All Florida Panthers general manager Bill Zito cares about is making the playoffs.

After winning back-to-back Stanley Cup titles the past two seasons, Zito knew the Panthers would have a tougher road this season after star winger Matthew Tkachuk had surgery over the summer that pushed his season debut back several months.

The bigger blow was when captain Aleksander Barkov suffered a knee injury during practice on Sept. 25. He underwent surgery and is expected to miss the entire regular season as well as the Olympics.

The Panthers are 12-11-1 in 24 games this season and while they sit ninth in the Eastern Conference wild-card race, they are just four points back of the Montreal Canadiens for the third spot in the Atlantic Division.

While the odds favour teams in a playoff position at U.S. Thanksgiving to make the postseason at 76.6 per cent according to a study, Zito is not concerned whether the Panthers go into the playoffs as the underdog or the favourite.

“There’s so many schools of thought on that, right?” Zito told The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun. “There’s the ‘just getting in.’ We made it to the final as No. 8 seeds (in 2023). We won the Presidents’ Trophy (2022) and didn’t win (lost in second round). So, you never really know. That’s why it’s about just getting in.”

The Panthers did not make many changes in the off-season. Instead, they locked up Conn Smythe Trophy winner Sam Bennett and defenceman Aaron Ekblad to eight-year extensions while key trade-deadline acquisition Brad Marchand signed a six-year contract to stay in Florida.

Coming off three straight Stanley Cup Finals appearances, Zito said it went through his mind how his team would be to start the 2025-26 season.

“I thought about it a lot in the summertime: How is this going to play out?” Zito said. “Once the season actually started, if you’re around our guys, around the players, the staff, the energy — there’s not a noticeable drop to me. So, it’s not something you keep looking at. Say we don’t play well — I’m not immediately thinking that’s, ‘Oh, the fatigue of the playoffs.’ Because we weren’t fatigued yesterday.

“In my mind, it’s less present than I thought it might be, if for no other reason — when you’re around the team, everyone seems to have the same enthusiasm and love of the game. And excited to win and hate to lose.”

Zito says he hopes Tkachuk, who has started skating again, will be able to return closer to Christmas while Barkov’s timeline of seven to nine months from when he was injured in September remains the same.

“The short, generic answer is we’re trying to stay afloat,” said Zito. “If you talk to the coaches and the players, there’s a few they’d like to have back, and there’s a few nights they probably wish they would have played better. And I don’t mean superb. I mean just a little bit better. But for the most part, yeah, our guys have been working their tails off.

“It kind of is what it is. We just have to keep battling every single night.”