The first pro season for Hunter St. Martin didn’t come easy, but the Florida Panthers still have a prospect with some real tools on their hands.
St. Martin, a sixth-round pick in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft, opened his professional career with the Charlotte Checkers after a strong run of scoring in junior and a string of eye-catching showings at Panthers camps and showcases. The results in the American League were uneven, but the underlying appeal remains obvious: he can skate, he can shoot, and he plays with enough pace to keep forcing his way into the picture.
That reputation started to build long before Charlotte. In his draft season with the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Hockey League, the smooth-skating left wing put up 24 goals and 28 assists in 68 regular season games.
His 52 points marked a 30-point jump from his first full WHL season. He added a goal and four assists in the playoffs, though Medicine Hat was bounced in five games by the Red Deer Rebels in the opening round.
St. Martin also made noise away from junior hockey.
He clicked quickly with 2023 second-rounder Gracyn Sawchyn at his first development camp and carried that momentum into the 2024 Rookie Showcase in Nashville, where he scored in all three games as Florida went 1-2. In an NHL exhibition game on September 28, his rebound set up Jesper Boqvist’s game-winning goal in a 5-4 overtime win over the Carolina Hurricanes.
That fall, he took off in Medicine Hat again, ripping off seven goals in the Tigers’ first eight games of the 2024-25 season. The Panthers rewarded him on October 25 with a three-year, entry-level contract.
From there, the junior season kept building. St.
Martin finished tied for tenth in WHL goal scoring with 39 and was second on the Tigers in that category to future first overall pick in 2026, Gavin McKenna. He also added 20 assists for 59 points, a seven-point bump from the previous year.
In the playoffs, he stepped up again with seven goals and ten assists in 18 games as Medicine Hat rolled to the Ed Chynoweth Cup, losing just two games on the way. At the Memorial Cup, he scored the game-winning goal and picked up an assist in the Tigers’ opening round robin game against host Rimouski, then went quiet over the next three games as Medicine Hat fell 4-1 to the London Knights in the final.
St. Martin’s second development camp in the summer of 2025 brought more of the same.
Skating on a line with Sawchyn and newcomer Anton Lundmark, he was again one of the more dangerous players on the ice in the closing day scrimmage. He also returned for rookie camp, another prospect showcase - where he was ejected for boarded Tampa Bay’s Connor Kurth in the second game - and later attended training camp.
By early October, the Panthers assigned him to the American League to start his pro career in Charlotte.
The transition was rocky. St.
Martin made his AHL debut on October 18 and came away scoreless in a 4-1 win over the Iowa Wild. He didn’t record his first point until his 13th game, when he assisted on a Sawchyn goal in a 6-2 win over Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
Six days later, he scored his first AHL goal against the Springfield Thunderbirds and stretched that modest run to a season-high three-game point streak. On December 30, he posted the first of two multi-point games in his rookie year with a goal and an assist in another 6-2 win over the Penguins.
He matched that line again in a 9-0 rout of the Hartford Wolf Pack on February 16.
The rest of the season was far less forgiving. After that Hartford game, St.
Martin went 12 games without a point. He broke through again with an assist in Rochester on April 1, scored his fifth and final goal three days later in Toronto, and closed his season with an assist on a Sandis Vilmanis goal on April 12 at Bojangles Coliseum in a one-sided win over Hershey.
Overall, his first run in Charlotte was a tough one. He played 46 games, finished with five goals and 13 points, and sat through two separate 12-game pointless stretches while adjusting to the pro level. He also did not dress in Charlotte’s first-round playoff loss to Springfield.
Even with the rough landing in 2025-26, St. Martin still brings traits that keep him on the radar.
He fits with skilled players and grinders, owns an NHL-caliber shot, and gets to that release with a scorer’s mindset. His shot has whip, deception and plenty of pop.
What he’ll have to do now is find more space and create more chances to use it. He also brings acceleration, speed, anticipation and motor, with first two steps that stack up against anyone on Florida’s current roster.
Like most young players, he still has work to do in his own end and on the defensive side of the puck, but he forechecks and backchecks hard.
At his best, he still looks more like a bottom-six forward with a good shot than a middle- or top-six scorer. The next step comes in his second season with the Checkers.
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Panthers Could Be Facing A Real Front Office Threat
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The Red Wings are searching for a replacement after Steve Yzerman stepped down, and their list of possibilities appears to include several names as they sort through the process. Peterson is part of that mix along with Jeff Kealty and Jeff Greenberg, and for Florida, the interest matters because it puts another important figure from a winning operation squarely in the crosshairs of a franchise trying to rebuild its own hierarchy. [Read more 🡒]