Florida Panthers’ 2024 offseason

Another step forward

The Panthers took a giant step towards the team’s re-build during the 2024 offseason.  In 2023, a decision was made to start over to build a team that will compete for a championship year over year.

Defence

One area that needed to improve was the defence, although there were some depth defencemen in the prospect pool, the quality of the prospects needed to improve and the overall depth of the defence core on the team and the far team also needed to improve.

A year later the team drastically improved by adding Jordan Harris, Niko Mikkola, Rasmus Sandin, Tyler Kleven, Daniil Miromanov and by drafting Sam Dickenson #8, Anton Silayev # 10, Stian Solberg #19 the Panthers Defence went from needing improvement to a strength and by the 2025 / 26 will be one of the most talented and deepest defence in the DCHL.

Forwards

The team also started to lay the foundation for its forward group by adding Michael Rassmussen and Owen Tippett to the up-and-coming C Shane Pinto.

The 2023 draft saw the Panthers add Callum Ritchie, Kasper Haltunen and Lanni Hameenaho, 3 highly skilled forwards with the potential to be top 6 Forwards within the next 2 or 3 years.

In the 2024 draft the Panthers selected centres Michael Hage #15 and Yegor Surin #33.  In addition, they added 5 additional forwards in the 2024 draft that added to the teams’ prospect pool.

Adding these draft picks to the existing pool of forward prospects of Nikita Grebenkin, Zach Ostapchuck, Bryce McConnell-Barker, Stanislav Yarovoi and Juraj Pekarcik the team in heading in the right direction, now the GM just needs to be patient and continue adding to the teams’ talent pool.

Although the team did a lot of great work over the last year, they still need to add a couple of high-end skilled forwards to complete this group.

Goalies

This is the group that needs the most work / patience.

2 goalies were added in the draft Kim Saarinen and Marcus Gidlof, although they have potential, they will need time to develop and probably won’t be available to the Panthers until 2029 or 2030.

This comes after the Panthers added Akira Schmid through Free Agency in 2022 and Juha Jatkola in a trade with Seattle.  The plan is that both or one of them will be available to the Panthers in the 2025 / 26 season, when they start competing for a Stanley Cup.

The last goalie in the Panthers system is Kirill Gerasimyuk, a late 2021 draft pick that has been dominating the MHL and VHL in Russia the last 3 seasons, with Gerasimyuk only turning 21 this summer, he will also need time to develop before the Panthers can count on him to lead them to the promise land!