Panthers to Dress More Youth

The Panthers forwarded their list to the NHL office today and sent four players (in red) to the IR. The team has a definite new feel to it, as Bryan McCabe, Keith Ballard and Nick Boynton all bring new dimension to a blueline that suffered in their own end last season. Up front, Shawn Matthias headlines a crop of young players that have made the team, thanks to some early season injury problems. Expectations in Florida cannot be too high, as they are still trying to get a feel of what they have in the system already.

Forwards	Defense	Goaltenders
Cory Stillman	Jay Bouwmeester	Tomas Vokoun
Nathan Horton	Bryan McCabe	Craig Anderson
Stephen Weiss	Keith Ballard
David Booth	Cory Murphy
Brett McLean	Bryan Allen
Richard Zednik	Nick Boynton
Rostislav Olesz	Karlis Skrastins
Kamil Kreps	Noah Welch
Ville Peltonen
Gregory Campbell
Radek Dvorak
Shawn Matthias
Wade Belak
Anthony Stewart
Michael Frolik

The 25-man list above, including injuries, will cost $53.8 million against the cap (approx.), but will also have lots of discounts when players become healthy and their replacements are sent down to the minors.

I'm awfully curious to see how well the Panthers perform this season, just to see if they are more offensive. Their defense does lead me to believe that Tomas Vokoun will have a better season, so he should be an immediate pick in your pool draft. Vokoun went in the fifth round (of 14 for 17 people) in my draft last night, which should be a very good bargain pick. Watch for some of these Panthers for your mid-season trading sessions.