With no first-round pick, the Panthers’ Draft will be all about trades — past and future

The Florida Panthers don’t have a first-round pick in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft.

Actually, they won’t have a first-round pick in NHL Entry Draft again until at least 2026.

It comes with the territory when a team is as aggressive in trying to improve as the Panthers are and it means the 2023 NHL Draft will be as much about networking in Nashville as making picks for Florida.

The Draft begins Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Bridgestone Arena with Round 1 and finished with Rounds 2-7 on Thursday, and then free agency begins just about 72 hours later Saturday.

The offseason is officially underway, just two weeks after the Panthers’ season ended with a loss in the 2023 Stanley Cup Final.

“Teams are reluctant to call you when you’re in it, so now your phone is blowing up and I’m trying to get back and handle some of those things,” general manager Bill Zito said Wednesday. “It’s a little chaotic.”

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It almost always is for Zito and it typically works.

The reason why Florida doesn’t have a pick in the first round this week or in any first round until 2026 is, after all, because of how aggressive he has been as a trader.

His first-round picks in 2023 and 2024 are gone because of rentals he acquired before the trade deadline last year. His first-round pick in 2025 is gone as part of the trade to land superstar right wing Matthew Tkachuk last offseason.

It’s fair to assume he’ll explore all his options to improve the team, even after he said he owed it to the players “to do everything to try and keep everybody together.”

“With all that said, my job is to try and get the best team we can get,” Zito said. “That, at some point, becomes the sum of the pieces and if there’s a move that we think will make us better, then we’ll pursue it.”

The Tkachuk trade was a blockbuster and stunner not just because it netted the Panthers an All-Star winger, but also because Florida, on the heels of winning the Presidents’ Trophy, sent out star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau and star defenseman MacKenzie Weegar to get him.

Both were about to enter the final years of their contracts and the Panthers were going to struggle to give both long-term deals.

Right now, Florida has nine everyday players set to become free agents next offseason — wingers Anthony Duclair, Sam Reinhart, Anton Lundell, Carter Verhaeghe, Eetu Luostarinen and Ryan Lomberg, plus defensemen Josh Mahura, Gustav Forsling and Brandon Montour — and will certainly try to extend some this summer.

With $10 million in cap space to work with right now and at $35 million in projected cap space available for next offseason, the Panthers have some flexibility. Only four everyday players — defensemen Radko Gudas and Marc Staal, and centers Colin White and Eric Staal — are set to become free agents later this week, and none ranked among Florida’s top eight forwards or three defensemen in average time on ice.

Some of those 2024 free agents, though, will come up in trade talks because the Panthers almost certainly can’t keep them all beyond next season. Florida would like to extend Forsling and Montour, Sportsnet reported; Duclair is fetching interest as a trade target, The Sports Network reported.

Those talks will begin in earnest, and in person, this week in Tennessee.

The Panthers will also do their due diligence when it comes to potentially trading into the first round Wednesday. As of now, Florida won’t pick until the penultimate pick of the second round Thursday — No. 63 overall.

“If we have somebody that we have rated very, very high and they’re slipping, slipping, slipping, but I don’t know if he’s going to get into the 60s, maybe we do give something up because this is going to be too valuable to pass up here,” Zito said. “There could always be trades. You never know until that phone rings.”

The Panthers’ other picks are No. 127 in Round 4, No. 159 in Round 5, No. 191 in Round 6 and No. 198 in Round 7, which they have from the Coyotes. They’ve also traded away their own third- and seventh-round picks.

It’ll make it challenging for Florida to restock with future talent. The Panthers know they need to be creative, either by finding hidden gems in the Draft, or signing undrafted free agents from college or foreign leagues.

“Wherever you pick, you’ll always try to find the best value and try to find the best player you can. We’ve had good fortune in re-stocking in alternate ways,” Zito said. “We can sort of add in other ways where you don’t have those picks. We’re hoping that goes well and we can yield another player through that process as well.”