1-on-1 With Columbus Blue Jackets Assistant GM Bill Zito (Part 1)
CLEVELAND, OH -- The Cleveland Monsters entered play on Friday on the cusp of the Eastern Conference playoff race. Not bad for a team who just a season ago was far from the playoffs.
Young guys got older. New veterans came on board. The result is a fun team who has a chance to win every night. That’s all you can ask for as the holidays have passed and 2019 begins.
Inside AHL Hockey caught up with Monsters’ general manager Bill Zito to discuss the season as a whole, and so much more. In part one, Zito reflects on the season, the impact of the veterans, including Zac Dalpe, and, finally, why, in his mind, have both the Blue Jackets and Monsters have stayed healthy this season.
Mark Scheig: Bill, your team enters Friday 14-10-4, tied for 8th in the Eastern Conference. In looking at the season as a whole, is this where you’d envisioned you’d be at this point in the season. How pleased are you with the early results?
Bill Zito: “I’m real happy with where we are. I don’t know if I would have said ‘do I think we’d be middle of the pack?’ When we started playing the season, I think I would have projected us to maybe have a few more points or be higher in the standings based on our personnel. But at the same time, we do have a lot of new players and younger players. It does take some time to adjust. It takes some time for the new vets to come in and gel, which they have. And I think if you’ve seen our last five games, our team is really starting to come together. So points wise, you always want to get greedy and you always want more. But as far as how our team is playing, I couldn’t be happier. The last five games have been wonderful. Even the games we lost, we lost 1-0 in Wilkes-Barre on the road. We had a tough one last Friday against Rochester we lost. But we’re doing things right and we’re coming along. The young guys are getting better. Guys are paying attention to detail and to the little things. So I’m pretty excited about the collective way we play as well as the individual games getting better."
MS: The one thing I was really paying attention to this season is the impact the veterans would have on this team, with the likes of Tommy Cross, Nathan Gerbe, Jean-Francois Berube, and others on board. Just how important have they been for you?
BZ: “They’ve been invaluable to myself and to our organization as leaders, teachers, teammates, setting examples as well as their play on the ice. Don’t forget Dalps [Zac Dalpe]. They help each other. They help our team. They help the young kids. Testy [Mark Letestu] was obviously a late add. That was a little frosting on the cake. It makes life easy on the coaches and allows them to sprinkle the infield when they put the lines together. You can put a vet next to a couple of the kids. You can run four balanced lines. It gives them a lot of tools to try to both win games and develop players at the same time. That’s a really hard thing to do.”
MS: You mentioned Dalpe. I still claim he’s one of your better pickups in your tenure the way you got him off waivers. He’s done so many things for your team. Just what is his upside? How far can he go in your eyes?
BZ: “It’s up to him. He needs to get his opportunity. And when he gets his opportunity to be in the NHL, he’s gotta come through on a consistent basis and there’s no reason to think that he couldn’t. It’s a pretty exciting upside for him. That’s a guy you don’t bet against. Every single intangible that you can think of, he’s almost a 10 out of 10, his character, his work ethic, his ability to be a teammate. He can skate. He’s got a physical element. He’s got a skill element. Next time he gets his chance in the NHL and it’ll probably come, it’s going to be exciting.”
MS: Bill, I’ve noticed that the organization has done a great job this season in the man-games lost department. If I recall correctly, the Blue Jackets had the fourth-lowest total man-games lost in the NHL. The impact of that can be felt not only in Columbus but in Cleveland too. What are you doing this season that allows you to enjoy this string of health? And how important has the health been for your team? What do you attribute that to?
BZ: “Without question, I attribute it to Nelson Ayotte, Kevin Collins and Kevin Schmalzried. They came in here a couple of years ago and they reset the culture, the off-ice culture, the strength and training, and the high performance and they work their tails off. I think gone is the day of the perception of the strength coach being a weight-lifter. And while these guys do lift weights, they’re scientists. If you could be privy to the emails and the data that we get about all of the different scientific data we get about health and wellness and fitness and sleep and diet, nutrients and vitamins. These guys are sharp cookies and they work their tail off. They care and I think these results are a direct result of them coming on board and their passion for what they do and the effort they put in to help our players. They get the players to buy in. They’re awesome! K2 [Schmalzried] does a phenomenal job in Cleveland. The guy’s always working. He’s always in the gym. He’s always there to help the players. He’s always prepared. And it’s a thankless job sometimes in the minor leagues. We have a major league guy there to help our guys. It’s very very helpful to us. It’s actually created a little bit of a logjam for us because we have a number of forwards. We didn’t know, we hadn’t anticipated we were going to have Mark Letestu on our team. So as we built our roster, you think you’re going to have some injuries through the year personnel wise but we haven’t had them. [Kole] Sherwood and Sam [Vigneault] went for a few days to the East Coast league to play some games. So we’ve had some unanticipated lapses in ice time because everybody’s been healthy. Knock on wood.”
Stay tuned for part two of our talk with Monsters GM and Blue Jackets AGM Bill Zito. We talk Eastern Conference, lineup decisions and how certain players look in his sight.
