Zito spoke to Boomer Gordon and Jake Hahn on the Sirius XM NHL Power Play show
Zito spoke to Boomer Gordon and Jake Hahn on the Sirius XM NHL Power Play show
Earlier this week Florida Panthers General Manager Bill Zito gave an interview on Sirius XM NHL Radio.
During the discussion with Boomer Gordon and Jake Hahn on the Sirius XM NHL Power Play show, which lasted about ten minutes, Zito answered questions about Florida’s run to the Stanley Cup Final, how the team has progressed during his time as GM and the busy offseason he and his front office staff have maneuvered.
He also gave an update on the status of injured defensemen Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour, which we touched on here.
Outside of the injury news, Zito had some interesting things to say, whether it was about Matthew Tkachuk’s impact on the locker room or how he sees the Atlantic Division shaping up this season.
On the team’s growing local popularity: “Our President is a guy named Matt Caldwell and he’s been working tirelessly since I've been here to keep expanding the brand and working in the community and just done a hell of a job. It's been great. I was on a call a little while ago and just the support in the community, and more and more people know what's going on and more and more people follow the Panthers, and it's exciting. It's a really exciting time, because it also feels as if the community has really embraced us.”
On how Florida progressed last season into a Stanley Cup Finalist: “I think change is difficult. Change anywhere in life is difficult, but I think in particular, the new coach, new systems, new way of doing things, not dramatically different - same rank, same locker room, same lifestyle – but the change on the ice, the different style of play, took a while for us to fully embrace it and understand it. And it's one thing to sort of execute what the coach tells you to do, and it's quite another thing to really understand the whys and to do it intuitively and instinctively. So I think that was part of it. injuries were a little bit of a part of it, and it just took us a while to seem to get some consistency in our game. After the New Year, then we started to perform a bit better, and we were in a battle just to get into the playoffs through most of really February, March and April, and I think it was at that time that the players started to gel and come together, and then in the playoffs you saw what happened.”
On Matthew Tkachuk’s impact on the locker room: “That's a delicate question because I'm in the room a lot, and you're around the guys, but you're not really in there every single day to fully appreciate all the nuance. The one thing that he did was he pulled that hockey enthusiasm out of everybody. I would say that was something different, distinct from what the coaching staff did, just on his own, his level of compete and his love of the game…I think if you had it in you and you were one of his teammates, he figured out a way to maximize it out of you.”
On the Panthers goaltending situation entering training camp: “I expect (Sergei Bobrovsky) just to be Bob, right? He gets in the groove, he's the consummate professional and he showed during the playoffs what he's capable of doing. I think he rather enjoyed it. I think he really had a good time in the playoffs, notwithstanding the end, and I would expect more of that from him. (Spencer Knight) is hungry, he's coming back, and we'll see. I think it was in late December he shut Boston out, and it was sort of like, okay, is this guy arriving now? So there's a lot of optimism, and yet still some question marks, like any team.”
On Brandon Montour’s breakout year last season: “So much of it is opportunity, right? Where he was given the chance to play hockey and make mistakes and get right back out there, and not every player has the luxury of being afforded that playing time, independent of errors or what have you, and he got the chance and he just took it, he just went with it. His skating is so dimensional, he's a strong guy, he's got a big shot and I think maybe the combination of opportunity and confidence came together at the right time.”
On Florida having a fair amount of turnover from last season to this one: “A lot of the turnover happens because of the defenseman on the back end. We can't use the money, they're going to come back in short order. So now we have to find players to help get us through, we have to have opportunity for maybe some of the younger kids or other people to push up, to improve, to grab some jobs. Up front we’ll be pretty similar, about three or four new guys, but I don't think that's any different than any other year, right? You have people are gonna get paid, and we still have a little bit of a salary cap crunch. We still have some money on our books from buyouts, so it's a little bit of a combination of everything.”
On giving free agent Evan Rodrigues money and term (he signed for four years, $12 million): “We thought he was a guy who could fit almost on any line on any night, and the utility that he gave us in combination with he has an ability to score, he can play defense, and he's a well-respected team guy and worker, and everything kind of fell into what we thought we needed.”
On the Atlantic Division seeming to get better and becoming an even tougher gauntlet of teams: “Yeah, it's exciting though, like from the fan the fan standpoint, ‘Those guys are great, they’re awesome.’ You're not the only ones who talks about the Atlantic Division. I can tell you that we talk about it all the time. It's gonna be hard. It's gonna be really hard. But it's exciting, and we're all really looking forward to the season starting.”