Monday marked the fourth anniversary of the Florida Panthers hiring Bill Zito as the team’s 11th general manager in their history.
Before moving to South Florida, Zito was the Columbus Blue Jackets’ senior vice president of hockey operations, assistant general manager, and alternate governor.
Zito joined the Blue Jackets in 2013, after establishing himself as one of the game’s top player agents and founding the powerful ACME World Sports agency.
The Panthers were not the first team Zito approached about becoming general manager; he had already applied for jobs in Buffalo, Carolina, Minnesota, and New Jersey.
Before being hired by the Panthers, Zito had interviewed with the Arizona Coyotes.
The Panthers, and Zito, are very happy things worked out the way they did.
Very, very happy.
“It’s humbling and very exciting. It’s also daunting,’’ Zito told FHN upon getting hired four years ago.
”There’s going to be a lot of hard work and I am not afraid of hard work. I know what’s in front of me and I am filled with excitement and enthusiasm. Last night I was just exhausted and still woke up at 3 a.m. I couldn’t go back to bed. I had to start writing my ideas down. I suspect that’s going to be my fate for the next few nights.”
Since being hired on Sept. 2, 2020, Zito has helped transform the Panthers from a team known for their potential to that of a champion.
It is hard to recognize the Panthers which ended the 2019-20 season with a four-game loss to the New York Islanders in the qualifying round of the Toronto Covid bubble to the team which will try and defend its Stanley Cup championship when Zito’s fifth season starts on Oct. 8.
When Zito took over, the Panthers had a number of decisions to make after Vincent Trocheck and Nick Bjugstad had been traded over the course of the previous two seasons.
Zito decided to build around Sasha Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau, Sergei Bobrovsky, and Aaron Ekblad at least to start.
“If you maximize the potential of every player, it’s a pretty good group right?” Zito said in 2020.
“I don’t think everyone clicks at 100 percent all the time and that’s unrealistic. But, boy, if these guys could just will themselves, prepare themselves as professionals to get there, this is a pretty good group. I’m real optimistic.’’
His first move as GM was trading Mike Matheson and Colton Sceviour to Pittsburgh for Patric Hornqvist.
Then Zito made Anton Lundell a first-round draft pick.
Zito’s first free agency saw Evgenii Dadonov, Mike Hoffman, Brian Boyle, Erik Haula, and Mark Pysyk leave — with Radko Gudas, Carter Verhaeghe, Alex Wennberg, Anthony Duclair, and others come in.
When looking at the Panthers roster from when he took over in 2020 up until now, one would think Florida went through a massive rebuild.
Teams in the NHL certainly do not turn over that much of their roster in a short period of time and have success.
Only the Panthers did just that.
In 2021, Florida made it to the playoffs; the following season, the Panthers won their first playoff series since 1996 in a President’s Trophy-winning year which was overshadowed by a second-round sweep to the Lightning.
Instead of being satisfied with what was, by most metrics, a pretty good season, Zito made a coaching change and hired Paul Maurice to change the way the Panthers play.
Zito also swung for the fence once Matthew Tkachuk suddenly became available, pulling off a blockbuster trade with Calgary which sent Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar to the Flames — and transformed the Panthers into a true contender.
Florida also added players such as Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Gus Forsling, and Brandon Montour along the way.
The Panthers have been to the Stanley Cup Final in consecutive years, winning the championship for the first time back on June 24.
Zito has been a finalist for GM of the Year in three of his four seasons with the Panthers.
He has not won that award for whatever reason, but he did get to take the Stanley Cup fishing in the Keys and then to a Brewers game in his hometown, so, not too shabby.
“That first night was just surreal,’’ Zito said at the draft, less than a week after the Panthers won the Cup by beating the Edmonton Oilers 2-1 in Game 7 of the Final.
“I can’t express how much better it was than I ever could have imagined.’’
