NHL Trade Deadline: Florida Panthers

Come inside the showroom. The cellar-dwelling Florida Panthers are selling and they have plenty of soon-to-be free agents that could be solid rentals, even if a few have some extra miles on them.

The Panthers also have plenty of unrestricted free agents at season's end, including Tomas Vokoun, the team's elite goalie who has carried them for long stretches during his four seasons in South Florida. (He's making $6.3 million this season, but a team would have to foot less than $1.5 million in prorated salary.) It could be hard to part with Vokoun with nobody behind him primed to take over between the pipes.

The other veterans set to become unrestricted free agents would be easy to let go, including forwards Cory Stillman, Radek Dvorak, Christopher Higgins and Marty Reasoner along with defenseman Bryan McCabe. But so far it's the players signed at least though the 2012-13 season -- forwards David Booth and Stephen Weiss -- that have reportedly been the most sought after by other clubs.

General manager Dale Tallon, the former Chicago Blackhawks executive who is in his first season at the helm in Florida, could certainly accumulate draft picks by trading some of those vets as he looks to rebuild the Panthers. So far, the only move before the deadline was the trade of struggling forward Michael Frolk, a former first-round selection, to the Blackhawks in exchange for forwards Jack Skille, Hugh Jessiman and David Pacan. Skille is the only one of the trio that has any NHL experience and all are fairly inexpensive.

NEEDS

The Panthers are in for a total overhaul and there might be no better executive out there that knows how to build from the draft than Tallon. He played a major role in Chicago selecting Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith in the entry draft. He also had good instincts in identifying players primed for a breakout who were already in the NHL, like Patrick Sharp.

VERDICT

The team as it stands now will could bear little resemblance of what you'll see take the ice to start the 2011-12 season.