TOM STILLMAN: “Those are tough decisions (but) Doug Armstrong and the organization focused firmly on the success of the club in the long-term. ‘Hitch’ will be a Hall of Fame coach, he’s just a tremendous person who put his heart and soul into this organization and brought us a tremendous amount of success in his years here. Those are painful decisions, especially when you have a person of Hitch’s caliber. But you get through them, and I think we came out the other end very well. That wasn't the intention to make the change midseason, but just as an overall concept, the idea of having a succession plan in place I thought was a very positive. Every major company in America wants to have a succession plan for their leadership and be grooming somebody to take over. That's what we did here. It was interesting to me that it got criticized so much ... (such as) players aren't going to know who they're boss is. Well in any company there's a guy who's the head guy now and you look around and there's another woman or man who's likely to be next and there's not confusion. That always kind of puzzled me. I thought it was good to be transitioning somebody and have him ready when the time comes. The idea was that's next season. Yeah, I think it did probably facilitate the transition and the quick start (Yeo) had."