Stanley Cup a Big Win for Florida Panthers and One Ex-Litigator

A key architect of the Florida Panthers’ first Stanley Cup victory is former litigator William “Bill” Zito Jr., who was hired by the NHL franchise four years ago to be its general manager, his first job running a team in the league.

Only days after a clip of Zito angrily tossing a water bottle during Game 5 went viral, the lawyer and player agent was crying before a crowd of 20,000 fans at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida, as the Panthers prevailed Monday night with a 2-1 win over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

Zito’s journey from law school to professional hockey started from the ice up. He was raised in a Milwaukee suburb and played hockey at Yale. He also coached collegiate hockey while earning his law degree at the University of Wisconsin.

In the early 1990s he spent time working out of Chicago and New York at a litigation boutique run by the late Michael Rovell, a former Jenner & Block partner. In past interviews, Zito had called it “sort of like a Wall Street law firm.”

Monte Mann, an Armstrong Teasdale litigation partner in Chicago, said he was a law student at Northwestern when he crossed paths with Zito. “I think it was Bill’s first job out of law school,” said Mann, who as a summer associate worked closely with Zito in handling Rovell’s docket.

“He was a great guy, very funny, affable, charismatic, and passionate,” Mann said of Zito. “I could see him being great in a team or locker room environment.”

Zito has credited his legal training with teaching him to think critically and problem-solve. He co-founded hockey player agency Acme World Sports LLC in 1995 and built it into a top contract representation shop before joining the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets as an assistant general manager. Acme was sold to sports mogul Casey Wasserman’s firm in 2020.

The Panthers, Zito, and the club’s general counsel C. Edward Wildermuth didn’t respond to requests for comment. Nor did Panthers vice chairman Douglas Cifu—a former partner and member of the management committee at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison—who a decade ago invested in the team along with majority owner Vincent Viola, a New York Law School graduate and billionaire founder of trading firm Virtu Financial Inc. (Cifu is now Virtu’s chief executive.)

Hockey Glory

It was Jenner & Block, Rovell’s former firm, which inadvertently led to pairing Zito with the head coach who would complete the Panthers’ transition from one-time NHL embarrassment to league champion.

An investigation led by Jenner & Block partner and former federal prosecutor Reid Schar into sexual assault allegations involving a former assistant coach for the Chicago Blackhawks led to the late 2021 resignations of several individuals, including Joel Quenneville, a former head coach of the Blackhawks who at the time was serving in the same role for the Panthers.

The Panthers, otherwise uninvolved in the scandal, were forced to find a new head coach. In June 2022, the team hired Paul Maurice, who with Zito was among the players, coaches, staffers, and executives celebrating this week.

Zito is one of a few Big Law-types working in NHL hockey operations.

Two former Latham & Watkins associates—Andrew Lugerner and Donald Fishman—hold assistant general manager roles for the Vegas Golden Knights and Washington Capitals, respectively. Tampa Bay Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois was a tax lawyer at now-defunct Canadian law firm Heenan Blaikie. All three teams have won the Stanley Cup in recent years.

With the NHL’s 32 franchises competing for the same assets and trying similar strategies, it often helps to have legal expertise in the C-suite when navigating the increasingly complex world of pro sports.

“I found having owners with legal and dealmaking backgrounds was an advantage compared to clubs that regularly ran into bottlenecks when trying to get buy-in for any big moves,” said Steven Werier, a former Paul Weiss associate who spent five years as an assistant general manager and vice president of legal for the Panthers. Werier left the team before Zito came aboard.

“It’s a totally different path,” said Mann about a career trajectory that will see Zito, his former legal colleague, be part of a select group of individuals to have their names engraved on the Stanley Cup.

Mann enjoyed seeing a hockey lifer succeed at the sport’s highest level. “When I was watching the other night, I was really rooting for him,” he said.