NHL ENTRY DRAFT

July 8, 1995

John Muckler

I guess, this has been going on for maybe a three-week period. Didn't get serious until we got here to Edmonton. It was completed this morning around 3 o'clock:

Well, I think we both accomplished what we set out to do. I think the reason that this is going to work as a good marriage because we are going in different directions. Their needs were entirely different than what our needs are right now.

I like to play very well with Bure. He is an excellent hockey player. I think you are going to see Alex the way he was two, three years ago. He is going to be one of the better players and more exciting players in the National Hockey League again.

I think that is going to be great for the league and good for Vancouver.

As far as we are concerned, our part of the deal in Mike Wilson, we got a player who is 6' 4". We need to get bigger, stronger, and younger. And also our salary structure is a little bit out of whack. We are trying to get it back into order again.

We are in a little bit of transition here. There is no question about that. We want to try and stay as competitive as we can, and I think with the addition that we acquired today, our future looks pretty good. Jay McKee who is 6' 1", big strong defenseman.

Kidnadure, drafted last year, in fact, that gives us something that I don't think we have had in Buffalo in a long time, exciting, aggressive blue collar type of a hockey player.

As you know, our club is a highly skilled hockey club, not very big. We found that against Philadelphia that we were too small. We are trying to go in the opposite direction than Vancouver. They are big already and they are a contender to win the Stanley Cup. We'd like to catch up to them pretty soon.

You have to think you would be limited in certain clubs that you can talk to or certain clubs that are willing to talk to you. You know, your area to make a trade in wasn't very large.

Without Alex here Donald is going to have a large opportunity here to carry us offensively and of course we are getting Pat Lafontaine back and hopefully he is going to be 100%. He hasn't been 100% in the last two years. Jason Dawe who has been with us in the last two years should be more of a consistent hockey player than he has been in the past and Holzinger who came out of college last year played very well for us, short period of time, during the regular season; also played well for us in the playoffs. Him having a bad year last year will get the opportunity to come up a notch and be our second left winger right now.

People who maybe were in a lower part of our rotation moves up. They move up and now get more ice time and the opportunity to grow, and sometimes when they are held back, they don't play as well as you think they should and now they are going to get the opportunity to be front row center:

Exciting; isn't it? Yeah, I think that will be a great drive for him there. Somebody said they didn't know who was going to play center ice. I said, it doesn't really matter; not going to touch the puck anywhere.

Those two, great speed, it will be very, very, exciting.

Well, I don't think Marc Titan is that far down the road. He was probably one of the most gifted and talented people in the draft. He went as low as he did because I guess the needs of goal keepers are not as important in the early rounds as forwards or defensemen. We were fortunate to have the two first round drafts. I don't think we would have been able to have the opportunity to get them. And our organization -- Dominik Hasek is a great goal keeper, as everybody knows, best in the National Hockey League. He is 30 years old; not that he is going to retire tomorrow, but we never had a third goal keeper in the organization and you have to have three and now we have a young goal keeper. I don't know when the last time it was that Buffalo had a young goal keeper with the potential that Marc has. We are very happy to have him (check the name before.

I saw McKee last year quite a bit. I like him very much, yeah.

Well, great speed, great speed.

I don't know. I mean, that is how you beat it, with speed. I guess possibly that would be very exciting against the trap.

I like the size of both of them. That is something we found out -- you have to be big to be able to handle the big forwards. Lindros and Remberg which we face everyday; then you go to Jersey with all the giants they have. You have to have big people in front of your net here. That gives us good size. We are not lacking size on defense anymore. It is not the youngest defense right now. We need young people who are going to grow and maybe in a year or two years would be very aggressive hockey players for us in our own end. That is something that Buffalo has never had in a long time too.

Probably at the best Jimmy, he will have to start in Rochester.

That is exciting.