NHL ENTRY DRAFT

June 23, 2001

Don Waddell

DON WADDELL: Well, we certainly in the last two weeks had about 11 or 12 teams that called us, and truthfully when it came down to it, there was two teams that were very persistent. One that we eliminated probably Wednesday, and then one other team that stayed right onto us until 11:00 this morning when we pretty much told them yesterday that we were keeping our pick, but they continued to try to persuade us to take an offer from them.

DON WADDELL: Well, in our three years it's the first player we've taken that 100 percent of our staff all agreed on. And I think if you talk to other people in the League right now, which obviously we listen to our own staff, but we all feel this player is a 100-point-type player. Development of this player is what's critical in the next year or two. We all feel that he's going to be a superstar in this League and he will get 100 points for a lot of years.

DON WADDELL: Yeah. What we said was we had four or five assets presented to us through a trade, but at this point, we really got some good players and good quantity of players but the end result was quality won out over quantity.

DON WADDELL: Well, we've explored some options, but as we sit here today with the three trades; Damian Rhodes, Milan Hnilicka, who just won the gold medal over at the World Championship with the Czech Republic and Maracle, I think all three guys, Damian for one reason or another mostly due to injuries the first two years hasn't been able to perform like we thought he would when we got him, but the other two guys continue to get better and if they stay status quo, we are comfortable starting the season this way.