The Two-Line Pass

No one cares about the Florida Panthers. Hell, only like three guys that play for the team probably do. But times are tough, economy-wise, so the Panthers organization has a solution: go to a game for free.

The Panthers, apparently courtesy of president and COO Michael Yormark, will give out 500 free tickets per game to anyone with a Florida driver’s license. All you have to do is register on the site, print out the e-mail they send you, and bring the e-mail to the game. Free tickets!

Want TWO free tickets? That’s fine too! And it’s not like these are even bad games. Look at some of the teams you can see. The Sharks, Sens, Bolts, Red Wings, ‘Canes, Devils or Rangers will all be in town before the end of November, and you can see them all for zero dollars. Pretty sweet.

But wait, illegal aliens, the Panthers thought of you too! Even if you DON’T have a Florida license, if you leave your information and answer a few questions, someone from the Panthers will call you about getting you down to Sunrise for a game too.

The fine print is great too. “Program will remain in effect until everyone in Florida experiences the excitement of a Panthers game at least once.” Ambitious.

Oh and speaking of the Panthers, Bryan McCabe may have broken his back. That didn’t take long.

We’re now something like 26 days out from the start of the NHL season so I figure this is as good a time as any to start doing the season previews. This is mainly for two reasons: 1) I am lazy and there’s no way I’ll do one of these every day, and 2) This is early enough that if I just stop doing them entirely you’ll have forgotten by October anyway. Oh and I guess also to show off my near-infinite knowledge of the National Hockey League. I’ll be previewing the teams in reverse order of finish in the 2007-08 season. Please note, though, that this is the opinion of one man, however smart and handsome he may be.

Florida Panthers, you’re on the clock.

Oh man is this going to be a bad team.

Bryan McCabe is the big offseason pickup is proof enough of that. The Panthers franchise is one with a complete lack of direction right now. It just traded its best player, malcontent though he was, and replaced his offensive production with almost literally nothing.

Not that being bad is an unknown situation in Florida, or anything, but this is going to get ugly even by Florida Panthers standards.

On offense, there’s.. well, there’s Nathan Horton and Stephen Weiss who are pretty good and after that.. umm.. I guess David Booth. After that, there’s a bunch of guys who scored less than 40 points. Repeat: less than 40.

More after the jump.

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Shed not a tear, Bryan. Where you're going, no one will care how many goals you get torched for.

Bryan McCabe is finally done with the Maple Leafs, and it looks like he’s going to be traded to the Florida Panthers.

Reports started to trickle out last night that he would be traded to Florida within a few weeks. They’re just waiting for some $2 million bonus from the Leafs to clear.

A delay in the announcement is linked to the Leafs willingness to pick up a $2 million bonus McCabe is due on September 1st. After the payment is made only then will the transaction be accepted by the NHL.

Now this trade prompted a lot of speculation from the Toronto-based national media that still has obsession with the Leafs despite their, um, awfulness (witness 23 of next year’s 37 Hockey Night in Canada 7 p.m. games being Toronto-centric).

Who would the Leafs get in return? Promising young centerman Stephen Weiss? Outstanding winger Nate Horton? Embittered defensive standout Jay Bouwmeester? Toronto’s air pollution problem? A bag of Tim Horton’s coffee beans?

Well, because the aforementioned players are all young and all very good, the Leafs won’t even get autographed hockey cards of them. Not for McCabe, who is not young and not very good AND has a monster contract.

Instead, the scuttlebutt is that the Panthers, possibly the only organization in the NHL more inept than the Leafs, will for once do the right(ish) thing and send over oft-injured defenseman Mike Van Ryn. What they should send is a 137th round pick and possibly a Miami Dolphins bumper sticker, but at least the Panthers are unloading Van Ryn’s contract, which has two years remaining on it at $2.9 million per.

By the way, click on the above link to the Sportsnet story and look at the picture of McCabe they use. Just outstanding.

Sweet footwork, J-Bo!

Jay Bouwmeester just became the hottest name on the trade market.

After rejecting a multi-year deal last week that would have severely underpaid him for his services in Florida, J-Bo has instead signed a one-year deal worth $4.8 million.

SUNRISE, Fla. – Florida Panthers General Manager Jacques Martin announced today that club has agreed to terms on a one year deal with defenseman Jay Bouwmeester.

Bouwmeester, 24, played in all 82 games with the Panthers last season recording a career high 15 goals, while ranking first in the National Hockey League with 27:28 of ice time per game. The 6-foot-4, 215-pound blueliner has played in all 82 games for the Cats in each of his last three seasons. For his NHL career, he has played in 389 games, all with Florida, scoring 38 goals with 123 assists and 261 PIM.

The Edmonton, Alberta native represented the Panthers in the 2006-07 NHL All-Star Game and played for Team Canada at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. He has also represented Team Canada three times in the World Championships (2003, 2004 & 2008), while also playing on Team Canada’s gold medal winning World Cup of hockey squad in 2004.

Bouwmeester, whom rumormongers have already linked to about 15 different teams regardless of their ability to trade for him, will almost certainly be dealt before the trade deadline this year, and likely earlier. As I said last week, the line to just negotiate for such a trade will surely be around the block.

However, given that Martin has everyone in the league over a barrel with this bargaining chip, and given that he might be one of the worst general managers in the NHL, it’s tough to imagine that a Luongo-type trade is not in the works.

A certain rumor maker-upper has him going to at least half the Eastern Conference:

Toronto (15%) Ottawa (5%) Boston (10%) Edmonton (5%) San Jose (10%) Dallas (15%) Colorado (15%) St Louis (15%) Pittsburgh (10%)

This also ignores the fact that hardly any of these teams have the juice (read: high draft picks and top prospects) or the desire to deal said juice to acquire Bouwmeester. It also ignores that this blogger/Sportsnet employee (which tells you everything you need to know about Sportsnet) has in the past two weeks also linked J-Bo to Calgary, Washington, Buffalo, the Rangers, and St. Louis. Being that St. Louis is the only team to make both lists, I assume that’s where Bouwmeester is headed.

To St. Louis: Jay Bouwmeester
To Florida: Dan Hinote, Andy Wosniewksi, 4th round pick.

For the sake of our hockey sanity over the next six months, please make it happen, J.D.

Jay Bouwmeester would appreciated it if you traded him immediately

These days, you can’t pay people to stay in Miami.

In a move that has HFBoards posters falling all over themselves to put together terrible trade proposals, highly sought-after defenseman Jay Bouwmeester apparently turned down Florida’s latest overture, a multi-year deal worth over $5 million per.

People wonder why Florida never competes. Here’s a defenseman who would get offers north of $7 million from just about any team in the National Hockey League who’s just 24 years old. He scored 15 goals last year and was only a -5 on an awful Panthers team despite playing a whopping 27:28 a night in all situations. So Florida, despite having all the cap room in the world, lowballs him. Badly. A deal in the mid-5s would have him paid less on average than Bryan McCabe, Andrei Markov, Mathieu Schneider, and Roman Hamrlik. ROMAN HAMRLIK.

J-Bo is obviously waiting for the day he gets his arbitration hearing (and he’ll get pretty close to that $5 million if they screw him there) and can beat a hasty retreat the hell out of Florida. Who can blame him? NHL GMs will be lined up around the block to get this kid on the free agent market, and most will be calling the Florida front office with trade ideas about three seconds after his arbitration hearing lets out.

This just makes me laugh for some reason

Say you own a hockey team and you a) just traded away a No. 1 center two years after trading one of the best goalies in the world for peanuts, b) are going to be awful this year and miss the playoffs for the eighth year in a row, c) couldn’t draw fans if you lit half the team on fire and d) were in danger of moving out of the market it has been in since 1994. How would you fix this problem?

If your answer was, “Charge more for tickets,” please forward a resume to the Florida Panthers, c/o BankAtlantic Center, Sunrise, FL.

Visits by the defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings, the New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens are among the games that will carry a $25 surcharge on every single-game ticket.

Smart. But wait, it gets stupider.

Panthers Chief Operating Officer Michael Yormark, who announced the plan June 9, said he hasn’t heard any complaints.

“The only feedback I’ve heard so far on the premium games has come from the season seat-holders, and they’ve said, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ ” Yormark said. “They’ve felt it’s really enhanced the value of being a season seat-holder.”

No one on the planet would be that emphatic about not getting charged extra money that they never were never charged before. Why don’t I call up the US government and thank them profusely for not bumping me up to the 54 percent tax bracket?

The home opener - against Atlanta on Friday, Oct. 10 - typically draws a sellout crowd but will have regular pricing.

“That’s a night we want our hard-core fans to come out,” Yormark said. “We didn’t think it appropriate to put a premium on it.”

Umm, maybe it’s just me, but I’d want my hardcore fans going to every game, and certainly the ones against teams that draw well, so we don’t get embarrassed by the fan ratio quite as badly as we would normally.

Say I’m a casual Panthers fan (thankfully this is only hypothetical). On a whim, I decide I want to go see the Panthers play Montreal because Florida is literally the only franchise in NHL history with an above-.500 record against the Habs. Hypothetically, I might also be interested to see how these kids we traded Olli Jokinen for work out. I go up to the ticket counter, ask for the $17 seats I always get, and I’m told, “That will be $42.” I think the term “apoplectic rage” works best in that situation.

Good work, Florida. Hopefully that extra $25 a pop comes in handy when you’re shipping your franchise to Kansas City in two years.