Panthers GM Bill Zito talks free agency; Spencer Knight expected to return

SUNRISE — Florida Panthers general manager Bill Zito is quite pleased with the team he’s built.

And who can blame him?

He took huge swings last summer by not retaining interim coach Andrew Brunette and hiring Paul Maurice. Then a month later, he traded for Matthew Tkachuk, who’s a finalist for this season’s Hart Trophy.

Zito and the Panthers though have a unique challenge that only two organizations face each year after making a run to the Stanley Cup Final. There is no time, yet, for a break.

The NHL draft is next week in Nashville and free agency begins on July 1. The Panthers’ season ended just over a week ago.

“Teams are reluctant to call you when you’re in it, so now your phone’s blowing up and I’m trying to get back and handle some of those things,” Zito said Wednesday afternoon. “It’s a little chaotic, but it’s relatively organized.”

But of course, not all the work gets crammed into these past couple weeks. Draft and free agency preparation is done year-round. Zito, for example, said that most pro scouting is done during the season.

It’s crunch time now though, even without the Panthers holding a draft selection until the second round.

“It’s quite difficult time-wise,” Zito said. “It’s quite difficult organizationally.”

Zito on free agency

Zito is still finishing up exit interviews with players, but he said he’s already noticed a common theme in those conversations. They all said splendid things about the locker room, players and staff they went to work with every day.

Zito even went as far as to say one player he spoke to said it was the first time in his NHL career that there were zero complaints ever in the locker room.

“A significant part of the success of this group was they’re a team,” Zito said. “It was the character, it was the graciousness of the guys in the room towards each other. It’s maybe not measurable, but it’s real. It’s tangible and it’s not something to be played with.”

With that being said, Zito indicated he won’t be making many major changes to the roster.

Sixteen of the 23 players are already signed next year, and the Panthers are in the middle of the pack with $10.3 million projected in cap space, according to CapFriendly.

Core players such as Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov, Aaron Ekblad and Sergei Bobrovsky are all locked up for at least the next two seasons.

Eight others (two restricted and six unrestricted) are slated to enter free agency. Some will likely be brought back.

Zito didn’t dive deep into many specifics, but did touch on Radko Gudas and Alex Lyon, who are both pending unrestricted free agents.

On Gudas, “I owe it to that room to do everything I can to try to keep everybody together. It’s going to be daunting, but I think it’s possible. I’m hopeful, but at the same time, individuals also have to worry about themselves. We only have so much that we’re able to do. We’re pursuing it and talking to everybody and hopefully we can get a good result.”

As for Lyon, who’s reportedly interested in returning to the Panthers, Zito said there is mutual interest to bring him back, but they are still doing “information gathering.”

“I don’t have all of it at the moment and I know time is running out, but what we have to do is figure out do we have the right situation for our team, and then the individuals also have to figure out what works for them,” Zito said.

Good news on Knight

Panthers goaltender Spencer Knight entered the NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance Program in late February and appears to be on track to rejoin the team in the fall.

“He’s doing well and we expect him back in the fall,” Zito said. “I’ve talked to him or texted him or whatever pretty frequently, so he’s doing great.”

Knight, 22, played in 21 games during the season with a 3.18 goals-against average and .901 save percentage.

A 2019 first-round pick, Knight is owed $4.5 million each of the next three seasons from a contract extension signed last September. If he’s ready to go for the start of the season and Lyon is brought back to the team, it could create a three-man battle in net.

No new injury updates

Maurice provided a long list last week of injuries the team is dealing with this summer. Zito did not have any new information on those players on Wednesday.

“I think we’re still kind of gathering information on a timeline, a temporal scope of return,” Zito said.

Among the list are Tkachuk, Ekblad, Gudas, Sam Bennett and Eetu Luostarinen.

Ekblad is the only known player that requires surgery to fix a dislocated shoulder. He’s not expected to be ready for the start of training camp in September, and if he or any other players miss the start of the season, it will have an effect on the cap.

“We’re gonna have a real challenge this year knowing some of our players are hurt and they may miss parts of the early season,” Zito said. “We can’t replace that money. If we spend it, when they return, we have to be able to absorb them back in. So if we spend it and they come back, we’re shot. We can’t do it. So now our cap is really effectively even lower, because we have to go through this timeframe.”

As for the decision to play Tkachuk in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final with a broken sternum, Zito said that’s not his decision. Rather, it’s a decision involving the medical team that he tends to stay out of.

“To be honest, I stay out of it for exactly those political reasons,” Zito said. “We’ll never do anything that’s irresponsible for the player’s health.”