How did the Stanley Cup finalists acquire their rosters?
The Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers are engaged in an all-out war in the Stanley Cup Final.
After a stunning overtime win on Thursday, the Oilers are all tied up with the Panthers at two games apiece, making the battle for the Cup a best-of-three series.
But how did the Panthers and Oilers get here?
I don’t mean who the two teams beat in the earlier rounds, but how did the Panthers and Oilers put together their rosters that have taken them to the Stanley Cup Final? Did they build through the draft, did they pay big in free agency, or did they execute some big trades?
Of course, it’s a little bit of all three, but it’s interesting to break it down and compare the two teams.
For instance, the Oilers’ top-four scorers in the playoffs were all drafted and developed by the Oilers: Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Evan Bouchard, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.
Conversely, up until Thursday when Aleksander Barkov’s two-point game moved him past Brad Marchand, none of the Panthers’ top-four scorers in the playoffs were drafted and developed by the Panthers. Marchand, Sam Bennett, and Matthew Tkachuk were all acquired via trade, while Carter Verhaeghe was signed in free agency.
Let’s break it down a little bit further.
How the Edmonton Oilers acquired their roster
Just six of their 25 players who have appeared in at least one playoff game this year were drafted by the Oilers. Of those, five were first-round picks: Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Evan Bouchard, and Darnell Nurse. The sixth is goaltender Stuart Skinner, who was a third-round pick.
Those draft picks, however, do represent their top-four scorers in the playoffs, two of their top-four defencemen, and their starting goaltender. In other words, the bulk of their core came via the draft.
That’s perhaps unsurprising given the Oilers’ draft lottery luck over the years, but it should be noted that just two of the Oilers’ first-overall picks from the last 15 years are still with the team.
Of the remaining 19 players, ten were acquired via free agency, eight were acquired via trade, and one was acquired off waivers.
Aside from the first-round picks made by the Oilers, three more first-round picks were traded to acquire other pieces, namely Jake Walman, Adam Henrique, and Mattias Ekholm.
But a lot of the team’s supporting cast were acquired in free agency: Corey Perry, Evander Kane, Zach Hyman, and Connor Brown are the next four scorers after the quartet of first-round picks.
Kane and Perry are unique, as both were acquired after their previous teams terminated their contracts. That’s not necessarily repeatable for a team like the Canucks, nor is it even advisable, as players usually get their contracts terminated for a good reason.
Hyman is unfortunately done for the playoffs after a wrist injury. The Oilers bet big on Hyman aftera few strong seasons for the Toronto Maple Leafs, signing him to a seven-year contract that has paid off in a big way, with 54 goals last season and a big role in the Oilers’ run to the Stanley Cup Finals last year.
The Oilers took a chance on Connor Brown coming off a major ACL injury that wiped out his 2022-23 season. They opted for a bonus-laden contract to hedge their bets, then were able to re-sign him to another one-year contract. There are unique circumstances involved as well, given that Brown and McDavid previously played together in junior with the Erie Otters.
Another interesting bet was made on John Klingberg, signing him late in the season after he recovered from double hip surgery, giving the Oilers an experienced defenceman to shore up their depth.
The Oilers also rounded out their roster with some low-cost trades, moving fourth-round picks for Vasily Podkolzin and Troy Stecher.
What can the Canucks learn from this? One is that taking chances in free agency can really pay off. The Oilers swung big on Hyman and took a chance on guys coming off injury like Brown and Klingberg.
They also weren’t afraid to trade away first-round picks, but only once they were clearly in their Cup window. The Canucks have been a little too eager to trade away first round picks before they’re actually ready to make that step to be a legitimate Cup contender.
How the Florida Panthers acquired their roster
The Panthers were not built through the draft.
Just four of the 24 players on the Panthers’ playoff roster were drafted by the Panthers, and all four were first-round picks: Aleksander Barkov, Aaron Ekblad, Anton Lundell, and Mackie Samoskevich.
That means there’s just one player drafted outside of the first round playing in the Stanley Cup Final for the team that drafted them: goaltender Stuart Skinner.
A few of the players drafted by the Panthers are important parts of their lineup, of course. Barkov is a Selke-calibre centre and the team’s captain, Ekblad is a top-pairing defenceman, and Lundell is an excellent two-way third-line centre. But a lot of key roster pieces for the Panthers have come outside of the draft.
Instead of building through the draft, the Panthers were primarily constructed via trades and free agency. Eight of their players, including five of their top-seven scorers, were acquired via trade, while 11, including their number-one goaltender, were acquired via free agency.
One more player was acquired on waivers, though it’s a pretty important player: top-pairing defenceman Gustav Forsling.
That’s not to say the draft didn’t play a major role in constructing the Panthers. Several of the trades used to construct their team involved players drafted and developed by the Panthers.
For example, the Panthers traded second-round pick Emil Heineman and a second-round pick to the Calgary Flames as part of the deal to acquire Sam Bennett. Seventh-round pick Devon Levi and a first-round pick went to the Buffalo Sabres for Sam Reinhart. And first-round pick Spencer Knight and another first-round pick were dealt to the Chicago Blackhawks for Seth Jones.
In recent years, the Panthers have aggressively traded away draft picks to maximize their Stanley Cup window. They haven’t made a first-round pick in the last three years, and they’ve traded away their next three first-round picks as well. That’s six straight years without a first-round pick.
That aggressiveness in trading away picks has arguably played a much bigger role in the Panthers becoming a juggernaut than their state tax.
The big trade, of course, was a bit of a unique circumstance, as the Panthers took advantage of Matthew Tkachuk wanting out of Calgary by swinging a huge deal, trading a first-round pick, former first-round pick Jonathan Huberdeau, former seventh-round pick MacKenzie Weegar, and former third-round pick Cole Schwindt to land Tkachuk.
The Panthers haven’t been afraid to trade away good players to get the players they want. The Tkachuk trade is an obvious example, but so is the Seth Jones trade, moving a young, talented goaltender in Knight.
Eetu Luostarinen is another example, coming to the Panthers in the Vincent Trocheck trade back in 2020. Luostarinen certainly hasn’t been as good as Trocheck, and the other pieces of the trade are long gone, but Luostarinen has been an excellent defensive winger and has chipped in 15 points in the playoffs, while obviously costing a fraction of Trocheck’s cap hit.
What’s interesting is that for all of the fuss over state tax, the Panthers have acquired more of their most important players via trade than free agency. A lot of the free agent signings on their playoff roster have been low-cost bets on players with upside, like Nate Schmidt and Jesper Boqvist.
And one of their biggest free-agent signings didn’t seem to give the Panthers any sort of tax-related discount, as Sergei Bobrovsky is the most expensive active goaltender in the NHL with his $10 million cap hit.
So, what can the Canucks learn from the Panthers? A big one is that it’s all right to take big swings in trades, but you really want to make sure that you’re trading away a Huberdeau and acquiring a Tkachuk and not the other way around.
Those eager to see the Canucks trade Elias Pettersson might see him as akin to Huberdeau, but it’s more likely that the Canucks end up on the losing end of any prospective Pettersson trade.
The Panthers also show that it’s okay to lose a trade once in a while, as long as you’re losing it the right way. The Panthers arguably lost the Trocheck trade, but it ultimately saved them cap space and still gave them a solid player.
Another thing to learn is that hitting on draft picks outside of the second round doesn’t have to help your roster; it can instead help you with assets for the trade market. Finding Emil Heineman in the second round and him showing immediate positive development in Sweden helped the Panthers get Sam Bennett.
Being willing to trade some of those draft hits at the right time can provide key roster pieces.
Of course, those prospects were packaged with draft picks, and there’s a similar point to be made about the Panthers as about the Oilers: the Panthers have aggressively traded picks, but only once they were squarely in their Cup window and not before. Up until the Sam Reinhart trade in 2021, the Panthers held onto their first-round picks.
Once they decided they were going for it, however, they were all-in. Their timing was right, as it led to them making three straight Stanley Cup finals.
