It’s a pivotal week for Panthers’ new regime. Here’s how GM Bill Zito plans to go forward
Bill Zito is undertaking a challenge unlike any a general manager has ever faced in the NHL.
A little more than a month after taking over as the GM of the Florida Panthers, Zito still hasn’t had any formal chance to meet in person with his players and some of the team’s staff. The COVID-19 pandemic still has most of the league — and world — operating remotely when possible.
Even so, Zito is diving headlong into one of the busiest three-day stretches the league has ever put together. The 2020 NHL Entry Draft begins Tuesday and wraps up Wednesday, and then free agency opens Thursday.
“The NHL Draft — and all things surrounding it — for people who love the sport, is an exciting time,” Zito said.
It’s easily the most important week since Zito took over as GM in September and a pivotal early moment for Florida’s new regime. After making splashy addition after splashy addition throughout the offseason last year, the Panthers still missed out on the traditional 16-team Stanley Cup playoffs this season. With lofty expectations unfulfilled, Florida opted not to renew former general manager Dale Tallon’s contract in August.
It puts Zito in an interesting position. The Panthers firmly moved into a win-now approach in 2019 when they hired coach Joel Quenneville and signed superstar goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky to a seven-year contract, even after taking a goalie in the first round of the 2019 NHL Entry Draft.
Bobrovsky struggled in his first season in South Florida, Quenneville couldn’t lift the Panthers out of the lottery and Florida lost to the New York Islanders in the qualifying round of the expanded postseason.
The NHL Entry Draft
Zito’s first crack at guiding the Panthers back into the Cup playoffs comes Tuesday, when Florida picks 12th in the 2020 NHL Draft.
The unusual, COVID-altered lead-up to the Draft could make this one of the most unpredictable ever. There was no NHL Scouting Combine and teams couldn’t meet with players in person, and amateur leagues across the world couldn’t finish their seasons because of the coronavirus outbreak in the winter. There’s no obvious consensus of whom Florida might target at No. 12, but logic dictates a defenseman, given the Panthers’ ongoing struggles on defense.
Canadian defenseman Kaiden Guhle is one of the most popular names tied to Florida, which hasn’t taken a defenseman in the first round since taking Aaron Ekblad with the No. 1 pick in the 2014 NHL Entry Draft. Finnish center Anton Lundell is also a common name popping up in mock drafts.
“Absent the combine, a lot of the personality interaction has been via Zoom calls and the staff here has obviously been on top of it prior to my arrival, so most of that work has been done,” Zito said. “I don’t know that there’s any individual, specific characteristic that I could point to that would be dismissive or inclusive for any particular candidate for our draft spot. Perhaps there is one. If there were, I probably wouldn’t tell you. For me on a personal level, it’s more of a feel for a person.”
Tuesday is limited to just the first round of the Draft. On Wednesday, the league holds the final six rounds and Florida has picks in all but the sixth, including two each in the third and fourth rounds.
Free agency
Free agency is just as much an uncertainty as the Draft because of the pandemic. The salary cap is staying flat rather than climbing and the uncertainty about when fans might return to arenas makes it impossible to predict what the league’s short-term financial outlook might look like.
Players might target short-term deals, hoping the salary cap spikes in coming offseasons when they can then target a long-term contract. Teams might opt to back load deals, deferring the bulk of salaries years down the road when the league potentially is on better financial footing. All sides know there might be unique bargains available for teams.
“I think it’s easy to say that. You can just use logic and I think it would lead most of us to go there,” Zito said. “The truth of the matter is I think it’s all individual, sort of on an ad hoc basis, what works for each team, what works for each player, so, for me, it’s just wait, be very patient and react to what our team needs are and what’s out there because you really don’t know. There’s always surprises and we’ll address our team needs in a prudent fashion.”
Zito has already made a few moves to the NHL roster, most notably flipping defenseman Mike Matheson and winger Colton Sceviour to the Pittsburgh Penguins for right wing Patric Hornqvist, and also trading defenseman John Brown to the Ottawa Senators for a fourth-round pick.
With more than $21 million in cap space available, Florida has a lot of roster flexibility and could be in the market for some of the available star defensemen, like Alex Pietrangelo of the St. Louis Blues and Torey Krug of the Boston Bruins.
This cap space, however, is available because the Panthers only have 12 players signed throughnext season. They’re at risk of losing 12 free agents who appeared in an NHL game this season, including wingers Mike Hoffman, Evgenii Dadonov and Erik Haula.
“I can’t really say with certainty what could or might happen with any of them,” Zito said. “I’ve reached out to the agents for all of them and kept them abreast of what I’m doing. That’s about the best answer that I can give. It’s a tricky situation because if I try to do A and it works, then I can do B. If it doesn’t work, then I have to do C and then if I do C well then I can do D, and if not then I do E. It’s a little bit of a puzzle.”
