Just before he fired up the phone lines during free agency, general manager Bill Zito also made a trade -- already his third since being hired by the Panthers just over a month ago -- sending forward Cliff Pu to the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for defenseman Markus Nutivaara.
To read more about all of the team's latest signings, click HERE.
Going back to the trade that brought in hard-nosed forward Patric Hornqvist on Sept. 24, Florida has already added a whopping seven new players during Zito's rapid restructuring of the roster.
With these additions, the Panthers expect to be a much harder team to play against in 2020-21.
"Speed, intelligence, character, compete, consistency, discipline, intellect, there's so many different adjectives we can use to describe what hard to play against means," Zito said. "It's more than size, strength and physical play. Hopefully, we get a little bit of all of it."
What's even more impressive, however, is the Panthers aren't done just yet. In addition to extending qualifying offers to six players -- Henrik Borgstrom, Emil Djuse, Mason Marchment, Sam Montembeault, Aleksi Saarela and MacKenzie Weegar -- Zito and his staff are also keeping their options open when it comes to potential trades and signings in the coming weeks.
"We'll still continue to try and improve the team every single day in any way that we can," Zito said. "We're working."
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