Did The Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers Make a Mistake by Letting Marchessault Walk?

With the 2022-2023 NHL season recently coming to a close and the Vegas Golden Knights capturing their first Stanley Cup in their sixth season, it’s time to revisit one of the key pieces in Vegas’ current success.

Jonathan Marchessault won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the Golden Knights 2023 Stanley Cup Playoff run. That’s quite an accomplishment for someone who was never drafted. He was given an entry-level contract by the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2012 but only appeared in two NHL games that season.

His first real taste of professional hockey came a couple of years later with the Tampa Bay Lightning. In 45 regular season games, he recorded 18 points. Seven of those were goals, and one was a game-winner. He even appeared in five postseason games, replacing the injured Ryan Callahan.

Unfortunately, Marchessault became an unrestricted free agent in the 2016 offseason. Then Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman was unable to re-sign him, and he moved on, this time to the Florida Panthers. During his brief stint in Sunrise, Marchessault broke out. He tallied 30 goals and 51 points in 75 games played. His play in the defensive zone continued to be a work in progress though.

In a head-scratching move, the Panthers left the versatile scoring threat unprotected in the 2017 expansion draft. That helped the Golden Knights, who immediately scooped him up. Vegas is where his career really took off, but both the Lightning and Panthers had a chance to keep Marchessault in their organization.

Should they have?

One can argue that the Lightning would have been forced to move on from Marchessault at some point, as they had lots of prospects waiting in the wings, and the team was entering ‘Win Now’ mode.

The Panthers, on the other hand, were still rebuilding. They had a couple of scoring threats in Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau but hadn’t made it past the second round until this past season. A blockbuster trade sending Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar to Calgary landed them Matthew Tkachuk, who played a huge role in the Panthers reaching the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 1996.

It’s fair to say that Marchessault would have been a key piece in the Panthers’ rise to the top. Putting him with Carter Verhaeghe, Barkov, and Tkachuk would give Florida balanced scoring, an important trait every Stanley Cup champion has. All in all, the Lightning and Panthers did what they needed to remain competitive, and Marchessault benefited from a change of scenery with more playing time.