Q: Thoughts on placing Brian Lee on waivers?
A: Well, it was more of an opportunity to expose Brian. Give him a chance to maybe get picked and have a chance to play. That’s part of it. The other part of course is financial. I won’t know until noon hour. At this point, he’s not being assigned. If he clears, we will continue to talk to other teams to see if there’s some interest but I’ll wait until after the waiver period is up.
Q: Will Robin Lehner play in the World Juniors?
A: We’re definitely talking about that (as an organization). We’ve asked the Swedish Federation that if he goes, will he play as the number one guy and play most of the time. The other consideration is Mike Brodeur. Mike is still not playing. We want to make sure he’s healthy and that we’re supported properly in Binghamton if we let that happen.
Q: What are your thoughts on Dany Heatley’s return?
A: He belongs to San Jose. He’s a good player. We’ve said that all along. He’s a point getter. They have a good team and hopefully we play better than we did against Edmonton against him.
Q: Eugene Melnyk said that he wouldn’t even give Dany Heatley the time of day if he happened to crossed paths with him. Would you give Dany the time of day?
A: I had a good talk with Dany after we made the deal. He gave me some thoughts on what happened, what was going on at the time. I don’t know that he’ll extend his hand or I will but certainly, I would talk to him if he wants to.
Q: Looking back on how the whole thing was happened, do you wish you could have changed the deal or how it was handled?
A: As you know, at the time, they were in the driver’s seat. That didn’t change the entire way through. I had talked to several teams but it came down to the one team basically. The thought was either keep an unhappy player here at that time and maybe effect everything else around us or make the deal that we did. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. At the moment, that was the option we had and we took it.
Q: Was that one of the toughest deal that you’ve had to make?
A: I’ve been in a position where you had to make deals in the past because of finances where the team didn’t want to pay a certain amount of dollars and so we made a trade that you didn’t get full value for. That’s the way our business is too. Everything’s not ideal that you do sometimes what you have to for the group rather than what you have to do for the individual.
Q: Is your team starting to worry you?
A: Yeah. Of Course. I think when you’re inconsistent, which we’ve been and certainly I know that a week ago, we looked like we were not a very good hockey team, the guys were really affected by what happened to Luke and Stephanie’s child. This last game against Edmonton, I didn’t like at all. I thought we should have played better. I think we had a chance in that game. I think Edmonton came out in the first period like they knew they were in for a tough night and we let them play themselves into the game and then win the game. I was very disappointed in that. You can’t give points away in this league. We know that every night it’s a real strain to win games. That it’s a real tough time to score goals in this league and you have to take advantage of situations when you have it. In particular, at home. We’re not happy. We’re obviously very disappointed that we’re not a few points higher in the standings. We do have to get going and make up some ground here and play consistently better than we have.
Q: Are you trying to do things to shake things up on your end?
A: Yeah, obviously. We’re on the phone yesterday and we talked to three or four managers again and we continue to do that. And everyone’s talking the same way: it’s so hard to make a trade unless it’s dollar for dollar. And how do you get that done right now? At some point in time, you may have to bite the bullet and do something that you don’t want to do but for the moment, I’m trying to make the right trade for the team going forward.
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