Insider reveals an Eastern Conference team is going to be forced to make a trade very soon
As much as a team may want to keep a player on their roster, sometimes the salary cap gets in the way of that. That's exactly what's going to happen to the Florida Panthers in the next month. The Florida Panthers have been operating this entire season over the salary cap.
Injuries have allowed the team to be salary cap complaint, but it's come at a price. The team has played at the minimum number of skaters every night and when Aaron Ekblad was sick, the team was forced to play a player short. Those salary cap issues are about to get a lot tougher.
According to Frank Seravalli of The Daily Faceoff the Panthers are close to getting Anthony Duclair back in their lineup. Duclair has missed the entire season due to an Achilles tendon injury during the summer.
Because the Florida Panthers have been flying incredibly close to the sun with the salary cap this season. They're dressing the league minimum, they're carrying the league minimum of players. You saw last week with Aaron Ekblad when he was sick, they didn't get a replacement, they played one player short. And so, they don't have anyone to send down and that means if they'd like to activate Duclair, who I'm told is closing in on a return, he's already skating, looking like sometime around Christmas at the earliest, he's got a $3 million cap hit, and in order to activate him, they have no space. They absolutely must make a trade.
Seravalli also mentions the name of both Sam Reinhart and Sam Bennett as potential trade options. This situation gets extremely complicated because once Duclair is healthy he MUST be activated.
So the question isn't if they'll make a trade, it's a matter of when the Panthers will make a trade.
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