



Compared to two months ago, I’m for sure not selling right now. That’s one thing that’s changed. Earlier in the year you were thinking about ways to get younger. That’s out the window. This team faced the adversity of a bad start and fought its way back into the picture of making the playoffs. Right now, you look at it and say they’re doing fine. As with any year when it comes to this point in time, if you can help them, or help a certain area of our team we believe is a little weak, where we might need a little help and depth, then you try to accomplish that. But as in the past, as I’ve always said, I’m not big believer in this day, in this timeframe. Just look at last year. We gave up a good, young prospect in William Karlsson and we tried to help the power play, which floundered all year, and we ended up not needing the player we traded for because the team turned it around. You can do too much and confuse the issue on the hockey team when there’s chemistry. It looks like there’s chemistry now. Everybody has fit into a role, so to speak, and is accepting their roles, which is huge. You don’t want to fool with it too much. The other example is the Stanley Cup year. It was one move, but it was a huge move. It didn’t seem important at the time, but it was a role player who accepted his role and did the job in a couple of situations in the playoffs that were vitally necessary.That would be a fair assumption.I’ve saved enough in my budget to do something if I think it would really help us. As you well know, we have a budget here and we’ve never been a cap team. Until our revenues here dictate that, it won’t be the way. I have no problem with that. Henry [Samueli] is very fair with what he does here. I’ve saved enough that if I think something is right, I can do it. In saying that, I’ve never been one to go out and trade my first-round pick. I get lots of calls asking me about the [Shea] Theodores, [Jacob] Larssons and [Nick] Ritchies of the world. I’m just not one to do that now. If I’m going to do something like that, it would be at the draft, where I’ll make changes to my hockey team.There are a few guys, if the price is reasonable, that could help. I emphasize if the price is reasonable. I’ve given you an indication of what I mean by that. We think there are players who can help us in certain areas. Some of these guys we’d like to have for the future, too. LA does a great job trading for guys and keeping them. You have to have the room to do that, also. There are a few guys out there. A lot of pieces have to fall in place. But there are a few guys out there who can help in certain roles.This may sound like a broken record, but all I ask this team to do is get to the playoffs, and when they get there to be playing well. My biggest concern – and we were playing really good hockey for a while – but the last little bit we’ve gotten away from it. What got us back on track was playing good defense. In the last little bit, we’ve been getting away with not playing as well defensively. You’re not going to win unless you play well defensively. I want us playing the way we were a little while ago. I want us to play a bit better hockey than we are right now. That’s more important than where we finish because for some reason in this league now, it doesn’t seem to mean anything anymore. It gets proven every year. Let’s just be playing well, make the playoffs and be healthy.When you go through the stretch we were going through, you look at everything. You try to analyze everything. When you look at it, and some of the things that went on during the summer and right before camp started, some of those had nothing to do with the coach. How can you always blame the coach when there are other things going on? I’ve said this before … sometimes, with coaches, it’s time to make changes. At that point, the things that were happening weren’t the responsibility of the coach.We’ve tried on a couple and got nowhere. Now is not the time to talk anymore. After a certain point in time, we tried a couple things during that one long break where we only played once in 10 days. Nothing was going anywhere. It’s going to be an interesting summer around here, I’ll tell you that.