'Either way, we'll have a good team': Latest from Bill Zito on Sam Reinhart, Panthers free agency plans
Florida has 11 players from their Stanley Cup winning roster who will be unrestricted free agents on Monday
Sunday will be a day of celebration in South Florida.
Hundreds of thousands of Florida Panthers fans are expected to converge on Fort Lauderdale Beach for an incredible Stanley Cup Championship parade.
The excitement and anticipation for the event has been reverberating throughout South Florida all week.
All members of the Panthers, from players to team staff to front office executives, will be beachside on Sunday for the big party.
A day later, things will get very serious again.
That’s because Monday is July 1, the official start of NHL free agency.
Panthers General Manager Bill Zito and his staff have been working incredibly hard to prepare for the new league year, all while watching Florida march through the Stanley Cup Playoffs all the way to a seven-game victory over the Edmonton Oilers in the Cup Final.
Monday will be exactly seven days since the Panthers won Game 7 at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise.
While quite obviously nobody would change a single thing that led to the Panthers hoisting the Stanley Cup, the timeframe isn’t ideal.
Working with agents ahead of time and trying to prepare for July 1 has been a collective effort on both sides of the negotiating table.
“Everybody knew what was going on and everybody knew we can’t really do this now, so I talked to the agents and said, ’Listen, be ready the day after,’” Zito said Saturday from the NHL Draft floor in Las Vegas.
Fortunately for Zito, the Panthers have become a destination team that players absolutely want to play for.
There are 11 players who were key members of Florida’s squad last season who will be unrestricted free agents on Monday.
They are Sam Reinhart, Brandon Montour, Kevin Stenlund, Ryan Lomberg, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Nick Cousins, Steven Lorentz, Dmitry Kulikov, Anthony Stolarz and trade deadline acquisitions Vladimir Tarasenko and Kyle Okposo.
Reinhart, who scored 57 goals for the Panthers last season, is the name on the list that has received the most attention, and rightly so.
He’ll be the one getting the biggest payday next week.
Zito was also asked on Saturday if, given the crunched timeline, it’s safe to assume that Reinhart had been made an offer.
“You know how to use that word ‘assume,’” Zito replied with a grin.
In a perfect world, Zito would probably like to run it back with the same roster of players, and why not?
They just won the Stanley Cup and have one of the closest and best run locker rooms in the NHL.
It’s a place that players want to be.
But this is not a perfect world, and in order to keep the core group intact, some hard decisions will have to be made.
Zito referenced last summer when Florida lost defenseman Radko Gudas to the Anaheim Ducks in free agency simply because he got an incredible offer.
The Panthers are going to spend up to the salary cap, but it’s a delicate balancing act when deciding how to allocate those funds.
That includes thinking ahead to next summer, when Carter Verhaeghe, Aaron Ekblad and Sam Bennett are set to hit the open market.
“We’re going to try and keep everybody,” Zito said when asked about next year’s UFA class. “Obviously, it’s a special group. We’ll try to keep as many guys as we can and be mindful that there’s opportunities for people.”
This is what life is like as a top NHL team trying to keep its core group together and maintain the same level of expectation in terms of winning and Stanley Cup contention.
During his four years at the helm, Zito has proven to have an incredible hockey mind to recognize players, make key signings and not waste money.
His next key test on the subject starts on Monday.
“It’s not just us, but all the cap teams,” Zito said. “So many players can come and reach their levels of achievement or raise their game. Either way, we’ll have a good team.”
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