Panthers GM Dale Tallon sees a lot of the Blackhawks in his current team

Dale Tallon talks to the media, after he was named the new General Manager of the Florida Panthers hockey team Tuesday, May 18, 2010, in Sunrise, Fla. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter)

AP

Even though Dale Tallon wasn’t there to enjoy it, last season’s Blackhawks championship had his finger prints all over it. He was the guy who signed or drafted a great number of the players that helped the Blackhawks end their 49-year Stanley Cup drought and now he finds himself in Florida as GM of the Panthers thinking that there are similarities between the Blackhawks and Panthers when it comes to building from seemingly nothing. Dan Rosen of NHL.com gets the story from the guy who’s looking to turn around the team in Sunrise.

Tallon, who built the Blackhawks into Stanley Cup champions, has spent the first three months of his new job assessing the situation in Florida and “slowly but surely chipping away at the block.”

“We probably had a few more assets to start with here (Florida) than we had there (Chicago), but it’s a challenge and I’m looking forward to it,” Tallon told NHL.com from the 2010 NHL Research, Development and Orientation Camp Fueled By G Series.

What has Tallon done with the Panthers so far? He’s turned them from the butt of jokes on the ice and a source of irrelevancy in South Florida to a team that’s at least got some buzz surrounding them. Being the architect of a Stanley Cup winning team can help make that happen. By adding guys like Chris Higgins, Marty Reasoner, Nathan Paetsch, Mike Weaver, and Andrew Peters he’s making the Panthers a tougher team as well as a more economically sound one. There are good players there now with David Booth and Stephen Weiss, but that’s a far cry from being a loaded team. As for what he has done, Tallon states the company line.

“We added the pieces we needed to add to make ourselves better,” Tallon said. “We added more depth at all positions, and we did it in a fiscally responsible way.”

Where Tallon’s abilities will be tested the most, however, is improving the Panthers farm system which is virtually bone dry. Drafting Erik Gudbranson third overall this year was a good start towards making things better. With the moves the Panthers have made to build depth on defense this year, they’ve made it OK for them to be able to send Gudbranson back to juniors just in case he isn’t ready right away out of training camp. Gudbranson also might help remind people of another big, tough defenseman from Tallon’s days in Chicago - a guy named Duncan Keith.

For now though, the Panthers are likely to be a bit too similar to Tallon’s first few teams in Chicago that struggled mightily and accumulated high draft picks much to their benefit. After all, guys like Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane don’t just grow on trees. While the Panthers might not be as bad as those Hawks teams (65 points in 2005-2006 and 71 points in 2006-2007), the future of the team is at least in seemingly good hands with Tallon in charge now rather than the wandering aimlessly version of the team we’ve seen for the better part of the last 10 years.