed crazy.

There weren’t many replies to this one.. Which hopefully isn’t a bad sign. They have good ownership and for a while looked like they were on the upswing as an important club to watch in the East. Now, uncertainty is back and they could slip into the irrelevance the had for years.