The Florida Panthers have announced the hiring of former Chicago Blackhawks general manager Dale Tallon. Tallon replaces Randy Sexton.

Tallon had been with the Blackhawks organization for 33 years, as a player and a broadcaster before he was an executive. He was promoted to the post of GM in the Windy City in 2005 and was instrumental in getting the franchise to the level they find themselves at today. Tallon was behind the drafting and signing of Jonathon Toews and Patrick Kane, for instance.

Even so, last year the Blackhawks reassigned Tallon to the post of senior adviser.

The signing by the Panthers puts the team in a unique position to, in theory, experience similar rebirth. It’s no secret that Florida is heading in a younger direction, so Tallon could be the key man for the job in building the team up virtually from scratch.

“It is with great pleasure and excitement that I join the Florida Panthers,” Tallon said in a statement Monday. “I look forward to getting to work and will immediately evaluate our club’s framework, as we diligently prepare for the upcoming draft and free agency signing period.”

Tallon was be officially unveiled as the club’s new GM at a press conference on Tuesday morning.

The Panthers have their work cut out for them and will probably always struggle to reach the heights they found themselves in the 1996 playoffs. Since reaching that level and since falling to the Colorado Avalanche in the Stanley Cup Finals that year, the Panthers have been little more than a mediocre franchise in a struggling market.

Despite reaching the playoffs a few times and boasting Pavel Bure as one of their stars, the Panthers have never really been able to pull off much success for very long. If the Tallon formula works well in Florida, fans could be seeing a new team take shape over the next few seasons. If it doesn’t, Tallon will once again find himself on the move. It really is that simple.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

Reports out of Florida indicate that the Panthers are shopping around goalie Tomas Vokoun. GM Randy Sexton is said to be contacting other GMs around the league with the intention of moving his goaltender and figuring out his options, so the veteran keeper could be on the move possibly even before the holiday roster freeze.

Some analysts are saying that Vokoun has become almost expendable in Florida with prospect Jacob Markstrom looking to join the club at the start of the next season.

The Panthers are said to be ready to move Vokoun prior to Markstrom’s arrival and have been looking at packaging other players up with him, such as forward Nathan Horton and Rostislav Olesz.

There is a sense among the league’s GMs that Sexton is simply asking too much for Vokoun’s services at this point. While Vokoun is only 33 years of age, there’s a sense that the goalie’s better days may be behind him and that he has already come into his top form.

Then there’s the cap hit on the goalie, which sits at a juicy $6.3 million. Vokoun has one year remaining on his deal with Florida and that could be a hard thing to move over at this point and time.

While the Panthers may be eager to move him sooner, the logical answer would be to let Vokoun ride out the remainder of the year in relative ease before letting him go to market. Moving him sooner than that simply seems like a headache for Sexton and Co. unless a reasonable package deal can be arranged that would also help the club offload Horton and Olesz.

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

It finally happened. Bryan McCabe was traded by the Toronto Maple Leafs over to the Florida Panthers for Mike Van Ryn. The Leafs also sent a fourth round draft pick to the Panthers.

This clears Toronto of their biggest salary obligation and gives them a pretty damn good defenceman in return.

McCabe had been with the Leafs since October of 2000 when he was acquired in a trade with the Chicago Blackhawks. He quickly became the top defenceman for the Leafs and took on all of the accolades and complaints that came with it.

After signing a high-priced five-year contract in 2005-2006 worth $28.75 million, McCabe became the scapegoat for the team’s problems. While it was true that his play suffered and he wasn’t the commanding presence that he had started out as, the Leafs woes were far from merely his fault. Nevertheless, McCabe’s position on the trading block was assured and fans kept waiting for the hammer to fall.

The ludicrous contract is said to be the main reason the Leafs were looking to move Bryan McCabe. His annual salary cap hit for the next three seasons will be $5.75 million even though the Panthers will only have to pay him $4.15 million per season. The Maple Leafs are certainly on the hook for a $2 million bonus that was due on Monday.

Van Ryn, on the other hand, has two years remaining on his contract and will earn $3.35 million each season. His cap hit is only $2.9 million so the Leafs have freed up $11.45 million over the next three years. Very good news for Toronto.

This move marks the latest in the long rebuilding process started by Cliff Fletcher. The team will doubtlessly look very different when it takes to the ice in October. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing remains to be seen.

The Florida Panthers have traded their captain, Ollie Jokinen, to the Gretzky’s Phoenix Coyotes.

Jokinen went to the Coyotes for a decent package that included defencemen Nick Boynton and Keith Ballard and a second-round draft pick on Friday. It was a case of Phoenix giving up a lot to get a lot. Ballard and Boynton were key components to their defensive game, but it looks as though Phoenix wants to head in another direction.

With Jokinen in the fold, the Coyotes get a top-tier forward capable of doing it all. He has scored 70 points or more in the least of the last three seasons and had his best season in 2006-2007, where he scored 39 goals and added 52 assists in 82 games.

Ballard had six goals and 15 assists in 82 games for the Coyotes last season, while Boynton scored three goals and potted nine assists in 79 games.

Jokinen is the real core of this deal, though, and Phoenix should gain some serious leadership to fit in nicely with their lineup. 29-year-old Jokinen had recently asked for a trade.

According to the Miami Herald this morning, Jacques Martin will not be back behind the bench next season as the coach of the Florida Panthers. Big shocker.

Martin has been Florida’s general manager and its coach, but the Herald reported that team owner Alan Cohen told season ticket holders Thursday night that Martin’s duties would be split. “More than anything, we needed a change as coach,” Cohen told the newspaper. “Jacques has done a good job as GM. That’s the bottom line.”

Cohen brought in Martin as coach and Mike Keenan as general manager in May 2004. Martin assumed both duties when Keenan resigned after a little more than two years. Keenan now coaches in Calgary.

Florida had a record of 38-35-9 this season, good enough to finish with 85 points. The Panthers have not won a playoff game since 1997 and haven’t reached the post-season since 2000.

“Jacques and I have talked about splitting the responsibilities and him staying on as GM,” Cohen told The Herald. “In that role, he would be responsible for selecting the new coach.”

Today, Richard Zednik continued what many have called a remarkable recovery. He was moved out of the intensive care unit today at Buffalo General Hospital and his condition was upgraded to “good,” which is incredible when one considers the scene on the ice a mere two days ago.

Zednik, as we all know, was critically injured in the third period of Sunday night’s game as the Florida Panthers took on the Buffalo Sabres. He suffered a deep gash in his neck after the skate of teammates Olli Jokinen clipped him. The gash stopped just shy of Zednik’s jugular vein. The scene was gruesome as Zednik lost a large amount of blood from the four-centimeter wound. He smartly skated to the bench for help immediately and trainers whisked him away where the wonders of medicine took over.

Zednik’s carotid artery, which pumps blood to the brain, was cut. Emergency surgery was done as soon as he arrived at Buffalo General Hospital. “It’s hard to say what would have happened under other circumstances, but clearly, the care he got initially by the staff at the arena, I think, saved his life,” said Robert McCormack, the hospital’s clinical chief of emergency medicine.

By the time he reached the hospital, Zednik needed roughly five pints of blood, which suggests that one-third of the blood in his body gushed from the wound before bleeding could be controlled. One day after Zednik was stitched together, he already had a question for Dr. Sonya Noor, the vascular surgeon at Buffalo General. “He actually asked me when he could go back to training?” Noor said with a smile. “And I said, ‘Next season.’ ”

According to Noor, Zednik had several things going for him on Sunday night. Doctors were astonished the skate blade did not hit any other arteries or veins, including the jugular, or cause any major nerve damage. It also helped that the artery was not entirely severed. “It was hanging by a thread,” Noor said. That lessened the time it took for the carotid to be clamped as it was reattached and decreased the chances of brain damage.

As the Panthers gear up for the playoff rush at the end of the season, minds are slowly turning back to hockey.

“We’ve got 24 games to go,” Ollie Jokinen said. “If we do our jobs, there is a possibility Richard’s going to play with us and join the team in the playoffs. The doctors say six to eight weeks; there’s a possibility he could play this year. So every game now, it’s going to be big, big for us.”

It was a horrifying moment.

Midway through the third period of Sunday night’s Florida Panthers versus Buffalo Sabres game, Panthers’ forward Richard Zednik was cut across the throat by a teammates skate. Thankfully, he is in stable condition after surgery to close the deep gash on the right side of his neck.

The incident delayed the game for fifteen minutes and led to discussion about whether to call the game off altogether. Zednik was behind the play and skating into the right corner of the Sabres’ zone when teammate Olli Jokinen was upended by Sabres’ forward Clarke MacArthur. Jokinen fell head-first to the ice and his right leg flew up and struck Zednik directly on the side of the neck.

Clutching his neck, Zednik raced to the Florida bench leaving a long trail of blood behind him on the ice. When he arrived, he nearly fell into the arms of a team trainer who quickly applied a towel to the cut. Zednik was then helped off the ice by the trainer and teammate Jassen Cullimore and escorted to the Panthers’ dressing room.

“The surgery was successful and he’s resting comfortably in the hospital,” Panthers spokesman Brian Goldman said after the game.

“We shouldn’t have finished the game,” Jokinen said. “I saw the replay, that it was my skate that hit him in the throat. I think we were all in shock. I’ve never seen anything like that. There are bigger things than finishing the game. It was terrifying. I didn’t think anyone on our team was thinking hockey out there after an injury like that. If it was my call, I would have gone to the hospital with him.”

NHL vice president Colin Campbell consulted with Sabres general manager Darcy Regier and referee Bill McCreary in a tunnel after Zednik was loaded into an ambulance. Campbell, who was not available for comment, attended the game in part because his son plays for the Panthers. In a statement, the NHL said that Campbell talked to commissioner Gary Bettman and decided to continue the game after knowing that Zednik was stable, that trainers had stopped the bleeding, and that the teams were willing to go on.

“I can fully understand if they wanted to cancel the whole game,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said. “It was pretty solemn. There wasn’t a lot being said on the bench. There was just more concern for Richard than anything else. When you see something like that, it isn’t about playing anymore. But I said, ‘We’re going to finish the game and it’s going to be what it’s going to be.”‘

All of us at HockeyDraft.Ca hold Richard in our thoughts and prayers at this time.