WASHINGTON — As the Florida Panthers' injured players trickle back to the lineup, decisions have to be made on roster space, and that led to Friday morning's trade of young defenseman Keaton Ellerby to the Los Angeles Kings for a 2013 fifth-round draft pick.
The 6-foot-5, 217-pound Ellerby, 24, was a first-round pick (10th overall) by the Panthers in 2007, but that was before the current regime of General Manager Dale Tallon and assistant GM Mike Santos were running the show.
"We have too many players," Santos said. "We've been dancing around it since training camp, and guys are getting healthy.
"We'll have too many bodies, and this was a player another team had interest in, so we had to make a move. This is a guy who was in the organization before we got here. He wasn't really part of our development plan."
Panthers Captain Ed Jovanovski, who remained in South Florida for the four-game road trip to rehabilitate a minor knee injury, is expected back shortly. With Tyson Strachan on a one-way contract, this deal and the season debut of second-year defenseman Erik Gudbranson in Thursday's 3-2 shootout victory over the Flyers give the Panthers eight D-men, so Ellerby was the odd man out.
In parts of four seasons, Ellerby has two goals and 17 points in 125 games, and a minus-21 rating. In nine games this season, he had no points with 36 penalty minutes and a minus-2.
Santos spoke of the quality of blue-line depth in the organization, referring to Michael Caruso, who's on injured reserve, and solid prospects in San Antonio such as Colby Robak and Alex Petrovic, both close to being NHL-ready.
Ellerby, who's on a one-way for $700,000, never seemed to gain coach Kevin Dineen's favor, as he was a healthy scratch for nearly half of last season. He had a poor minus-2 effort in Tuesday's 3-2 OT loss to the Jets, perhaps signaling his jettison.
"Defensemen take a while to develop, a change of scenery could help somebody," said Dineen, who took a puck off the leg in practice at the Verizon Center. "We couldn't find a full-time place for him, he's still a young guy and has a lot of hockey left in him."
Shootout record
The Panthers were 6-11 in shootouts last year, so when rookie Jonathan Huberdeau and Peter Mueller beat Ilya Bryzgalov on their first shots Thursday, while Jose Theodore stopped Matt Read and Claude Giroux, that marked the first time they've ever won a shootout in two rounds.
"I've been working on those moves with those guys quite a bit," Dineen joked.
Gudbranson's solid debut
Gudbranson played 21:02 on 25 shifts in his first NHL game in more than nine months, and had two blocked shots with three hits.
"He was good; a very stable performance," Dineen said.
Weiss comes through
The Panthers were 0-5 when trailing after two periods, so no goal was more important than Stephen Weiss' first goal of the season, the tying power-play tally with 11:25 left in regulation.
"I had him out there quite a bit on our PK at the end, and then he scores a big goal for us to tie things up," Dineen said. "The little things, the faceoffs, his board battles when you're killing penalties. That's what makes him a special player."
