The Panthers have signed restricted free agent defenseman Tobias Bjornfot to a two-way contract, per a team press release. He’ll earn a $775K salary in the NHL and a $450K salary in the minors this season, according to PuckPedia.
Bjornfot was a first-round pick by the Kings in 2019 out of the Djurgarden program in his native Sweden, but he and L.A. decided to move his development to North America immediately after he was drafted. In hindsight, that was a hasty decision for a mobile but raw stay-at-home defender who played most of his draft year at the under-20 level in Sweden, and he never pieced together a career as a full-time NHLer as a result.
Florida is Bjornfot’s third NHL organization. He ended up being claimed off waivers by the Golden Knights in January 2024 before the Panthers snagged him off the wire two months later. He’s remained in the organization since, successfully passing through waivers at the beginning of 2024-25 and spending most of the season with the AHL’s Charlotte Checkers.
Last season saw Bjornfot regain some stability after suiting up for five different NHL and AHL clubs in 2023-24. He made 50 regular-season appearances for Charlotte, posting a 5-13–18 scoring line and a plus-six rating. He also added seven points in 14 AHL playoff games and made 14 NHL appearances for the Panthers as an injury replacement throughout the season, going without a point and logging a minus-three rating while averaging 13:06 of ice time per night.
He’s a fine No. 8 defender at this stage of his career, and while he doesn’t have the current pedigree nor ceiling that his draft position indicated, he’s still an experienced and reliable call-up option that benefits a Panthers club that lost some of its organizational defensive depth this summer following its second straight Stanley Cup championship. Bjornfot, 24, will be a restricted free agent with arbitration rights again next summer.