Winter Classic in MLB park brings things ‘full circle’ for Panthers GM

MIAMI -- Bill Zito once brought the Stanley Cup to a baseball stadium. Now he's bringing his team to one.

The Florida Panthers will host the New York Rangers at loanDepot park, normally the home of the Miami Marlins of Major League Baseball, in the 2026 Discover NHL Winter Classic on Jan. 2 (8 p.m. ET; HBO Max, truTV, TNT, SNW, SNO, SNE, TVAS).

Zito went from a clubhouse attendant for the Milwaukee Brewers in the early 1980s to the general manager of the Panthers in 2020. After the Panthers won the Cup in 2024, he took the trophy to American Family Field in Milwaukee. They won the Cup again last season and will be the main attraction in the first NHL outdoor game in the Sunshine State.

“It’s almost come full circle and merged,” Zito said, standing inside loanDepot park recently as workers began to transform it for the Winter Classic.

It’s more than a coincidence, a nice story on the surface. Dig deeper, and you find Zito’s baseball experience led to his hockey success. It’s part of the background that made the Panthers a first-class organization capable of an event like this.

“I take so many lessons (from the Brewers),” Zito said. “Probably not a day goes by where I don’t take something from that and utilize it in what we do now. It’s such a huge impact.”

A clubhouse attendant performs many roles, from doing odd jobs in the clubhouse to retrieving lumber as a bat boy to snagging balls down the foul line.

One memory makes Zito emotional. The Brewers were playing the New York Yankees at Milwaukee County Stadium in 1981, when he was 16 and in his first season.

Stationed down the right field line in uniform, he was warming up a Yankees star before bottom of the first inning.

“Reggie Jackson fires a missile at me,” Zito said. “My arm almost flies off. And I take three hops and a skip, and I launch one. It goes way over his head.”

The fans loved to razz Jackson, and they went bananas as he trotted back to pick up the ball. Jackson fired the ball back to Zito, who launched it over his head again.

“Now I’m just humiliated,” Zito said. “I’m terrified. I don’t know what to do. I’ve lost my composure.”

The same thing happened a third time.

When Jackson came out for the bottom of the second, Zito ran out and asked him to play catch with the center fielder instead. He told him he couldn’t do it.

Jackson refused.

“He said, ‘Yes, you can,’” Zito said. “ ‘You threw it over my head. I’m going to be here all night. We’re going to get this right, and you and I are going to play catch. Don’t you worry about me.’ And he stayed with me.

"I want to cry when I tell the story. He was that good of a guy.”

Brewers GM Harry Dalton encouraged Zito to become a GM.

“‘Can you be a pro hockey player?’ ‘No,’” Zito said, recalling a conversation. “‘Can you be a pro ballplayer?’ ‘No.’ ‘Why don’t you do what I do? You’ll love it.’ He would teach me about scouting. He would explain things to me.”

Zito got to see how the players interacted with each other and everyone else. He said the group was irreverent and had fun, but the players also displayed grace and dignity. Anything you wanted to know about baseball, they’d take the time to teach you.

“In the midst of what an outsider may think is a roadhouse brawl or a frat-house party was a team,” Zito said, repeating the last three words for emphasis. “Was a team.”

Zito got to see how the Brewers handled pressure. In 1982, they took the St. Louis Cardinals to Game 7 of the World Series, the Fall Classic.

“In a similar fashion to our group, not a lot of tension or stress during the high-stress moments,” Zito said. “Everybody was pretty cool.”

Zito got to learn attention to detail and the pro sports standard. Keep everything clean, tidy and shiny. Keep everything stocked, from the Gatorade on down. Make everything as first class as you can. Oh, the players are playing through rain? Their uniforms are caked in mud? Then fire up the laundry machines during the game and crank out fresh uniforms.

“You think they’re little things, and they’re not,” Zito said.

Do whatever it takes. Plan for every eventuality, and when things don’t go according to plan, adapt.

“OK, maybe two NHL all-stars go out of your lineup the first week of the season,” said Zito, referring to lower-body injuries to forwards Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk this season. “One hundred percent that experience with Milwaukee, it helped not only me. It helped everybody.”

The Brewers invited Zito to throw out the first pitch at American Family Field on Aug. 7, 2023, after the Panthers made the Stanley Cup Final. They had come close to a title much like the Brewers had in 1982.

Then Zito returned with the Cup on Aug. 14, 2024, a champion.

When the Panthers had their dads trip this season, Zito grabbed Dan Petry, the father of defenseman Jeff Petry. Zito worked the visitors clubhouse when Dan pitched for the Detroit Tigers early in his 13-year MLB career.

“They went back and forth for a while with the names that were around then,” Jeff said with a smile. “When he brought it up to me for the first time, it was kind of a surprise.”

Don’t be surprised, though, if everything is clean, tidy and shiny when the Panthers borrow the Marlins clubhouse.