Thank you guys for the warm welcome!

And Gates yes I followed the debates about the Panthers prospect system; its basically the main thing all of us Panther fans (so between nine-15 people) are exited about.

Okay lets get started in here with some rant and some additional fantasy outlook about the new arrivals in the Sunshine State. I will mix it up with big and small names. If you need some input about a special guy earlier, let me know.

Sergei Shirokov:

Sergei Shirokov is a very intriguing prospect , who showed some brilliance on the Nucks, but he stated via Twitter he is only coming to Florida for his vacation the next years and wants to honor his contract with CSKA in the KHL. Florida will have first dibs after those three years, but he will be 28, when he finally could come over to the NHL.

Fantasy advice: Dont get exited about the potential here. The chance of Shirokov ever playing for the Panthers is < 10%. He is only worth a shot in super-deep fantasy leagues, where you can wait and see what happens.


Brian Campbell:

Yeah Soupy has a hefty contract for several more years that will lower his value in salary cap leagues, but just seeing this trade from the Panthers side its a landslide win. We got rid of a unwanted contract in Rostislav Olesz, who was more than disappointing the last seasons and the only progress he made is that he showed the potential to be awarded the teams Band-Aid-Award year after year and gained a better replacement for the departure of Bryan McCabe and Dennis Wideman.

Soupys contract isnt that scary anymore with the inflating salary cap (it seems like progress this will continue) and the fact that we needed to somehow hit the cap floor. On top of that the arrival and waive of his NTC convinced several other names to land in Florida (f.e. Kopecky and Upshall stated they came to Sunrise cause Campbell did), so that alone was worth it.

In addition to that the fantasy relevant side of the coin now:

The Panthers got a great PP quarterback and penalty killer in Soupy. The Blackhawks will miss him a lot more than some fans expect. He logged a total of 23 minutes of total ice time per game and a lot time was spent on the PK and PP.
So far he is expected to quarterback the Panthers Powerplay as well, together with rising young star Dmitry Kulikov.
Doing the PK forecast; he will not see the same amount of time as he did in Chicago due to the circumstance that the Panthers got a PK specialized unit with Jason Garrison and Mike Weaver, that already was on upper half of the league and there is no reason to change that. This fact should result into a smaller drop in the +/- category than what could be expected, if a guy plays for a far worse team.

You should pencil him in for 35 points and I wouldnt be surprised if he hit 45 points again. He proved that he can do it several times and the fact he is playing for a worse team will not necessarily result into worse stats on the sheet. (see as examples Jokinen, Olli, Bouwmeester, Jay).

PIM he should settle around 20 again, so he is not very valuable in that category.

Fantasy advice:

Soupy is a great option in the late rounds of one-year leagues now! Dont miss on him there.

For keeper leagues he is only interesting if you got a lot of cap space left. If you do he is a brutally good late round pick up as well, especially in points only leagues.


The potential defensive pairings:

Campbell- Kulikov
Jovocop - Gudbranson
Weaver- Garrison

7th d-men: Ellerby


Campbell and Kulikov should be the first pairing, while Jovo and Guds should be the 2nd.

Guds expected pairing is with Jovo to learn from him and to school his offensive awareness playing with a more defensive guy.

Its expected to see Weaver and Garrison stick together. They had awesome chemistry so far, especially on the PK, and there is no need to change that.

The poor boy Keaton Ellerby proofed he belongs in the NHL the last season. He will bounce in and out of the lineup for the full season. He needs to show more to offset a guy like Weaver or Garrison to become a full time NHLer.

Additional short info on Shawn Matthias:

"Word is Mike Santos will be returning to South Florida in the coming days so we should get word on the signing of RFA center Shawn Matthias soon" Miami Herald

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Florida Panthers Team Coverage

Great stuff, KTL! The Panthers will be a difficult team to predict with the massive turnover.

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Ultimate Fantasy Hockey League
Teams: 12
Players: G,A,+/-,PIM,PPP,SHP,GWG,SOG,FW,HIT
Goalies: GS,W,L,GAA,SA,SV,SV%,SHO
Pro(23)
3C - Malkin(RW)/Toews/Vermette(LW)/Hanzel
3LW - Parise/M.Foligno/Michalek(RW)/McDonald(C)
3RW - Cole/Simmonds/Brown(LW)/Downie(LW)
6D - Letang/Streit/Hamonic/Garrison/Ekman-Larsson/Girardi/Seidenberg
2G - Rask/Markstrom/Reimer/Vokoun
Farm(8)
C - Shaw/K.Palmieri/Tatar
LW - Zucker
RW -
D - S.Elliot/Trouba
G -Scrivens/Hackett

Welcome aboard. Good luck. Sorry to hear about being a Panthers fan :P

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3C 3LW 3RW 6D 2G 6BE.
G,A,+-,PIM,PPP,SHP,GWG,SOG,FW,HIT; GS,W,L,GAA,SA,SV, SV%,SO
(C) Bergeron, Spezza, Ribeiro, R. O'Reilly
(LW) Ovechkin(RW), Clowe(RW), Hagelin
(RW) Eberle, Stewart
(D) Subban, Pietrangelo, Green, Byfuglien(RW), Bogosian
(G) Crawford, Varlamov, Neuvirth

8 Person Farm:
(C), Couturier, Teravainen
(LW) Kreider
(RW) Etem
(D) Dumba
(G) Holtby, Ramo, Subban

Welcome bud! I think your take on Campbell is dead-on right.

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"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

Twitter: @ross10019

CBS Sportsline 14 team H2H keeper (21-man roster, 14 keepers), weekly lineup changes
G, A, PPP, SOG, BS, +/-, GAA, W, SV%
Montreal Maulers - 2011/12 and 2012/13 League Champions
C: Zetterberg/Getzlaf/Granlund/Roy/Desharnais
W: Hossa/Gaborik/Moulson/Marleau/Fleischmann/Horton/Brown/Baertschi(IR)
D: Markov/Karlsson(IR)/Letang/Byfuglien/McDonagh/Tyutin/Spurgeon
G: Lundqvist/Hiller/Brodeur

THN dislikes the offseason of my fellow Kittens. They ranked the Panthers finishing 14th overall in the Eastern Conference. Can´t blame them on that, they are used to it!


Jose Theodore:

The main reason they rank the Panthers that low, is our new goalie and my next piece to analyze. Jose "The Stopgap Solution" Theodore.

Theodore was brought in after they lost Thomas Vokoun to FA and according to Dale Tallon Jose was the next best option on the open market. The Panthers were pleased with awesome goalies in T-Vo and Loui over the last decade, so it will be a completly new feeling for them to not have an elite netminder in the back of the team.

Dobber stated the Panthers signed Theodore to make sure to get more high draft picks over the span of the next two seasons. I think this is biased bashing. While I wasn´t high on the signing at first, taking a closer look makes it a decent to good choice for Florida.

While I disagree with Dale on the point, that he was the best goalie out there, I agree he was the best goalie for the Panthers situation. With King Markstrom waiting in the pipelines it made no sense to bring in a good young talent like Dekanich or a fairly young guy like Ray Emery, who could burry Marky for several seasons on the bench or the minors.

He signed a two-season contract exactly the timeframe the Panthers have for the arrival of Markstrom and the final eclipse to a playoff team. During that time span the Panthers want to improve but don´t need to necessarily make the playoffs.

One reason the signing happened is that Theodore wanted to play in Florida, he was the one calling Tallon on his own. That´s usually a good sign.
As a former Vezina trophy winner, even if it was a fluke season, is at least decently talented as he proved again last season winning 15 of 32 games with a save percentage of .916 for Wild.

He won 25 games plus, in 5 of his last 10 seasons. And that´s what the Panthers are looking for from him again.

Theodore got a pretty good backup that can carry the Panthers and play up to 30 games if Jose fails in Scott Clemmenson, so he needs to keep his game up to stay the starter.

Fantasy outlook:

Looking at the numbers that he posted on the Wild, it seems like a little much to expect 25 wins for Theodore but keep in mind that Panthers had already a not too shabby defense last season and with the additions of Campbell, Jovanovski and Gudbranson this season the blueline should even get better.

I´d pencil him into starting around 55-60 games for the Cats and I´m fully expecting him to win around 25-28 games while doing that. Clemmenson will NOT surpass him as a starter this season. For the save percentage something along the lines of %.91 is what you should you hope for again..
The prediction of shootouts in general is a mystery task and others should be better at that task.

Try to buy low in deeper keeper leagues, if you are competing the next two seasons and start more than one goalie and need a second one or if you have daily switches. He will not be interesting for more than those two seasons and maybe you should focus only on this very season.

For one-year leagues it would be no surprise to see him finish above some other names on declining teams. So he shouldn´t be the last goalie selected there!

Good luck Jose!



Opposing to the ranking of THN for the 2011-2012 season, ESPN had the Panthers ranked #1 for the overall prospect system. This ranking was a pretty hefty debated on the ramblings section here on Dobber a few days ago.

I will try to shed some light on that prognosis and whether it is right or right.

For now just take a quick glance on the Panthers depth of noteworthy prospects to take a closer look at:

Forwards:

Quinton Howden
A.J. Jenks
Sergei Shirokov
Garret Wilson
Drew Shore
Vincent Trochek
Rocco Grimaldi
Jonathan Huberdeau
Logan Shaw
Kyle Rau
Nick Bjustad
Corban Knight
John MacFarland
Connor Brickley
David Pacan
Evgeni Dadonov
Joonas Donskoi
Michal Repik
Zachary Hyman
Anthony Luciani
Jonathan Hazen

D-Men:

Rasmus Bengtsson
Erik Gudbranson
Alexander Petrovic
Colby Robak
Keith Seabrook
Adam Comrie
Goaltenders:

Jacob Markstrom
Sam Brittain
Marc Cheverie
Brian Foster

While not all of those names are fantasy relevant, all of those names wouldn´t be all that surprising to end up in the NHL one day.

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Florida Panthers Team Coverage

To me the big thing with Theodore is that he has only ever performed well in a contract year. Given that he signed for two years, I hope Clemmensen is ready to play a lot of games.

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Twitter:@DH_EricDaoust.

Nice to see my favorite Panther promoter covering the Panthers Team coverage. Welcome aboard!! Looking forward to your insight.

So we might as well start here. Your thoughts on Tim Kennedy, now that his former coach from Portland is now at the helm in Florida?

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N Backstrom - P Marleau - P Sharp
A Tanguay - T Purcell - M Hossa
D Perron - BJ Crombeen - K Clifford
R Clune - T Kennedy - T Jackman

D Keith - J Schultz
B Dillon - S Salo
V Voynov - R Ellis

C Price

Z Dalpe, T Wandell, J Leopold , T Vokoun, R Bachman


Farm: M Hrivlik, J Audy-Marchessault, P Cehlin, S Wilson, T Blugers, B Hart, K, Agostino, C Blackwell, P McNally, B Lamb, A Sergeev, J Janus, M Mahalak, K Ramo, S Aittkallio...

30 team salary cap with 30 NHL roster & 30 prospects plus unsigned prospects = ZFHL also (DTDL and Scfhl2)

Glad to be here as well uofmehockey-) Where do i know you from?

To answer your question about Tim Kennedy:

While he was resigned in mid-June to a one year two-way contract and the Dineen hiring might help him a little, i see no chance how in bloody hell he can crack the top six after the Panthers overhaul in the offseason. And thats he position he needs to be in, to finally excel. Even our bottom six is totally crowded.

You got Fleischmann,Weiss,Versteeg, Booth, Santorelli, Upshall,Dadanov,Goc,Kopecky, Bergenheim as locks plus you got Ryan Carter, Skille, Bradley plus the two rookies that according to Dineen are competing for a spot as well in Quinton Howden and Garret Wilson.

Not sure how the pieces will fall for sure, but there is not more room on this team for Kennedy than being a constant AHL call-up. He really needs to get a lot of lucky events at the same time to make it happen. The chance of him making the team out of camp is under five percent.

Wouldn´t count on him unless its a brutally brutally deep league.

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Florida Panthers Team Coverage

Scfhl2 (Pittsburgh) and DTDL (St Louis)

__________________
N Backstrom - P Marleau - P Sharp
A Tanguay - T Purcell - M Hossa
D Perron - BJ Crombeen - K Clifford
R Clune - T Kennedy - T Jackman

D Keith - J Schultz
B Dillon - S Salo
V Voynov - R Ellis

C Price

Z Dalpe, T Wandell, J Leopold , T Vokoun, R Bachman


Farm: M Hrivlik, J Audy-Marchessault, P Cehlin, S Wilson, T Blugers, B Hart, K, Agostino, C Blackwell, P McNally, B Lamb, A Sergeev, J Janus, M Mahalak, K Ramo, S Aittkallio...

30 team salary cap with 30 NHL roster & 30 prospects plus unsigned prospects = ZFHL also (DTDL and Scfhl2)

Ah Thats comes from using team names as nicknames really didnt knew. Glad you are following my coverage.

Dale Tallon was criticized by the Hockey community that he totally inflated the contracts of the whole 2011 FA, by grossly overpaying each and every of the new Panthers signings.
While this is a pretty bold statement that isnt entirely true, there are two contracts Tallon gave away this offseason that are screaming overpaid even to me as a biased Panthers fan.

Those two contracts the bold statement is totally true about are the ones of Thomas Kopecky, who signed a 12-million contract over the course of four years and the retirement contract (16.5 million dollar/four years) for JovoCop, Ed Jovanovski.

While both guys are overpaid and that might affect their value in salary cap leagues a lot, they might be still noteworthy guys.

Ed Jovanovski:

At first glance the signing of Jovanovski seems like a farewell gift from the team that drafted him in the first round in 1994. There are several aspects why Dale Tallon signed the JovoCop. One reason is that he is still highly respected in the whole fan base and puts some butts in the seats to create some revenue. And he definitely brings a ton of leadership to the table, a factor the last-decade-Panthers were completely missing.
Jovo is destined to help and teach blue chip prospect Erik Gudbranson the way to become a great NHLer, as a high character guy with 16 successful seasons under his belt, there arent many others that could be considered as good potential teachers for Guds.

He is grossly overpaid for his production that he should, bring but overall he isnt a bad signing, the Panthers were able to afford it, they needed to reach the cap floor anyway and Jeff Finger wasnt a better option to do that.

Fantasy outlook:

Jovanovski was crippled with injuries the last two seasons but seems to be on the decline a little, even if you adjust his stats to the games he played.
For the next season id expect something along the lines of 65 games, 28 points and 55 PIMS. With that contract he just signed this should not be all that appealing for fantasy owners regardless in what kind of league you play in. He should only be an option if you got tons of cap space left and need a d-men bad.


Thomas Kopecky:

Thomas Kopecky on the other hand was brought in for a seventh rounder from Tallons former club, the Blackhawks. For the first time in his career he finished with 42 points, which would set him second overall in scoring on the whole Panthers team last season just behind Stephen Weiss.

But dont get excited by those numbers, he mostly managed those while playing with Hossa and Sharp, two awesome linemates. The new shaped Panthers team cant help him with linemates of that caliber. Kopecky is a hardworking, hard hitting winger with good positioning but he isnt a scorer.

For the mystery that is the lineup the new Cats lineup, he should suit in either as the third or the fourth Left Wing.
At the moment it is looking like Kevin Dineen is planning on fielding 3 scoring lines which would push down Kopecky to the fourth line,while the other new signing Sean Bergenheim would profit and be put on the third line cause he fits this line better.

Fantasy outlook:

On the one hand Kopecky will be a big gain for the Panthers, due to the fact he is playing that gritty game this team needs so bad. But thats not good news for fantasy owners because he will do that on the fourth or at best on the third line. He should get a ton of hits out there, that help in multicat leagues but dont expect more than 30 points maximum with 50 PIMS out of him for next season. If you want to be on the safe side calculate with 25 points for Thomas.
Suggestion: Stay away till the very late rounds of your draft to grab him.

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Florida Panthers Team Coverage