Panthers select Marek Alscher of WHL in third round of draft, add three wings, center and goaltender in final rounds

The Florida Panthers selected Marek Alscher, a defenseman from Kladno, Czech Republic, with the No. 93 pick in the NHL draft on Friday. He played this past season with the Portland Winterhawks of the Western Hockey League.

In his lone season with the Winterhawks, Alscher, standing 6 feet 3 at just 18 years old, played in 61 games, scoring seven goals and handing out seven assists for 16 points to help lead Portland to 47 wins and 99 points in the regular season.

Before his time in Portland, Alscher played for the Lahti Pelicans’ U18 team in Finland, totaling 14 points in 27 games before being selected by the Winterhawks in the first round of the CHL Import draft.

“The size-skating ratio and then you get a competitive defenseman,” general manager Bill Zito said of Alscher. “It’s somebody who can hopefully continue to grow and become one of those reliable minute-crunching guys, log big minutes and contribute night in and night out.”

Alscher, a third-rounder, was the Panthers’ first pick of the draft after not having a selection in either of the first two rounds. The team traded away those picks in exchange for immediate contributors Sam Reinhart and Sam Bennett.

In the fourth round, Zito opted to take another defenseman in 18-year-old Ludvig Jansson with the No. 125 pick.

A native of Stockholm, he has played the majority of his professional career alternating between the Södertälje SK’s junior and senior team.

Playing for the senior team last season, Jansson appeared in 47 games, scoring two goals and finishing with three assists for five points. He also played nine games for the junior team in 2021-22

Putting on a Panthers NHL jersey was a surreal moment for him.

“Of course it means a lot to me,” Jansson said. “It’s been everything since I was a little kid, so of course it means a lot.”

In the fifth round, the Panthers took their first offensive player of the draft, selecting left wing Sandis Vilmanis with the No. 157 pick.

Vilmanis, a native of Latvia, played the past two seasons, for Swedish club Lulea HF’s junior team. In 2022 he played in 40 games, racking up 18 goals and 13 assists for 32 points.

With their two sixth-round picks, the Panthers took left wing Josh Davies (No. 186) of Canada and American goalkeeping prospect Tyler Muszelik (No. 189).

Davies, 18, was the second prospect selected from the WHL, having played for the Swift Current Broncos. He scored 36 points with 119 penalty minutes last season.

Muszelik, was the first American selected by the Panthers. He played in the USA National Team Development program, he had a .900 save percentage last year.

At 6 feet 2, Muszelik, 18, continues to add depth to the organization’s position room and will have proper time to develop with Sergei Bobrovsky and Spencer Knight entrenched on the roster.

The Panthers ended up with a second seventh-round pick as well after trading a seventh-rounder in 2023 to the Penguins in order to take center Liam Arnsby with No. 214.

Arnsby, a Canada native, was an attractive prospect for Zito, having played with the North Bay Battalion. He captained the side and scored 26 points in 46 games.

“High leadership, high compete, high grit,” Zito said of Arnsby. “And it’s something that we need to continue to get better at and continue to have throughout our lineup. Someone at the table said ‘glue guy,’ and you can never have too much.”

With their final pick, Florida took right wing Jack Devine at No. 221.

Devine, who was set to be a freshman at the University of Denver, last played for the USA National Development, he participated at he World Junior Summer Showcase in Michigan this past year.

He had 10 goals and 12 assists in 33 games with the U18 team in 2020-21.

Overall, Zito was happy with the approach that he and his staff took to bringing in the best possible players with their draft capital and building upon the Panthers’ developmental system.

“At the beginning we set out to put an emphasis on what we would call being a Panther,” Zito said in the post-draft press conference. “So, character is obviously something that we look for, but generally it’s best player available. It’s been a theme that we established in the first draft when I got here and its carried on through the whole time.”