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WORLD CUP OF HOCKEY MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 2, 2016

Miroslav Satan

Q. Can you talk a little bit about the makeup of this team, especially the blue line? Obviously a lot of leadership, a lot of experience. Are you at all concerned about the wear and tear on guys, some of whom may have long playoff runs and are getting up there a little bit in age? Do you worry about the durability? Talk a little bit about your blue line situation.
MIROSLAV SATAN: Well, you know, there is a few things that come into play. First of all, we're going to have such a big pool of players to choose from to have like too many choices, and second of all, I feel for a short tournament, for a two‑week tournament, I think experience will be important, and I think when you see our lineup, I think there is enough experience there. I think probably it'll be a long summer, guys will be in Playoffs, maybe they don't have enough time to rest and heal. And one other thing that we're going to have to have to deal with other than all the other teams is that half of our team will be playing in Olympic qualifying tournaments just before our training camp.
That might create an interesting situation for us. On one side it might be good that guys will get a few games before they come to the camp. On the other side there's a little bit of worry for me because somebody might get hurt and then you'll have an unexpected problem that you'll have to deal with quickly.

Q. (Inaudible.)
MIROSLAV SATAN: It`s basically, other than slow Slovakian and Swiss players, which will be approximately half the team, all the rest of the guys will be playing in Olympic qualifying tournaments in I think three different locations around Europe, and it's basically 12 countries, I think, playing in those qualifiers. And I'm sure every federation will have a training camp and then tournament itself, so they will have a busy summer, these players.

Q. Does that mean then, will you have kind of a pool of players beyond what you name on June 1st to let them know in case of injury, you're sort of among the guys that might get called?
MIROSLAV SATAN: I think we will have to have some kind of plan, backup plan, if anything like that happens, but I think it's too early right now, and I wouldn't be able to give you any details on that.

Q. Can you take us through, obviously you have the most unique, I guess, circumstances around your team, how it went in terms of finalizing these 16, what was the debate like and what was the experience like in general?
MIROSLAV SATAN: I think I can honestly say it was a collective decision. It wasn't me or Ralph Krüger who decided this. We had five scouts who were generating reports throughout the season. They were watching all these players. And we had close to 300, I think, reports on all of these guys. When we were making decisions, we were including basically opinions of like these five scouts and four coaches and myself. So it's 10 people who were basically‑‑ we got input from 10 different people to make this final decision.
You know, from day one, I said I feel as if we will be‑‑ not to look at the nations or other things, but just to take the best possible team and pick the best players regardless of the nationalities or whatever else. So I think that's something we will do in phase 2 when we have to name the last seven guys, which I feel will be a little more difficult decision than it was these first 16.

Q. Are there any KHL players on your radar right now?
MIROSLAV SATAN: Well, we're going to try to take probably NHL players. That's our first idea. But we're kind of watching two guys who are over in KHL and there are reports they might be going back over summer‑‑ back to NHL, but I cannot give you anything on it, but it's kind of we are watching them. It's a longshot I would say. Not more likely that it's going to happen, but as a backup we might have somebody who is not in NHL right now, one guy maybe. You see other guys announcing today they maybe have two guys on the team already.
So I would say there is little possibility that we might have somebody who is not in the NHL, but I don't know right now.

Q. You've got a head coach that ran the Swiss team for years. You've got players from maybe as many as nine different countries, nine different systems, nine different styles of play. How do you decide the style that this team is going to play? How do you coach them into one system?
MIROSLAV SATAN: Well, that's going to be, I think, a question for Ralph Krüger. I mean, I don't know if you guys know this about him. He's doing some speaking on leadership, and he's got all of‑‑ other than his coaching experience, he's got other experiences in his life as far as bringing groups together, leadership style, all these experiences from I think his 13 years of coaching the Swiss national team and his coaching spans the NHL with Edmonton, I think all combined into that, I think he will be able to find the right system simply enough maybe for everybody to understand that it will be something we can build on as the tournament goes on.

Q. I believe the youngest player on the roster is Leon Draisaitl. What caught your eye about him that made him part of that initial 16?
MIROSLAV SATAN: Well, I think when the season started he was probably‑‑ even everybody was looking at him probably a longshot. I think he started his season actually had in farm team. They brought him up maybe two, three weeks, I don't remember exactly, and then I think he caught everybody's attention how he started to play in the first maybe month or two. This year in Edmonton he was just putting unbelievable offensive production numbers up there, and he continued to play well the whole season. He's become a very important player for, I think, Edmonton, and I hope he'll be a big help for our team, also.

Q. As a quick follow‑up, do you see Anze Kopitar as potentially being a bit of a quick mentor for Leon since they are both big two‑way centers?
MIROSLAV SATAN: I hope so. We have other center like Frans Nielsen who's an experienced guy, and I had a chance when I still played for the Islanders to know Frans as a player. He came as a rookie that year, so I know Frans. So we have three solid centermen that I think should be the main core of our lineup.

Q. I had the chance to be in Gothenburg in 2002 when you certainly had a special moment with your country winning the world championships and the emotion that day was unbelievable for you guys. That's the thing about international hockey is you play for the crest in front of that uniform. How do you think you can funnel that kind of emotion for this team when you have people from different countries playing together?
MIROSLAV SATAN: Yeah, I think because we are a new thing, new team, new logo and no history basically, this is going to be, I think, one of our biggest challenges to put these guys together and make them feel as a team and compete. But I think even if they don't have something like maybe other federations have, the players know each other and they're looking forward to playing on this world stage together for their country. We're basically creating a new team. It's maybe a little bit of All‑Star feeling for them, but I think they are professionals and when they come to a tournament they don't want to just waste two weeks of their life just being there. I think their everyday job is to win games and compete and be better than the other team, so I think they will‑‑ even if we have a little disadvantage of that, they will have a short time to come together as a team, but we hope with this drive they have inside of them to compete and to win, I think once the puck is dropped, they'll figure everything out and they'll try to compete as they do every day in the NHL.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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