Which Panthers UFAs are most likely to re-sign?

Frank Seravalli released his Top 50 UFAs who are set to hit the market July 1 for the opening day of NHL Free Agency, and today on Daily Faceoff Live, Frank breaks down which Florida Panthers players are most likely to re-sign with the club.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Three of your top 10 are Florida Panthers, Frank, obviously Brad Marchand, new to the Panthers organization, but Sam Bennett’s and Aaron Ekblad are there. Their cap situation is that they have $19 million in projected space with 10 forwards, five D men and one goalie on their raw so you can kind of count up, you need to probably sign five players with that 19 million. Can they get all three of these guys back, you think? or is that a reach?

Frank Seravalli: Yeah, and Nate Schmidt also way further down the board, like they there’s a bunch of Florida Panthers guys that they’re gonna have some significant questions. If I were to take these ones and rank them in order of most likely to least likely to resign, I would say Sam Bennett, most likely, then Aaron Ekblad second, most likely, and Brad Marchand third. Unless Brad Marchand is willing to take a a a discount, which wasn’t really willing to do in Boston, like, I think the numbers that we’re talked about were really reasonable.

Frank Seravalli: The Bruins didn’t seem to think that that was the same that they were in agreement on what that looked like. and if he wasn’t willing to really budge off of that number significantly in Boston, what’s the point now? You ripped the Band-Aid off, like, just go have a day. like, have a ball and get what you can get. So, I think the production increase from Sam Bennett, like this 50, I think is a new career high in the regular season. And when you look at his his playoff pedigree and what he brings, like, he’s such an important piece, the tough part is figuring out relative, regular season production and pay, which is the only time it counts on the cap to then the larger postseason impact, he’s a really tough guy to let go. and and actad, I think, his game has waned a lot. you see the game’s played, he’s been hit with injuries over over the years. He’s slowed down a bit.

Frank Seravalli: I just think that there’s other things that the Panthers might be willing to do. I think the Panthers in conversations to try and get Mikko Rantanen in and I think that Carter Verhaeghe, newly signed, was one of the guys that they would have considered moving. Do they do something else with someone like him and free up more space and it out? They’ve got some things to figure out because I think ultimately in the end, they’d like to improve this defense court, and it’s gonna be hard to do when you’re taking someone like Ekblad and deleting it, potentially spit and others.