Same-Day Analysis: Chiarot gives Panthers playoff bite
Florida was willing to pay a premium, but not an exorbitant one, for size and grit on the blueline. Plus, the Sharks chose Tomas Hertl now over uncertain futures
When it came to his approach to the 2022 trade deadline, Florida Panthers GM Bill Zito was willing to bet a first-round pick and a marginal prospect on the tried-and-true inevitability that referees don’t call anything in the playoffs. In no other universe would Ben Chiarot fetch a first-round pick than in the NHL, where the whistles go in the pockets when the games mean the most and skilled players endure ridiculous amounts of abuse.
From the time the Montreal Canadiens’ fortunes went directly south and Chiarot’s name emerged as a deadline candidate, the going rate for the defenseman was a first-round pick and a prospect. And that’s what it cost the Florida Panthers to get the 6-foot-3, 234-pound crease clearer, a player who crosschecked his way to invaluable status during the Canadiens’ run to the Stanley Cup final in 2021. When the playoffs begin and the officials follow the league directive to “let them play,” it becomes much easier to wreck a masterpiece than to create one. That’s why Chiarot was so valuable in shutting down the Toronto Maple Leafs’ skill players in the first round and limiting the Golden Knights’ top players in the third.
As TSN Insider Bob McKenzie said today on Hockey Unfiltered – The Podcast, Chiarot was always going to command a significant price. “I know people will pull out the analytics on a player like Chiarot…and I hear all that,” McKenzie said. “But every time you look at a Stanley Cup winner, they’re loaded with 6-foot-2, 6-foot-3, 6-foot-4, big, strong defensemen who can defend and offer some physical play. Basically every team that wins the Cup, you look at the size of their blueline, you look at the bite they’ve got. It gives you a dimension you feel you otherwise may be lacking. If you’re desperate to win the Stanley Cup and win it now, there are teams that will pay a premium for a player like that.”
The Panthers have the requisite size and it’s hard to believe that any blueline with Radko Gudas on it needs to be tougher, but the Panthers figure on having an incredibly difficult and gruelling run through the Eastern Conference, beginning with the first round. So, the premium was paid, just not this year. The Canadiens did get a fourth-round pick in 2022, but the first-rounder will have to wait until 2023. As far as the prospect, the Panthers didn’t actually have to go deep in their pool, giving up their eighth-best prospect – according to the 2022 Future Watch edition of The Hockey News – in 20-year-old center Ty Smilanic, a sophomore at Quinnipiac University. Smilanic had been named to the U.S. roster for the World Junior Championship, and will be eligible to play in the tournament this summer, but was a healthy scratch for USA’s only game in the tournament.
HERTL KNOWS TO STAY IN SAN JOSE
If a soon-to-be 31-year-old stay-at-home defenseman on an expiring contract could fetch a first-round pick, you can only imagine what a 28-year-old center on an expiring deal who is also a 30-goal scorer would fetch. But the San Jose Sharks weren’t even considering what they would get in return for Tomas Hertl at the trade deadline. So they took him off the trade board entirely by signing him to an eight-year contract extension worth $65.1 million. The deal has a full no-move clause in the first three years, with Hertl submitting a three-team trade list from 2025-26 through ’27-28 and a 15-team list in the final two years of the deal.
This should come as no surprise. First, guys who play for the Sharks tend to stick around for a long time. Secondly, the Sharks obviously saw more valuable in what they knew they had in Hertl than the uncertains they would have acquired by trading him.
“We’ve always been committed to signing him to this contract,” said Sharks assistant GM Joe Will. “We didn’t even look at the market, really. We were fully committed to signing him here because we recognize the importance of a top-line center. And for a long period of time, we have two of them in Tomas and Logan (Couture) and that’s our building block right there down the middle. That was our commitment first and foremost. (Trading for futures), that’s a different direction for the organization, that’s taking a step backwards and this is a commitment to winning now, a commitment to pushing forward. Tomas is a known quantity in that No. 1 center position, along with Logan, and they’re extremely hard to get, no matter what you have in picks and prospects.”
For a long time, the Sharks have not been a tear-down type of franchise. And really, they can’t do that now with the term and money they have invested in some of their players. Starting next season, they’ll have $42.64 million in cap space devoted to Hertl, Couture, Brent Burns, Erik Karlsson and Marc-Edouard Vlasic for a minimum of three more years.