CDL Season Preview Series: Florida Panthers

The Cycle Down Low Season Preview is a feature where we look at the chances for your favourite team in the 2011-2012 NHL campaign.  AND WE’RE GOING TO VEGAS!  With the new season upon us, a mere 30 days away, the CDL Season Preview Series will take you right up to game one of the new season.  Is this the year they surprise everyone and take the Cup?  Are the great expectations placed upon them too much?  Here you’ll get the scoop on what is to come for every team from both the Eastern and Western Conferences.  The breakdown will list the teams in six categories: Stanley Cup Odds (the actual odds from Bodog.ca and a breakdown of what you can expect), Lock (the best bet or biggest star on the team), Upset (the bust or player that won’t preform as well as many think), Pit Bosses (front office), Payout (the overall summary of the team), and CDL Bet (our bet at what the results will be for the team this year).

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STANLEY CUP ODDS: 75/1

Out with the old, in with the new.  Quite literally, that’s the way things seem to be going in Florida.

After years of the Panthers continuing their playoff drought — now reaching the decade mark — the Panthers have gone ahead and cleaned house.  Randy Sexton, the team’s GM in 2009-10, was let go and Dale Tallon, seen by many as the architect behind the Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup winning team, was brought in.  This summer Peter DeBoer was let go after three full seasons as the team’s coach and replaced with former NHLer and coach of the AHL’s Portland Pirates, Kevin Dineen.

With the front office and bench boss positions filled, the re-shaping of the Florida Panthers began.  After trading away Nathan Horton, Gregory Campbell, and Keith Ballard, the Panthers went into the year knowing it was going to be one of those years.  The team struggled from nearly the opening faceoff.

Scoring was a struggle all season with the Panthers managing a measly 2.33 goals a game, good enough for — Oh, I don’t know — 28th in the league?  If that wasn’t enough, it seemed like every move Tallon made to add scoring fell flat on its face.  A trade for Niclas Bergfors, who was at one time a key piece in the Ilya Kovalchuk deal, didn’t quite work out as Tallon would have hoped as the talented prospect failed to get anything going and would register a measly seven points (1-6) in 20 appearances with the Cats.

It wasn’t only Bergfors that struggled, either.

Tallon would make a plethora of moves up front to make the offense blossom, but nothing would click.  Jack Skille’s 13 games in Florida were good for two points, off-season acquistion Steve Bernier only put up 15 points in 68 games, and even those he could count on regressed as Stephen Weiss’ point totals dipped after to two consecutive years at 60+ to 49 (21-28).

Not only were things going wrong on the ice, off the ice there was just as much negativity surrounding the team.

For the past several years the only redeeming factor for the Panthers has been their undeniable all-star between the pipes, Tomas Vokoun.  The clear cut team MVP year in and year out since his arrival in 2007-08, Vokoun has never posted a save percentage below .919 in a Panthers uniform, and it was clear what Florida’s intentions were: sign him, and sign him long-term.

As rumours continued to swirl about the back and forth, it became clear that there was very little chance Vokoun would be back in a Florida jersey, and the bad news seemed like it didn’t stop there for Panthers fans.

Just before the trade deadline rumours were sparked that Dale Tallon had made his voice heard about blowing up the entire roster and starting fresh, stating that there were almost no untouchables on the team.  Stephen Weiss, he was looking at you.  For weeks, even months, there was speculation about the chances of Weiss being moved, but nothing ever seemed to happen.  It was not until the trade deadline came and passed that people stopped the speculation about Weiss’ future with the team.All in all 2010-2011 was a year to forget for the Panthers.  Matter of fact most of the past ten years have been that way, but is there some light at the end of the tunnel?

Maybe, but it may very well just be a train.

LOCK

For years — I think I’ve already made it clear that it’s been about ten of them (…recruitin’ suckas Mac and Mike and makin’ men of ‘em) — the Panthers and their fans have had very little to look forward in ways of someone to either throw the back of a jersey, carry the team out of a hole, or just make that play when it was needed.  Finally, this year, that someone may be there.

After an injury shortened season in Colorado, Tomas Fleischmann looks to keep up the pace from his production in Denver

In an injury shortened season last year, Tomas Fleischmann — or Flash as him teammates call him — put up 31 points (12-19).  If you extrapolate that to a full season (the injury made Fleischmann’s campagn a mere 45 games), it looks like Flash could be right up alongside Weiss and Booth in putting up nearly 60 points.  A team with three 60 point getters is nothing to laugh about, and Flash does it in his own way.

Maybe a bit more defensively gifted than either of the two, the 27-year old Czech winger can play any of the three forward positions and contribute big minutes on the PP.  Fleischmann has soft hands and is a gifted distributer and it can only help the puck moving efforts of the not-so-offensively-adept Cats.

On top of that, the cast that Tallon has brought in to surround Fleischmann will help his chances at further blossoming after getting off of the Colorado Avalanche ship that sank so very hard last season.

If Flash can get good quality minutes, there is no reason to believe he can’t surpass and destroy his previous career highs of 23 goals and 28 assists.

BUST

How many of you remember the name Chris Kontos?

Maybe a handful?

Chris Kontos was a member of the LA Kings in 1989 and in the playoffs that year, he tallied 9 goals in 11 games.  His 9 playoff goals would be over 1/6th of his career total in the NHL.  Never again would Kontos perform at the level he did that post-season.

How about John Druce?

Druce scored eight goals all season in 89-90 while with the Capitals.  Most of Druce’s time was spent on the fourth line, but come playoff time that season, something magical happened.  Druce played lights out and tallied not only eight goals, but another six, besting his entire season total and making puck pundits heads spin with his performance.  Not only that, nine of his fourteen total goals came in a single series against the Devils.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Sean Bergenheim’s regular season was about what you would expect from a late off-season free agent pickup for the Tampa Bay Lightning.  He played 80 games for Tampa and registered 29 points (14-15), but come playoff time, he exploded.  Bergenheim posted nine goals in sixteen games in the playoffs last season and he made sure to cash in on it.  During the off-season, Tallon signed Bergenheim to a four-year deal worth $11 million.

Bergenheim’s not exactly a proven player and the payoff after one season, more specifically one post-season, could prove to be a salary cap killer, something Tallon knows all too much about.  It went without saying that someone was going to throw money at Bergenheim, but I’d put money down on his playoff performance being a flash in the pan.

PIT BOSSES

Dale Tallon, as previously stated, is a smart man.  He’s understands the game, he knows how to build a team, and he has taken a team from the bottom of the mountain all the way to the peak, but Florida is a different animal altogether.

He’s never been a good Cap manager, but he has always been a team guy that players want to play for.  This could help him draw in talent and convince them that becoming a Florida Panther, doing something where no one else really has before, could be the best fit.  Going forward Tallon will need help from his scouting staff as, most likely, this will be another floundering season for the Panthers.

When it comes to signing talent, Tallon has made it clear that he will be aggressive in the market.  He went out and signed what seemed like half of the free agents available.  It’s clear he wants to do everything with the amount of money he has available to him to turn this team into a competitor.  He may be able to do just that, and has taken steps in the right direction, surely.

Kevin Dineen, much has been said about his tenure in the AHL.  In six seasons as the bench boss for the Pirates, Dineen never had a record below .500.  On top of all that, his very first season as the head coach, he won the Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award as the AHL’s most outstanding coach.

Dineen was oft regarded as the coach that was going to make the jump next and this is it.  He’s been given an opportunity, and Tallon retooled the team for him.  It will be interesting to see if he can make the most of what has been put in front of him by Tallon and Co.

PAYOUT

It’s a serious transition period in Sunrise.  If you don’t believe me, let’s just look at a quick run down of who is in and who is out this off-season alone:

IN:
F: Scottie Upshall, Kris Versteeg, Tomas Fleischmann, Sean Bergenheim, Tomas Kopecky, Marcel Goc, Matt Bradley
D: Brian Campbell, Ed Jovanovski
G: Jose Theodore

OUT:
F: Rostislav Olesz, Marty Reasoner, Mike Duco, Darcy Hordichuk, Niclas Bergfors
D:  Alexander Sulzer
G: Tomas Vokoun

That’s not a small transformation.  Matter of fact, that’s not even close to one.  From the top line to the bottom line, it is expected that there could be as many as seven or eight fresh faces appearing this year if any of the recent Florida draft picks — namely Quinton Howden and 2011 1st rounder Jonathan Huberdeau — end up making a good impression out of training camp.  On D, it could be just as many, as half the D-corps will likely be fresh faces in the form of Brian Campbell, Ed Jovanovski, and 2010 3rd overall pick Erik Gudbranson.

The place where the biggest change will be, however, is Jose Theodore.  After a few seasons in Washington and a brief stint in Minnesota last year, Theodore is looking to make the best of his opportunities at the helm.  Right in his rearview mirror, however, is Jakub Markstrom.

While many will remember Markstrom more for his diving antics in the gold medal game of the 2009 World Junior Hockey Championship, the young Swedish netminder has all the tools to take the reigns as soon as this season.  He’s got size — he’s a towering 6’4″ — and he almost carried that talented Swedish team through the tournament, earning the best player award at his position.  In his final two seasons in the SEL with Brynas, Markstrom was able to post SV% of .917 and .927 respectively before making the jump to the AHL and posting a SV% of .907 to go along with a GAA a touch under 3.00 grouped with one shutout in 37 games.  The 2010 Elitserien Rookie of the Year has the tools to be an NHL netminder and the tutelage of a former Vezina winner like Theodore can only help.

CDL BET

Florida Panthers: 10th place in the Eastern Conference, 3rd in the Southeast Division

Record: 36-34-12 — 84PTS

Points Leader: Stephen Weiss — 24G – 38A – 62PTS

Bold Prediction: Jose Theodore recaptures a bit of the magic from his years in Montreal and shows he can still be an NHL starter.

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