Bill Zito, architect of Panthers rebuild, misses out on General Manager of the Year Award
Bill Zito’s transformational performance at the helm of the Florida Panthers was not quite enough for him to become the first rookie general manager to win the Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award.
Lou Lamoriello of the New York Islanders beat out Marc Bergevin of the Montreal Canadiens and Zito to win the Jim Gregory Award for the second straight year. Zito finished third in voting, which is conducted by all 31 GMs, plus additional executives and media members.
Bergevin and Lamoriello both likely benefited from the timeframe of voting for the Jim Gregory Award. Unlike most NHL awards, voting for the Jim Gregory is conducted after the second-round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Canadiens and Islanders are both still playing in the third round, while Zito’s Panthers bowed out in the first round of the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The turnaround Zito staged in his first year in Broward County, however, was nearly unparalleled in the NHL this season. Florida hadn’t been to the traditional 16-team Cup playoffs since 2016 and Zito immediately vaulted the Panthers from irrelevance to contention.
Zito, 56, spent nearly three decades in hockey before finally get his first GM job last year when Florida hired him to replace Tallon and the executive quickly established him as one of the sport’s best. Before taking over the Panthers, Zito spent nearly a decade as an assistant general manager for the Columbus Blue Jackets and spent nearly two decades as an agent prior to joining the Blue Jackets.
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Through a series of offseason moves, Zito overhauled nearly half the roster and Florida had eight newcomers in its opening-day lineup. The new-look Panthers opened the season on an eight-game points streak and were the last team to lose a game in regulation.
With Zito at the helm, Florida reached the traditional 16-team Cup playoffs for only the sixth time in franchise history. The Panthers also set new franchise record for points percentage, goals per game and shots on goal per game, and tied a club record for goal differential despite the shortened schedule. Florida had the fourth points in the regular season and finished second in the Central Division before falling to the defending-champion Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round.
For their final game in the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs, the Panthers used 13 players who didn’t play a game for them a year earlier, including a pair of trade-deadline acquisitions. Despite another first-round exit for Florida, Zito has the Panthers in position to contend year after year after making a slew of shrewd moves to retool the roster around his core of star center Aleksander Barkov, All-Star left wing Jonathan Huberdeau, and defensemen Aaron Ekblad and MacKenzie Weegar.
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Right wing Patric Hornqvist, whom Zito acquired in a trade only a month after taking over as GM, led Florida in power-play goals. Carter Verhaeghe and Anthony Duclair, a pair of relatively unheralded free-agent acquisitions, ranked top two in plus-minus among Panthers forwards, and defenseman Gustav Forsling, a waiver-wire pickup in the days before the 2020-21 NHL season began, finished fourth on the team in the category.
Five of Florida’s top 11 goal-scorers in the regular season were acquired by Zito in his short tenure — Verhaeghe, Hornqvist, Duclair, and forwards Alex Wennberg and Sam Bennett — and Bennett, a trade-deadline acquisition, scored 15 points in just 10 games with the Panthers.
With about $9 million in cap space heading into the offseason, Zito will have a chance to continue making his mark in South Florida as he tries to guide the Panthers back to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since 1996.
