NHL ALL-STAR WEEKEND

February 1, 2002

Wayne Gretzky

WAYNE GRETZKY: We actually met yesterday. We discussed everything from the time that the players arrive, the number of family members, tickets, roommates. You name it, it was really discussed. An itinerary was put together for the players and their families to coordinate in a fashion that the concentration can be on hockey and the Olympics, and yet being able to spend some quality time with their friends and family. We have a lot of people that are going to be part of this other than the players because it's so close to Canada. We want them to be able to enjoy the experience as much as possible, not only with their teammates, but with their family and friends. So we pretty much went over everything. We want the players just to be able to get there, get into the dorm, get on the ice and worry just about playing hockey.

WAYNE GRETZKY: First of all, let me clarify one thing. We have a ruling that -- some of the rules are sometimes hard to understand. As it is now, all three goaltenders can play without injury or without illness. We have said, and we again yesterday reiterated - with Pat's direction - we're going to play one goaltender in Game 1, and another goaltender in Game 2. That's our plan of attack right now. Again, after our discussions yesterday and today, we haven't been able to make a final decision. We want to give it a little bit more time, although we know which way we're leaning. It's not a race to make that decision. Right now, we've decided not to make it.

WAYNE GRETZKY: I think that every player that had an opportunity to be part of the orientation camp really enjoyed themselves. I think whether you're Mario Lemieux or Jarome Iginla, it's something that motivates players and they get excited about. I know being a youngster and then being an older guy, I always looked forward to it and it always gave me a jump-start to the season. Hopefully it helped him. He's had a tremendous year. We expect great things out of him at the upcoming Olympics.

WAYNE GRETZKY: As soon as possible. We're not going to have him go there to tell him when he gets there that he's number three. We've said all along we want to give that goaltender the decision, put it in his hands. Although I will say that all three goaltenders have publicly said they were fine with the scenario. They wanted to be part of Team Canada. And we don't seem to be in as much of a crisis as we were before all three goaltenders made those statements. So we're not going to panic over it, yet we are going to let the player know strictly because maybe his family doesn't want to travel all that way and spend all that money knowing he's not going to be part of it as far as playing actual games.

WAYNE GRETZKY: That would be up to the individual. Is that what you're asking me? I'll leave it to the individual. If he says, "Quite frankly, I really appreciate it, but I've decided to take a step backwards." The indications we've had over the last two months of what these players have said seems to be the opposite of that. You know, when I do tell the guy, the other side of it is you never know. One of the other two guys can get injured. We hope not, but that can happen. Crazier things have happened in this game before. So we're hoping all three of them stay healthy, there's no question. But crazy things do happen.

WAYNE GRETZKY: What players?

WAYNE GRETZKY: Well, first of all, let me say this. I talked to Steve Yzerman three days ago. I talked to Jim Ramsey, the trainer for the New York Rangers, who is now the trainer of our Team Canada. First of all, in Eric's situation, he said that they feel very strongly that he'll play the next game after the All-Star Game. Consequently, I'm not overly concerned about Eric. I think he'll be ready to play. I talked to Steve Yzerman, and he informed me he planned to play the last three games before the Olympics started. I talked to him about the fact if he maybe needed a rest in the first three games, because we do play Friday, Sunday, Monday, to make sure that he came forward and talked to the coaching staff or myself and Kevin Lowe, Steve Tambellini . We have a tremendous amount of confidence that if Stevie is healthy, he's going to play. If he's not healthy, he'll be honest with us and tell us. If he says he can't play, then we have to make a decision who will replace him. I felt very comfortable talking with him. He's going to be a huge part of our team. We need Yzerman on this team. I'm sure he's going to be okay in my conversation with him.

WAYNE GRETZKY: I think you need to be a little more -- I'm a little sketchy on quite what you're asking me. As far as playing or management? From the previous people?

WAYNE GRETZKY: I think the good that we took out of '98 is pretty simple. It was a tremendously well-prepared staff, management. It was a tremendously strong prepared coaching staff. From that point of view, if you look at what happened in '98, from Game 1 until the Czech game, it was really nothing but a positive. When we went into that tournament, if you remember correctly, there was a lot of negative talk about how the hockey players, the Canadian hockey players, would try to overrun the village, how they probably wouldn't fit in, et cetera, et cetera. If you look at that Olympic Games, from day one until the Czech game, it was nothing but extremely positive from how hard the team worked, how dedicated it was to winning, how good it was in the village. Everything that they did as a group was tremendous, except the result wasn't what we wanted. The biggest change or the biggest difference between this team and '98 is we feel we've added a little bit more offense. I said that day one, we wanted to make sure we're an offensive force. We know we're a very strong defensive hockey club, with a good defense, but we wanted some offense out of our defensemen. Guys like Jovanovski and Niedermayer are going to be a big part of that. I think that's a big difference between this team and the team of '98. Maybe this team will be a little bit more offensive-minded.

WAYNE GRETZKY: No, it would be Sean Burke.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Absolutely. It won't even be an issue. He deserves it. He'll be the first phone call. Theodore has had an outstanding year. Theodore will probably play '06, no question about it. For this particular situation, it will be absolutely Sean Burke that will get the phone call. No wavering off of that.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Yes.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Before I get into the Theo Fleury situation, from 1 to 23, since the team has been selected, we've monitored each and every player, whether they have a cold, whether they have a bad game, whether they have a knee injury, concussion, or in Theo's case what he's gone through. So we've watched each and every player. Like everyone else, do we get concerned? Absolutely. Do we worry about it? This is our livelihood here. We're hoping for nothing but a gold medal. We think each and every guy is important. If they have an off situation, it bothers us, and we pay attention to it. But we feel very strongly in the people that we've contacted and the dialogue we've had between Sather and the Rangers, Jim Ramsey, who happens to be one of our trainers, who is the trainer of the New York Rangers, we feel very strongly that Theo is going to be fine. I still believe that Theo is going to be a big part of the success of this team. You know, in my career, I played -- I still say this strongly, he's one of the best players in the game, and he's going to be a big part of a contribution to this hockey club winning a gold medal. We have full confidence he'll do that for us.

WAYNE GRETZKY: It's such a fine line. We actually have a letter that's being sent to all the players, all 23 players, that touches on that subject. I think Kevin Lowe said it best. We had a conference call last week, myself and Kevin and Steve Tambellini, that when you play in the Stanley Cup playoffs, the best players who are injured play at 70% or 80%. They get novocaine, they get a shot, they take medicine. That's all part of playing through that, playing to win a championship. There's nobody in the organization better to replace that player. In this case, that's not it. We have players who are very capable, not that they're better, but they can be as good, who can contribute to this team. I'm thankful that people like Owen Nolan and Steve Yzerman have been extremely honest with us. They have said that publicly, have talked to us. If they're not healthy, they're doing the country a better service not going at 70% than going at 70% because we know we have great players that can go. What he's saying is great, and that's the way it should be. I commend him for saying that.

WAYNE GRETZKY: First of all, we're ahead of where we want to be as far as preparation. I said this today, I learned from Glen Sather, the best way to run an organization is hire the best people. And we have a great staff. Pat and his coaching staff, Kevin and Steve Tambellini have been outstanding. If anything, we're overprepared. We're ready to go from everything who is picking players up at the airport, who is rooming with who, you know, who is playing with who. We're ready to go as an organization. Has it been a lot of work? Yes. I said to Terry Jones today, "You don't get paid a penny to do this, but it's worth millions of dollars in the memories and the fun and the experience that you have." It's something really special. In hockey, in Canada, the greatest sport in the world. It's part of our life. When we picked the team, I said, "There's going to be talking about this team forever, good or bad. People are going to be second-guessing it. There's going to be controversy over it. That's a credit to our country to how much they love this game." All the way back to 1972 when Bobbie Orr and Bobby Hull couldn't play on that team, there was controversy. I'm very proud to be part of it. It's a special experience. I know we're ready to play, ready to go.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Well, first of all, I'm not going to win a gold medal. The team is going to win the gold medal. These players, these 23 guys, are going to be the people that step out there, and they deserve all the credit. They're going to be the guys who win this gold. They know people like Mario and Yzerman and even guys all the way down to Gagne and Iginla who grew up in our country and our system, they know how important this is to our country and how proud we are of our game. So each and every guy who is with the support staff of Canada and the players of Team Canada, we know how important this is. This is something very special, and we want to win nothing but gold.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Because we want to be able to explain to a player that, "You're number three. Even if you can play, you're not going to play. In the possibility of an injury, you can go in and play and you will still be part of this." We want him to know the full story before we give it to him and let him make the decision. We think that's only fair. As I said, it's changed a little bit in the sense that over the last three months all three players have come forward and said publicly they just want to be part of this.

WAYNE GRETZKY: I'll let you see it tomorrow. We talked about it yesterday. We have a bit of a leg up that he's coaching tomorrow and has that opportunity. The way the game is played now, and I can't remember who probably implemented the system, but whoever we put Mario with, there's a strong possibility he's going to play with Kariya, whoever is on the other side, Mario is going to play deep in the offensive zone. He's going to be behind the net, he's going to be making plays, he's going to be doing all that. But he can't go from behind their net to behind our net. So we have to have the responsibility of our winger to probably play deep in our own zone and let him play the wing. So although he's going to be playing center, you probably will see him a lot on the wing side and defensive zone coverage, which simplifies the game and makes it better for the whole team. You're right in what you're saying, but he will be in the middle to start with. One other thing, I told Terry today, one of the things we talked about, we are going to talk to Mario about back-to-back games. We do play Sunday and Monday. If there's a concern on his part that he can't play back to back, and maybe needs that rest, we'll see what happens. But I'm just going off of what's happened over the last two or three weeks, where he hasn't played back-to-back games. You know, as I said, Pat is going to talk with Mario over the next 24 hours. The next 10 to 12 days go by, his body might feel better where he can. There could be a possibility that he may rest on that Sunday game and play Friday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday hopefully. Just so you're aware of that.

WAYNE GRETZKY: No. It will be 18 and 2. We will dress 12 forwards, 6 defensemen and 2 goalies each and every game. As I said earlier with Steve's knee, with Mario's knee, guys could come in and out of the lineup the first three games. If a guy doesn't play Game 1, don't read a whole lot into it because it's not like he's not going to play, probably with our situation. We haven't made the Game 1 lineup as of yet. All I'm trying to say is, yeah, there's going to be two players plus a goalie that don't play each game. But that doesn't mean they're not going to play in the tournament.

WAYNE GRETZKY: We're not getting to the shootout this time (laughter). That's what we voted on. We don't like the shootout. What we talked about with the shootout was obviously we're all going to have a say in it. It will fluctuate because, as we talked about as a unit, there might be a game where a guy scores three goals. How can you not have him in the shootout that night? You have your two or three guys for sure probably be part of that five. As I said, you might have a guy that night that gets two or three goals, and you're going to want him in the shootout. We'll talk to the three goaltenders, get their advice and opinions on who they feel are the strongest breakaway players on Team Canada. We will talk about it each and every day as the tournament goes along. But quite frankly, we're hoping to avoid the shootout (laughter).

WAYNE GRETZKY: No, no. What I said is he's going to play three games before the Olympics. After that, if there's a situation or a point in time where he said he was a little sore, we could rest him for one game of the first three is what I'm saying. Might not come to that. But he was making me aware of his situation. He thought he was going to be fine, he was going to play the first three games before the Olympic Games. He's in great physical shape. I'm sure he's going to be okay. We have the luxury. As I said to him, "It's more important we have you for the last three games instead of the first three," is what I said to him. As Owen Nolan said, if players don't feel they can play, it's important to our country and it's important to our team, they're bigger heros if they say, "I can't play," because there's other people who can that can fill the role.