Florida Panthers: Top 3 reasons why they should fire Dale Tallon
He Isn’t Good At Drafting
Drafting is crucial to building a Stanley Cup contender. Show me a Stanley Cup champion in the salary cap era, and I’ll show you a team that built through the draft. It’s especially important for teams like the Florida Panthers, who don’t have much financial clout.
Supporters of Tallon will quickly point out the Panthers have gotten players like Aaron Ekblad, Jonathan Huberdeau, and Aleksander Barkov through the draft. This is true. However, all three of those players were drafted in the top three. You’re expected to draft a good player in the top three.
Let’s take a look at how Tallon has done in all of his NHL drafts with the Panthers. He has made a total of 77 draft picks. 30 of them have played in the NHL.
How many of those players actually stuck around in the NHL? It’s still too early to tell for recent draft picks like Spencer Knight, Grigori Denisenko, Owen Tippett, and Henrik Borgstrom, but only 18 of the Panthers draft picks since 2010 have played in at least 82 NHL games (one full NHL season).
However, a few of those players deserve some asterisks because they never played for the Panthers.
- Zach Hyman (traded for Greg McKegg)
- Joonas Donskoi (didn’t sign with Panthers)
- Lawson Crouse (traded to Arizona Coyotes as a sweetener for taking on David Bolland (more on him later)
- Iiro Pakarinen (didn’t sign with Panthers)
That cuts it down to 14 players in 11 years. Of those 14, only seven of them currently play for the Panthers. That’s less than one player per year, which doesn’t cut it for a team that relies on the draft like the Panthers. Furthermore, only four of Tallon’s 12 first-round picks are currently contributing to the Panthers.
Even if you want to be generous and argue Borgstrom and Tippett should be in the NHL, that’s still just six out of 12. The Panthers are a team who needs to draft well and it’s hard to argue Tallon has done that. He’s done a terrible job of hitting on non-first round picks.