Panthers re-sign Stone, Domi to multi-year extensions

After several months of speculation, forwards Mark Stone and Max Domi have each signed new contracts with the Florida Panthers.

Stone was awarded a 4-year, $36,100,000 million deal, while Domi re-upped with Florida by agreeing to a 3-year, $15,003,000 extension.

Domi will remain a restricted free agent at the conclusion of his new deal, while Stone will become an unrestricted free agent – but that shouldn't matter.

“I want to play the rest of my career as a Panther,” said an elated Stone. “The fans are tremendous and our GM is a hockey genius. Why would I want to ever put on any other uniform?”

Added Stone: “Wearing green is for losers.”

Domi, who was acquired last season from the New York Rangers, shared Stone's Panther pride.

“I'm so proud to play for this team that I can't even find the words to properly express it. I'm telling you we're building something special here and I'm so glad to be a part of it,” Domi said.

Florida General Manager Jeff Kuntz said of the signings, “Talent at Right Wing is hard to find in this league and Mark is one of the best at the position. We structured Mark's deal by looking at the teams who might offer-sheet him, then we built out full spreadsheets for those teams to better understand their situations, and crafted a deal that would both be too difficult for other teams to beat while also reducing Mark's salary cap hit.”

And as for Domi?

“With Max's deal we took a totally different approach. We structured his deal to be exactly $1,000 [per year] above the threshold to require maximum compensation for an offer sheet. We gambled that the teams who were big-game hunting with their offer-sheets would prefer to look elsewhere, and that by over-paying slightly for Max we could lock him in without having to worry,” Kuntz explained.

The Panthers also submitted an offer-sheet for Devon Toews of the Los Angeles Kings, but when pressed for comment, the usually talkative GM didn't say much.

“The window to talk about Devon closed when the Kings matched our offer-sheet. He's another team's asset and for that reason I can't talk about him,” said Kuntz, adding, “But what I can and will talk about is that wearing green is indeed for losers. I agree with Mark.”

So there you have it. Both key restricted free agents from the Florida Panthers will be wearing red, blue and gold. Not green.

Unrestricted free agency is set to begin for the EHE very soon, so we'll see what Florida plans to do.