from Patrick Johnston of the Vancouver Province,

In trying to create maximum cap space so that he could sign both Sergei Bobrovsky and Artemi Panarin, did Florida Panthers general manager Dale Tallon suddenly find himself in a game of Russian Roulette?

If so, given he was prepared to go all out for Panarin’s services, it would seem lost.

You may recall that days ahead of the opening of free agency, Roberto Luongo did something that nearly no other player signed to a so-called back-diving contract has done. He retired, officially.

It has been suggested in these pages that Luongo’s retirement being official was a team-driven preference. There was a need to create as much cap room as possible and while the Panthers would still incur a cap-recapture penalty if Luongo were to officially retire instead of doing what others have been doing for years — failing their training camp physical and being paid out the remainder of their salary, while living out life on long-term injury reserve — that penalty would be much less than the cap hit his contract was costing the Panthers.

Due to the math of the collective bargaining agreement’s cap recapture formula, designed to dissuade teams from signing long contracts with low-wage years at the end to gain a cap advantage, Luongo’s retirement created a US$3 million cap penalty for the Vancouver Canucks.

That penalty, though, is where things appear to have gone off the rails for the Panthers.

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