The Panthers are still in the playoff hunt, even if they sell at the trade deadline

The Florida Panthers are stuck in two places at once. A look at their roster, filled with star veterans and proven winners like Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, and Brad Marchand, among others, suggests this team is poised to make a run at a third straight Stanley Cup. A look at the standings, however, where the Panthers sit last in the Atlantic Division with 61 points through 57 games, suggests they should be selling at the trade deadline to reset for next season.

General manager Bill Zito will have to decide which version of his team is the real one before March 6th’s deadline, but there’s a chance he could have his cake and eat it, too. Even if Zito sells off a couple pieces for draft picks, Florida should still have enough talent left over to make a late-season charge at a playoff spot.

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by The Sheet‘s Jeff Marek to discuss the Panthers’ outlook for the rest of this season.

Jeff Marek: I really do wonder what the Florida Panthers are going to do. We all know they’ve been riddled with injuries, (Aleksander) Barkov being the big one, but we all know about Matthew Tkachuk at the beginning of the season and Seth Jones. The goaltending hasn’t exactly been great this year with (Sergei) Bobrovsky and (Daniil) Tarasov at the same time. I would be curious to see what Bill Zito does here.

If you read any military history books, they’ll always tell you retreating can be an offensive posture too, if you’re still in the fight. I don’t think that anyone thinks the Florida Panthers are not still in the fight. I think that if they take a step back, it’s not like “we surrender, we’re going to tear this thing down.” Bill Zito is a wise general manager. I don’t think that Bill Zito is fooling himself about where this team is at, and what it’s going to take to get into a playoff spot. I don’t think that he’s shy about saying “Look, we’re going to do a minor little retreat, we’re going to regroup, and we’re going to come back at this thing healthy next season.”

You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Tuesday’s episode here…