The Florida Panthers have some major questions to answer this offseason, including whether or not to re-sign two of their core players in Mike Hoffman and Evgenii Dadonov. The two players combined were making just above $9.1 million AAV and will become unrestricted free agents at the 2019-20 season conclusion. With thirteen games remaining to play in the regular season for the Florida Panthers, they were three points behind the Toronto Maple Leafs for the third spot in the Atlantic Division and three points behind the Columbus Blue Jackets for the second and final wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference. They were on a two-game win streak before the play stoppage and had a 4-4-2 record in their last ten games.

Mike Hoffman scored a team-high twenty-nine goals and registered thirty assists for the Panthers this season, while Evgenii Dadonov scored twenty-five goals (second-best on the team behind Hoffman), and registered twenty-two assists for forty-seven points. Both players played in all sixty-nine games for the Panthers. When looking at penalty taken/drawn ratios, Dadonov’s 11:4 ratio exceeded Hoffman’s 12:12 ratio; however, both are impressive for forwards. Neither player had impressive giveaway/takeaway ratios as Hoffman’s was 52:31 (-21 turnover +/-), and Dadonov’s was 40:29 (-11 turnover +/-). Both players were negative +/- wise as Hoffman was -5 and Dadonov was -7.

In terms of AB, both Mike Hoffman and Evgenii Dadonov both registered negative individual AB scores in 2019-20, with Dadonov’s being somewhat better at -0.63 than Hoffman’s -1.70 score. For Mike Hoffman however, this -1.70 score was significantly better than his score from 2018-19 of -6.37 and was his best score since he registered a 0 flat in 2016-17. His career AB score is still a respectable -0.66 over seven seasons of data. For Evgenii Dadonov, this is the second-worst individual score of his career, and his worst score since 2011-12, when he registered a -0.67 score. His career AB score is a +0.30, which is acceptable for five seasons of data.

We ran Hoffman and Dadonov through our arbitration analyzer to determine what they could potentially get on the open market later this summer. We determined that Hoffman’s comparable contracts are Arizona’s Taylor Hall ($6 million AAV), and Calgary’s Johnny Gaudreau ($6.75 million AAV). We believe Hoffman could get anywhere from 6-7 million based on these projections. We determined Dadonov’s comparable contracts are Vancouver’s Brock Boeser ($5.875 million AAV) and San Jose’s Timo Meir ($6 million AAV). We believe Dadonov’s range is somewhere between 5.5-6.5 million based on these projections. We believe they are both solid players and think they could each contribute positively to any team. More to come.