Conspiracy Theory Emerges of How Panarin Can Get to the Panthers

The Florida Panthers blew a two-goal lead in a 5-3 loss to the Buffalo Sabres Monday night, the latest debacle in a season that's just been fraught with troubles right from the get-go. In fact, it started back in training camp when captain Aleksander Barkov suffered a torn ACL and MCL.

Without him and Matthew Tkachuk for the first half of the year, the Panthers have had a dreadful season, and are now nine points back of a playoff berth, with four other teams to leapfrog as well.

Tkachuk alluded to the fact that there are a lot of banged-up bodies on the Panthers.

“Some of the guys in right now, I’m seeing them just work their absolute ass off and grind and play through stuff so that they can stay in and play, so it’s been wild, but we are in trouble right now.”

But could this dark cloud of a year actually have a silver lining to it?

According to a theory that insider Elliotte Friedman says has been floating out there, the Panthers could capitalize on their troubles to actually land NY Rangers star Artemi Panarin.

Huh?

How can the Panthers land Artemi Panarin?

"There are...whispers that (Panarin) wants to be reunited with (fellow Russian) Sergei Bobrovsky and play in Florida," said Frank Seravalli on Canucks Central.

So how does the Panthers' rash of injuries play into that?

Friedman said on the 32 Thoughts podcast on Tuesday that with the number of guys playing hurt, a "conspiracy theory" has emerged:

If they're out (of the playoff hunt]...A guy said to me, 'How many guys do you think are playing hurt?' He said, the other thing that could happen here, after the Olympics, Florida could just shut guys down, declare them out, and they'd have the cap room to do it. That's the conspiracy theory on the Panthers on how they could pull it off.

"There's a lot of people pretty wary about that, like, 'could that actually happen?'" Friedman concluded on The Fan Hockey Show.

The one caveat, as he notes, however, is what can the Cats offer the Rangers that would entice them?

Stay tuned.