Zito playing all the right notes in his retooling of the Panthers in first year as GM

Bill Zito played for legendary coach Tim Taylor at Yale and spent two decades grinding as an agent. It set up the general manager to turn around the Panthers.

It was sort of fitting for Bill Zito’s first addition as general manager of thePanthers last year to be Patric Hornqvist.

First of all, Zito spent more than seven years in the Columbus Blue Jackets’ front office, where he was repeatedly tormented by Hornqvist’s Pittsburgh Penguins — he knew well what the right wing would add — but Hornqvist was also exactly the sort of player Zito has always had an affinity for, dating back to his playing days with the Yale Bulldogs and all the way through his time as a high-profile agent for Acme World Sports.

Zito was always a bottom-line player at Yale — a self-described “grinder”

Courtesy of Florida Panthers Bill Zito, right, being introduced as the Panthers new general manager on Sept. 2, 2020, said: ‘People have likened roster-building to a symphony.’