Florida Panthers Pull Off Ultimate Salary Cap Coup

Before the champagne from their celebratory Stanley Cup soirée had gotten warm, the Florida Panthers were faced with a tough choice.

Conn Smythe winner Sam Bennett, playoff point machine Brad Marchand, and former number one overall pick Aaron Ekblad, were all set to come off the books this offseason.

Signing even two of the three seemed like a tall task, and getting all of them in the boat looked to be next to impossible.

They said it couldn't be done. The haters doubted whether this was possible.

The haters were dead wrong.

How's that for a Stanley Cup follow-up?

I am not even entirely sure how they pulled this off from a logistics standpoint, but Panthers general manager Bill Zito just conducted another masterclass in roster construction.

Getting Marchand at the trade deadline alone felt like a monster addition, but keeping all three of his big pending free agents was a different coup all together.

And somehow, this man STILL hasn't won a GM of the Year award.

Make it make sense!

With the money being thrown around between these three, there are sure to be some cap casualties, as it is unheard of to keep a Stanley Cup roster completely intact.

There are rumors that the Panthers could lose key contributors like Nate Schmidt or Evan Rodrigues to free up some cap space, but that is a small price to pay - both literally and figuratively - to keep their core together.

Lest we forget, this isn't just about Marchand, Ekblad, and Bennett.

Florida has a majority of their championship roster locked into long-term deals until at least 2030.

That post right there should make the rest of the league very worried.

A team that just won back-to-back Stanley Cups has almost all of its playoff production locked up for the next half a decade.

You'd better get used to seeing the Panthers near the top of the NHL for a long time. They aren't going anywhere.