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NHL EASTERN CONFERENCE FINAL: PENGUINS VS SENATORS

May 12, 2017

Jim Rutherford

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - Practice Day

JIM RUTHERFORD: I'll try not to keep you guys too long. That's usually how you start off when you call me. (Laughter.) Okay. Fire away.

Q. Jim, good morning. Jason Botterill taking off for the Buffalo Sabres, were you surprised? Was there a long discussion about it? Can you kind of take us inside what took place before he made that decision to go to Buffalo?
JIM RUTHERFORD: Yeah, I wasn't surprised. I mean, he's a guy that was on the top of every list for the last couple of years when there were job openings.

Shortly after they made the change in Buffalo, I got the call from the president. They asked for permission. I met with Jason at that time, and we talked about a lot of different things.

Then he went for the interview, and then he went for the second interview. Once I got the call that he was going for the second interview, I knew that he was going to end up there.

Q. Jim, one part of this might be funny, the other serious, but Jake Guentzel, when you watch him, you at that age, how would you have processed what he's done? And two, what does his performance in these playoffs say about the organization developing players and that stuff?
JIM RUTHERFORD: What part of that was funny?

Q. What you were like as a 22-year-old.
JIM RUTHERFORD: Well, Jake was brought up in a hockey household, and so what you see now has a lot to do with that. He's brought up from a hockey coach, a very good one, and so I'm sure his childhood was not the same as a lot of young children that are trying to become professional athletes. He was learning a lot of things when he didn't even know he was learning them. It was just a natural thing in the household.

So his hockey sense, I think, has a lot to do with what makes him such a good player. He sees things quicker than other players. He gets to the open spots. He finds the open players. And he's the player that we all see.

But he had a good college career. He turned pro. We felt it was important that he stay in Wilkes-Barre for half a season. That's our preference with these young guys, to give them that extra confidence that they can play there and get the feel of the pro game. And the coaching staff there did a good job with him, and our development guys did a good job.

Then, of course, he comes here prepared, and then Sully and his staff takes over.

Q. Jim, I thought, when you came here, what, three years ago now, right around there, I'd say maybe a lot of us, maybe even you, thought that, okay, you'll stick around here for three years. How much longer now are you going to stick around, and how much fun is this?
JIM RUTHERFORD: Some days are fun. Some days aren't. It just goes with the job.

I don't really think about it. So I guess the fact that I'm not thinking about it, I guess it will be for a while longer, whatever that means. I don't know. I really -- 'cause I just don't think about it. When I'm starting to think about something, it doesn't usually happen that quick. I usually think about it for quite some time. So I guess -- I don't know.

I said when I came here, I came from a place that I had been with one man, Peter Karmanos, for 30 years, and I was in the NHL with him for 20 years. So I made my comment at that time that I may only be -- I'm not going to be here as long as I was with him. I'll only be here for a few years, and that's why I made that comment.

But the years keep ticking along, so maybe I will be here as long as I was with him.

Q. You said all along, repeatedly, that you wanted to keep both your goalies this year, that that was your preference. Do you feel like now that you've needed them both? And the job Fleury's done in the first two rounds, I don't know, I'd like to give you this forum to take a victory lap if you want to.
JIM RUTHERFORD: No victory laps. I'm very happy we have the two goalies we have, but I never changed my position from the start of camp. I never wavered on it. I had some calls during the season asking about him. Those conversations didn't go very far.

I know there were times during the season where it became a little more difficult for the coaching staff and for the goalies because they both wanted to play. And when they were both healthy, it didn't work ideal because one guy maybe sat a little longer than he wanted. But as it's turned out, it's worked good for both guys.

I can't be happier for Marc because he, to me, is one of the best team players in all of sports. To see how he handled the situation and ultimately how he's played these two rounds, I couldn't be happier for the guy.

Q. Still about the goalie situation, last year before trading that line, you made some important moves to improve your team. So are you more proud about those trades that you made last year or the trade that you didn't make in the season?
JIM RUTHERFORD: Yeah, well, I mean, sometimes you make good ones, and sometimes you don't make trades, and that's what you should do. Obviously, if I decided to trade the goalie, we wouldn't be in this room right now. You'd be in another room in another city because Marc has been such a key guy in these two series.

I mean, in the Washington series, I thought we played two good games as a team, Game 4 and Game 7. And if it wasn't for our goaltending, we wouldn't have won the series.

Q. Kind of going off that, two questions, if that's okay. When you got Justin Schultz last year, did you envision top paired Justin Schultz at some point? I know injuries have had to happen for that to become a thing, but how much of this did you envision?
JIM RUTHERFORD: Just exactly the way it's played out (laughter).

No, he -- when we traded for him, we felt very strong he was a better player than what he was in Edmonton, and he needed a change, and that's how it's turned out. Okay.

For a lot of the times, you know, he gets protected a little bit more on our defense and in our lineup, certainly when Kris Letang is in and we have all our defense. But because of the way things have had to be moved around, adjustments on our defense, he's moved up, and he's deserved to. He's earned that, and he's done a good job with it.

Q. The followup. He's one of several RFAs, or free agents. How much do you communicate to those guys directly or through their agents, just over the course of the season, letting them know where they stand? Because, obviously, there's a lot of contracts that will be talked about in the next month or so, I guess.
JIM RUTHERFORD: No communication at all. When we're playing, I feel that it's important that the player plays and there's an appropriate time to negotiate the contracts.

So I think the player knows where he stands and the team knows where he stands. When Carolina won the Cup in '06, I think I had 13 free agents to sign in ten days, and for me, it's a lot easier that way because you cut out all the baloney in between, you know, like going round and round about things that don't even matter in a negotiation. You get down to the end, you get right to the point, and you get it done.

Q. What gave you confidence that Flower would still be -- would be this effective? I mean, he had some bumpy stretches during the season. That play was pretty consistent for a while. What gave you guys confidence that, if Matt can't go, this guy cannot only play to that level but obviously he's raised his level in the last? And as a former goalie, what have you seen from him that's doing better?
JIM RUTHERFORD: Because he's such a competitor, he's done it before. When he's playing a lot of games, that's when he plays his best, and during the regular season, when they got him to the point where they were splitting a bit and one guy played five in a row and the other guy played, that's a tougher situation for him. It's not something that he's used to.

But even if we didn't have the total confidence he's going to do that, he was still the best choice for us in a two-man system. We did feel confident, though, that he was -- he would play well, and he's probably even played better than anybody would expect because he's been terrific.

Q. Jim, just going back to the Botterill thing a little bit. I know what you said yesterday about you're not going to replace him specifically, but you have two guys in Dupuis and Gonchar that would theoretically, the way you do things, jump up maybe into more of a player development role. Do you foresee those guys as possible front office, like on that track?
JIM RUTHERFORD: Not right now. No, no, the guys that I am going to talk to and sort out, I'm going to talk to Mark Recchi, Billy Guerin, and Jason Karmanos. They are in the hockey ops now, and see what they want to do. Then I'll sort out what they want to do and what I want them to do. I'll be happy, and they won't.

Q. I guess I didn't ask that totally appropriately. I just mean like going behind those, like behind Recchi, like maybe the next time.
JIM RUTHERFORD: Sure. Those guys are -- Gonchar's around. Like you mentioned Duper, Duper is in Quebec and doing TV there. But Gonchar's very good. He's not here all the time because he still lives in Dallas. But I see a bigger role for him going forward.

And certainly if all this doesn't work, I have my own little list of people that can also come in and do a good job. So I feel good that it's going to be well taken care of.

I

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