Panthers president offers insight on Zito, Maurice, how the Tkachuk trade went down, more

Smart stewardship from the Vinnie Viola-led Panthers ownership group, president Matt Caldwell and general manager Bill Zito has transformed a franchise that was lost in the wilderness into an Eastern Conference champion and a team that’s now annually relevant.

Caldwell — the team’s CEO since 2014, a U.S. Army veteran and a former vice president at Goldman Sachs — addressed the franchise’s growth, behind-the-scenes background on the Matthew Tkachuk trade, Zito’s penchant for making good decisions and other issues in a phone conversation this week:

▪ On the burgeoning fan base and a big looming business deal:

Caldwell said the team has its highest season-ticket base ever — like most teams, the Panthers don’t release numbers — and the renewal rate for next season is extremely high.

“We should be able to sell 2,000 to 3,000 new season tickets,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Panthers are close to selling naming rights for their arena; the plan all along was to call it FLA Live Arena only for this season.

“We’re bringing in a ton of new business,” Caldwell said. “Our revenue in general hit an all-time high last season” and will continue to grow.

▪ On the Tkachuk trade:

Caldwell said Zito informed him of the possibility of acquiring Tkachuk from the Calgary Flames on Sunday night, July 17. The deal was completed and announced the following Friday night.

Caldwell’s response when Zito first told him about Tkachuk’s availability?

“My literal first reaction was ‘holy [expletive],’” Caldwell said.

Tkachuk reportedly had told the Flames he wouldn’t re-sign with them this summer, triggering trade talks. The Panthers were among the teams that interested him.

After Zito came to Caldwell with the possibility, the Panthers shared the information with a small circle of team employees, who offered feedback. Viola also was looped in.

“We brought in the analytics [employees] and scouts,” Caldwell said. “It was kept very confidential.”

In fact, news of the trade never leaked until it was announced.

At the time the talks were happening, there was “some shock and awe,” Caldwell said. “A player of Matthew’s caliber doesn’t become available at 24 years old. None of the teams knew he would be available. We dug in and spent every waking hour talking about this.

“Bill had a conviction that this was the style of play the team needed. We felt we needed a couple tweaks to make it a playoff-style team, to be grittier. Matthew was the rare combination of a player who could score goals [at a high level] and bring a level of toughness we felt our team needed. Many have called him a unicorn player. He’s got that swagger we’ve been missing for a long time, and he’s a star.”

Caldwell acknowledged “we had to give up a lot” — Jonathan Huberdeau, MacKenzie Weegar, Panthers prospect Cole Schwindt and Florida’s lottery-protected first-round selection in the 2025 draft in exchange for Tkachuk and a conditional fourth-rounder.

“A lot of teams interested were offering multiple first-round picks,” Caldwell said. “It was really hard because we drafted Jonathan and MacKenzie, and they were great cornerstones of the team. It was tough on our heart because of how we loved them. But there’s a hard salary cap in the NHL. It was going to be really hard to re-sign both of those players with our roster with a hard cap.”

Through five days of discussions, “Bill was adamant” that the trade made sense for the Panthers, Caldwell said.

“Vinnie asked a lot of questions,” Caldwell noted. “Bill was prepared as always. Bill was amazing. He said we may take flak in the short term but this is the best move for the Panthers long term. You always want to think five years out in sports. Getting him and [Aleksander Barkov] locked up for eight years” was big.

One of the final components of making the trade was agreeing to an eight-year, $76 million deal with Tkachuk; Calgary permitted the Panthers to speak with his agent.

“No team was going to trade for him unless he signed with them,” Caldwell said. “Bill was fully empowered to get to the right number.”

▪ On what has made Zito so successful as an executive and evaluator:

Caldwell, who speaks with his GM daily — sometimes multiple times a day — said Zito’s diverse background (including his work as an agent and seven seasons as an executive with the Columbus Blue Jackets) has helped him.

“It comes from his training in law school — he went to Yale — but you can’t just be academic in these areas. You have to have a feel for the locker room. He has that. It’s one thing to know what data says, what scouts say.”

But it’s another thing to apply common sense.

“He has an ability to take in multiple variables and challenge the staff,” Caldwell said. “He tries to be very objective, tries not to have a bias.”

Caldwell and Zito encourage the team’s hockey executives and scouts to be honest with their opinions.

“I try to get our people to talk about what they think is the right way,” Caldwell said. “If we argue it and do all the work, we should get to the same conclusion. We want to know what our blind spots are. We’re not going to ever get every decision right. He reminds me all the time that if he hits on 60 percent, that’s great. To me, he’s way higher than 60 percent.”

Caldwell said even when the team’s play was uneven earlier this season, it never reached the point of either he or Zito saying that they didn’t have all the personnel they needed to win with their new style of play.

“You don’t want to pull the plug on anything too early,” Caldwell said. “We had a lot of conviction of what we wanted to do.”

▪ On why the Paul Maurice hire made sense:

“There were a lot of great coaches, experienced coaches,” Caldwell said. “Paul checked a lot of boxes. I was most excited about the alignment and how he and Bill thought about the game.”

And the organization’s thinking was “let’s give Bill the right coach that will be good with his style and the type of players we have and all the performance and recovery [principles that the organization believes in]. Bill is very good on being progressive. And Paul was open with all of that.”

▪ On what the franchise has done off the ice to improve the experience for players:

“Vinnie bought the team in 2013. We invested a lot on the player side, whether it was upgrading the locker room or building the new practice facility at War Memorial or investing in the facility in Coral Springs. Bill Zito has turbocharged us and helped us be first class. We upgraded the team plane, improved the hotel experience on the road; we stay in first class hotels. We provide food for the players through our own food and catering company.”

Fifteen years ago, long before Caldwell and Viola arrived, players had to pay for some of their meals at the training facility. The team is spending $70 million on that new practice facility at the War Memorial site in Fort Lauderdale; it’s scheduled to open by the end of the year.

It will feature “two sheets of ice, one for the community,” Caldwell said. “There will be a music venue attached to it. It will become a great civic hub for the city.”