The three best remaining landing spots for Free Agent Mike Hoffman
Mike Hoffman is somehow still available on the open market.
In keeping with what has been a downright bonkers year in 2020, Mike Hoffman is still without a team nearly a month after Free Agency opened.
Given Hoffman’s considerable talents, especially in the goalscoring department, it seems crazy that a team hasn’t reached out and brokered a deal with one of the deadliest snipers in recent NHL history.
However, this is 2020 after all and the fact that Hoffman is still stranded all on his own in the murky depths of hockey wilderness perhaps best epitomizes the current state of the sports landscape due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
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Talent always shines through, though, and Hoffman would automatically upgrade any team’s offensive depth given his track record of lighting the lamp on a consistent basis throughout his career.
Just one of seven NHL players to have scored at least 22 goals in each of the past six seasons – Patrick Kane, Nikita Kucherov, Brad Marchand, Sean Monahan, Alex Ovechkin and John Tavares are the others – coupled with at least 55 points in each of the past five seasons, Hoffman is a proven production machine in the world’s best league.
Having also rounded out his defensive game somewhat in 2019-20, the left wing would automatically become a top-six staple for any contender, and he could be that final piece for a team on the cusp of glory.
Granted, Hoffman may have to settle for a one-year deal as was the case with Taylor Hall who signed a one-year, $8 million contract with the Buffalo Sabres but, in the times we currently live in, you have to take whatever you are given.
And, on that note, let’s take a look at the three best remaining fits for Mike Hoffman as we get into the thick of the NHL offseason…
1. Florida Panthers
Let’s start in Sunrise where Mike Hoffman last called home as part of the Florida Panthers organization.
Although it appears as though the Panthers have started to turn in a new direction under new General Manager Bill Zito, who made a number of offseason moves in order to make his team tougher to play against, a reunion with one of the deadliest snipers out there makes a lot of sense.
Firstly, the Panthers have been mired in mediocrity for a long time and that was still the case in 2019-20, despite hiring three-time Stanley Cup winning Head Coach Joel Quenneville and throwing a boatload of money at goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky – $70 million over seven years to be precise.
As a result, the pressure will be firmly on the shoulders of Quenneville to turn a talented but flawed core into consistent winners in 2020-21, thus hopefully reigniting interest in a hockey market that is currently stagnant at best.
However, while getting tougher and more experienced in the locker room by signing the likes of defenseman Radko Gudas and forward and multiple holder of Stanley Cup rings Patric Hornqvist, who both play a hard-nosed game, the Panthers lost a lot of firepower too.
Evgenii Dadonov, who was twice a 70 plus points scorer with the Panthers and who also at least recorded 25 goals in each of the past three seasons, was allowed to sign a three-year, $15 million contract with the Ottawa Senators in Free Agency.
If you take Hoffman out of the equation then the Panthers are losing a combined 54 goals and 106 points from a team that only made the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 2019-20 because of the expanded format.
Therefore, it would make perfect sense for Bill Zito to try and set up a reunion with Hoffman, who seemed a good fit in the Florida locker room.
He knows the area, he was a proven success in his two seasons in Sunrise with a combined total of 129 points (65 G, 64 A) in 151 regular season games, and he also considerably improved his defensive game in 2019-20, battling hard in the corners, winning puck battles in the dirty areas and really leading by example when others around him looked defeated.
With a projected $8,313,712 in cap space, the Florida Panthers could afford to bring back Mike Hoffman on a one-year, prove yourself deal in order to ensure that the sixth ranked offense in the NHL in 2019-20 remains hot during the 2020-21 season.