Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman on The Jeff Marek Show – Marchese & Friedman: Team Player or Sore Loser (Dec. 22nd).
Matt Marchese: “Now Florida is 12th in the East in points. It’s a much tigher Eastern Conference, I’ll say that much, but this does feel like … Do I think they’ll get out of this? Sure. Do I think they’ll need to figure out their goalies, do their goalies need to be more consistent? Sure.
But this is also, they’re not in a position where they can just trade out of their problems right now either.”
Friedman: “No. No they can’t because their just, they also don’t have a lot of resources to trade with.
My position is that if they had the assets to trade for (Jakob) Chychrun, they would have either been trying to do it or they would have it done already. But the don’t. they went all in last year. They traded away a lot of their picks and they don’t have the ability right now to.
I think a lot, the begining of this year, if we all had a question about the Panthers, it was going to be, could they defend. They had to have good goaltending. I think (Spencer) Knight is going to be good. I think he’s legit, but he’s not ready to be the full-time, number one yet. And (Sergei) Bobrovsky’s really struggled.
So, you’ve got a problem. And that’s the thing. They’re tight in the cap and they don’t have a lot pieces that they can move for top end players. And so they’re in a really tough spot. There’s no question about that.
I also think that there’s something to be said for, is this the time for you to blow whatever capital you have left. And last year I understood why they did what they did. They had a shot, and they should have taken a run at it. I’m just not sure if now they should be considering that cause I’m not sure they’re good enough.”
