PUBLICATION
Tom Banks
November 28, 2025Â Â (5:36 PM)
Photo credit: Daily Faceoff
Nikita Kucherov has been a star for Tampa Bay, but now the star winger has revealed he almost ended up with their rival Florida Panthers a decade ago.
The Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers have both experienced immense success over the past decade, with both teams reaching three Stanley Cup Finals each, winning two.
They’ve done so with some of the biggest stars in the National Hockey League, with the likes of Nikita Kucherov, Aleksander Barkov and others leading the way for the hockey revival in Florida.
Nikita Kucherov… almost a Florida Panther?
At this point in time, those two players have become synonymous with their current teams, but according to former Panthers General Manager Steve Werier, Kucherov almost landed on the other Florida team.
Werier reveals that Florida was lining up a major offer sheet for the Lightning star, but in the end, Kucherov would sign a three-year, $14.3 million bridge deal that saw him remain in Tampa Bay before he would go on to sign a long-term extension with the organization that may see him retire in Tampa Bay.
That ended up being an incredible move for the Lightning, as Kucherov has gone on to become arguably the franchise’s greatest ever player, tallying 368 goals and 1,021 points across 824 games played for the organization.
At the time, this may not have been a strange move to look back on, but nine years later, Kucherov is one of the key pieces that led the Lightning to three Cup Finals and back-to-back titles in 2020 and 2021, as he will likely go down as the best player to ever play for the Lightning, while the Panthers themselves have gone on to similar success without him.
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