The Florida Panthers were up against the cap this offseason, which is one reason why both Claude Giroux and Mason Marchment moved on to other teams. They would be looking at cheap depth signings which is why they got guys like Marc Staal and Colin White on low-cost one-year deals. They continued their bargain hunting by signing a now-former San Jose Shark:

Rudolfs Balcers signed for one year at the league minimum. He had 40 points in 102 games with San Jose and is going into his age-25 season. Let's dig in.

What Florida Gets

Balcers is an interesting player from an analytical perspective. If we go to Evolving Hockey and look at his offensive/defensive impacts from the last three seasons, they look just fine, particularly for a guy that is going to make the league minimum:

That is not a huge TOI component, but over 1500 minutes for a middle-6 winger is about 1.5 seasons' worth of ice time. It's not nothing. And the impacts look solid across the board, though nothing spectacular.

Where the confounding part comes in is when we look at the things he does on the ice, specifically. One source I reference often is Corey Sznajder's tracking data because he breaks the game down from zone entries/exits, forechecking, types of passes, and a whole lot more. It's a cornucopia of useful information to see what a player's strengths and weaknesses are, which helps paint a picture of why they may or may not have good impacts on their team's play at both ends. If a player has a high expected goals-for impact, they typically are good in transition, or playmaking, or forechecking, or some combination of those things. The confounding part is Balcers really doesn't, or at least not across the board. Here are his microstats from 2021-22:

The controlled zone entries were fine but not great, he had good defensive zone work, but the rest was very pedestrian-to-bad. That isn't even 200 minutes of ice time tracked, but in 225 minutes from the year before, things look relatively the same, with the controlled zone entries being even worse.

It really is tough to make heads or tails of this. His defensive zone work looks very good, but why that turned into good offensive impact on a team bereft of talent outside their top line is the question of the day. Could it be as simple as being great in the defensive end led to cleaner looks for his team 10-15 seconds later? It could be.

Where the fantasy value could come from is two-fold. First, he hits a lot. He had 196 hits in 102 games with the Sharks, skating under 15 minutes a night. He may not get much more than that on a deeper Florida team but putting up nearly two hits per game is valuable in multi-cat leagues, and cap leagues especially.

Secondly there is, ostensibly, a spot on the third line with Anton Lundell up for grabs. Assuming Carter Verhaeghe and Jonathan Huberdeau are in the top-6, they don't have a player locked into that third-line left-wing role. Ryan Lomberg seems a favourite of the team and likely the fourth-line left winger, but 3LW is open. That seems like it could come down to a battle between Balcers and the newly-signed Nick Cousins. As we've seen through Cousins's career, he's an NHLer, but he's had trouble playing up the lineup with better players. If Florida decides to leave Sam Reinhart alongside Lundell on the third line, they'll want someone that can play with them. Maybe the team would value Balcers's defensive ability and give him the edge to stay in the lineup.

This may not be something that's resolved in preseason with Balcers playing 82 games on the third line. But if he can somehow lock onto that role and skate alongside Lundell/Reinhart for long stretches, he could have himself close to a 40-point season with that huge hit total. In cap leagues, particularly, that'll play very well. It'll be a fascinating battle come training camp.

Balcers moving on does open up a second-line left wing spot next to one of Logan Couture or Tomas Hertl. Timo Meier is obviously locked on the top line, but the recently added Oskar Lindblom and Steven Lorentz now have a second-line role up for the grabs if they can take it. Same goes for Alexander Barabanov, who can play both wings but likely stays on the right side.

Who this helps

Oskar Lindblom

Steven Lorentz

Rudolfs Balcers

Who this hurts

Nick Cousins