The trade
Florida Panthers get: Right winger Vladimir Tarasenko (Senators retain 50 percent of salary).
Ottawa Senators get: Conditional fourth-round pick in 2024, third-round pick in 2025. (Condition: Fourth becomes a third if Panthers win Stanley Cup.)
Dom Luszczyszyn: When the Panthers acquire a player, it’s fair to envision the best version of that player immediately coming to light. The Panthers are a savvy organization that has shown time and again that they know exactly which players to target and they know exactly how to get the most out of them. They know how to make different skills mesh perfectly to maximize a player’s full potential.
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Enter Vladimir Tarasenko, a flawed scorer who looks like the perfect player for Florida’s second line.
For starters, he is not Nick Cousins. That Cousins, who has five goals all season, was the man most recently skating beside Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett shows just how large of a need a scoring winger was for Florida.
What Vladimir Tarasenko is, is a pure finisher who can put up numbers at five-on-five. That’s a huge addition for Tkachuk who has grown into one of the game’s very best play-makers. Tarasenko is a solid offensive play-driver too which should mean the second line can spend even more time going to work there. Tarasenko should fit perfectly here with the other two doing all the dirty work.
Where there’s concern with Tarasenko is his defensive ability. In each of the last three seasons, his teams have bled a lot of chances against with him on the ice and that reached new heights this year on a bad Senators team. It shouldn’t be as big of an issue on a more structured Panthers team with a lot more support, but it is a red flag in his game that his offense comes with a price.
Fortunately for the Panthers that price was very cheap: A 2024 fourth-round pick that can turn into a third if the Panthers win it all, and a 2025 third-round pick. And that’s with Tarasenko’s salary retained at 50 percent.
That’s some tidy risk-free business on Florida’s end and makes this deal a slam dunk for the Panthers. A perfect fit at an extremely reasonable cost. This is a pretty big win for them.
As for the Senators, the return is obviously not ideal. It would’ve been nice to at least get a second-rounder here, but trade protection and a crowded market meant a lower return. It’s hard to fault them too much for that, but that doesn’t make this deal feel like any less of a loss for them.
Panthers grade: A+
Senators grade: C
Sean Gentille: The Panthers’ need for a middle-six winger with some scoring pop had become obvious; we said as much in last week’s edition of The Athletic’s NHL power rankings. A team that good, and that capable of winning the Stanley Cup, should not be playing Cousins on its second line. General manager Bill Zito’s track record, combined with a glut of rental wingers and Florida’s own half-decent cap situation, made some moves seem relatively inevitable. It was more a matter of “whom” than anything else.
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Tarasenko isn’t a bad answer to the question. He’s not the guy he was a few years ago, particularly when it comes to shot volume. He’s not the guy that, say, Jake Guentzel is at the moment, either. For the Panthers, though, he makes all the sense in the world.
Part of that is due to who he’s replacing; Cousins has become a name-brand NHL player because he’s annoying — not because he’s the type of guy you want on a line with Tkachuk. Part of it is due to the rest of the Panthers’ forward group; only Tkachuk, Carter Verhaeghe and Sam Reinhart have more than 15 goals.
The biggest reason Tarasenko makes sense, though, is the price. A few years’ worth of live-in-the-present trades have depleted Florida’s stock of tradable assets, whether prospects or picks, to a major degree. That was the single biggest hurdle Zito had to clear, and he managed it. Part of that is due to Tarasenko’s no-movement clause, sure — but the Panthers’ on-ice success has made South Florida even more of a destination for players. Zito deserves credit for that.
This time, it’s netted him a player who, in decline or not, has still managed to score 17 goals so far this season. Maybe most crucially, the rest of the lineup is built to mitigate whatever Tarasenko gives back at five-on-five. There, Florida is third in expected goals percentage, fourth in actual goals percentage and 24th in goals/60. That screams “we need a guy who can fill it up.” Tarasenko fits the bill.
As for the Senators, they were in a tough spot. Rental wingers aren’t easy to find, at the moment, and Tarasenko had earned the right to choose his destination. Still, the return is negligible and seems certain to annoy the fanbase. Can’t blame them.
Panthers grade: A–
Senators grade: C–
(Top photo: Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)