"With the draft complete, Panthers general manager Dale Tallon and assistant Mike Santos have plenty of work to do.

The free agency period opens Friday, with Florida being forced into the role of a major player.

Even with the pickup of defenseman Brian Campbell and his big contract, the Panthers have about $24 million to spend just to get to the NHL-mandated salary-cap floor. With the salary cap set at $64.3 million — and the minimum at $48.3 million — the Panthers are going to be very active.

Florida has about $24?million committed for the coming season.

"We're excited about this. It took a lot of pain last year to get ourselves in this position,'' Tallon said. "We've earned the right to do what we need to do to get this franchise turned around.''

Tallon and the Panthers could add some players in the coming days, as well. Tallon spent the past week on the phone with his peers, joking on NHL radio that the Panthers have become "the new Waste Management" as teams with salary-cap problems want to dump their large contracts on Florida.

Although the Panthers took on the financial heft that came with trading for Campbell, that was as much to dump the bad contract in Rostislav Olesz as it was to bring in a strong defensive player. Goalie Tomas Vokoun remains property of the Panthers until Friday as Florida is the only team that can negotiate with him until then.

Tallon says one of his first orders of business this week is speaking with Vokoun. Even though Vokoun is expected to test free agency, Tallon hopes the commitment Florida made by bringing in Campbell is enough good faith move to convince Vokoun to stick around.

"I think the moves we're making right now will help lure guys here on July 1,'' Tallon said. "We have some things in the fire as we move forward this week. Things are good, we've put ourselves in a good position. We're just going to move forward. There's a lot of talk, a lot of chatter. We're hopeful this starts to steamroll.''"