NHL ALL-STAR WEEKEND

February 2, 2001

Art Berglund

Doug Palazzari

Craig Patrick

Larry Pleau

BILL ROBERTS: Thank you for coming today, members of the media for attending today's United States Men's Olympic Ice Hockey Press Conference. I am Bill Roberts. I will be the Director of Media Relations for Team USA Men's Team that will compete in Salt Lake City in the year 2002. With us up on stage we have the Executive Director of USA Hockey, Doug Palazzari; General Manager to his immediate right, Craig Patrick. Next to him will be the Associate GM, Larry Pleau; on the far right, Director of Player Personnel, Art Berglund. At this time there will be no announcement regarding players. We will need to keep this brief, then we will open it up for questions. We have a very short time period. I'd like to thank a couple of people. Thank you to the NHL for their help today. Also Chuck Menke and Ron DiGregorio. They are here today as well. Thank you for your help. With that, I will open it up for Doug with an opening comment. Each person up here will make brief comments, then we will have questions. Thank you.

DOUG PALAZZARI: I actually thought we were going to do questions and answers. All I will do is thank you for coming today. This is a big weekend for USA Hockey, with our women's team here as part of the All-Star weekend. So we are excited about that. I think from my position as Executive Director of USA Hockey, one thing I am excited about I think we are going to have teams in the Olympics that are going to be very competitive and represent our country very well. I am also very excited about the fact that we were able to put together what I think is just an incredible staff to work with our team and our players. So from that standpoint, we are excited. It's only a year away, as we prepare for the Olympics in Salt Lake City.

CRAIG PATRICK: Only a year away? Getting ready. We have had one meeting so far with everyone in the room, and most of it was going over details on what the schedules were going to be like and what deadlines we will meet. We did spent a fair amount of time going over player personnel, but that is all preliminary at this point. We are real excited about the people that we are going to be able to choose from. We think the people that are playing in the National Hockey League, that are Americans, comprise a great team that could be very, very competitive in this competition. We are real excited about the next year in evaluating everybody and getting ready for our December date when we actually pick our team.

LARRY PLEAU: Thanks, everybody, for being here. If anybody's wondering about booking your flights, you have got to wait 331 days before the Olympics open up before you can book a flight. I tried to get one for my wife and myself. So it is a waiting stage. Everything -- we just had a meeting, got together with the staff, which I thought was great. Very open-minded. Put some thoughts on the table as far as talking about some of the players. We know the deadline we have coming up in March. I thought it was a very productive meeting; and again, we are all excited about it. It is something it is still a year away, but we look at our team, and I sit down -- I will sit down, have a beer, jot outlines jotting out defense pairings, people that you'd like to see play for your team. It is a year ahead, but our minds are on that all the time.

ART BERGLUND: To play in the Olympic Games is a long, difficult process. It takes a lot of meetings and organization with a lot of different people. We have been around the world with meetings the NHL, NHLPA, the International Ice Hockey Federation, and the our Olympic Committee. We are organizing this Team USA Hockey for our Olympic Committee and there is a lot of people involved. It is just wonderful to be with a hockey crowd with all the great hockey writers in North America sitting here that have covered our programs over and over the years. We are all excited about Salt Lake City. As you know, we won gold in '60 and '80. Hoping that we have another great performance in Salt Lake City. We are very happy with our -- everyone on our staff has touched the Olympics from Coach Herb Brooks to Lou Vairo, John Kenneth (ph) players, coaches. We are real excited about what is going to happen one year from now. Thank you very much.

BILL ROBERTS: The team leader is here. Jim Johansson, raise your hand. We are going to open it up for questions.

CRAIG PATRICK: We haven't talked about whether we would name anything prior to March 25. I think we will probably wait 'til that date, but we really didn't discuss that thoroughly. As to the number, we did discuss that; and we didn't come up with our decision on that yet. But it has been discussed.

DOUG PALAZZARI: To add to that, there will be some discussions going on between the NHL and the IHF and the other countries so that the announcements of players that are selected will be coordinated properly. So we are going to work with the other groups that are involved here to make sure that that comes off properly. So it is possible it would be the 25th or it could be another date in March.

CRAIG PATRICK: Well, I personally wasn't in Nagano. I can't really speak to it. As far as I am concerned, it is not part of my past. And any team that I have ever been involved with in USA Hockey we feel has been very, very successful both on and off the ice. So we plan to run the things as we have in the past when we have been part of USA Hockey Teams. And I don't know who -- Larry wasn't part of the Nagano staff either. So I don't know if somebody else wants to jump in on this one or not.

DOUG PALAZZARI: Just to say that as far as from an organization, what happened in Nagano was a pretty disappointing and embarrassing situation. However, we also recognize the fact that players that were on that team have represented us a lot of times, and all the times I think in the best way possible. That particular situation, while embarrassing and unfortunate, it is over, and maybe got blown a little bit out of proportion than what actually occurred there. But we have no doubt that our team will behave in the manner that they generally do. It is history as far as we are concerned. So we don't want to spend the next year really talking about that. We are looking to the future and the players that we have together that are going to represent our country in Salt Lake.

DOUG PALAZZARI: I will ask the coach on that and the general managers on that one.

ART BERGLUND: Our Olympic Committee does have a Code of Conduct, yes. They will have to sign it, a Code of Conduct, our U.S. olympic Committee.

ART BERGLUND: Yes, they did.

CRAIG PATRICK: First of all, Nagano is a totally different cat in terms of the travel of getting there. There is a whole lot different than going from any city in North America to Salt Lake City. So I think that won't be -- the travel thing won't be a factor. One thing that we play we are only there 12 days, I believe. It is a shorter period of time. We won't get that much practice time prior to our first game so in terms of preparation we are agonizing over how we are going to achieve it. But we will find a way to get it done.

CRAIG PATRICK: We didn't even discuss it as a group. Actually I was informed of that as I walked in here this evening. I didn't read the paper today, so I wasn't aware of it, kind of amused me. But each one of us probably have our own opinions on all these things. We really haven't discussed that at all.

CRAIG PATRICK: We have discussed a number of things that we'd like to be able to do, but obviously there is hurdles that we would have to overcome before we can accomplish any of those things.

CRAIG PATRICK: It is possible. It is something we have discussed.

LARRY PLEAU: That is something we talked a great deal about at the first meeting. We really feel that -- I think you first have to look at kind of -- the consensus was look at the best players, but at the same time, look at certain players that can do certain roles for you at the end of your lineup. But you are going to have to expect other players, your top players to do certain roles also. That was kind of more or less the consensus at this time.

ART BERGLUND: It will be Olympic size ice. The rink in Salt Lake, it is convertible with an internationally league service (inaudible) - regular season with the Utah Grizzlies, but will be converted to the Utah ice for the games. It will be in the East Center. There will be games played in Pro Bowl in the preliminary rounds but all the U.S. games and major games will be played at the East Center.

DOUG PALAZZARI: They get better with age.

LARRY PLEAU: I think again that is something we talked about, but I don't think you can look by good players. Some players don't skate as well but they think better than other players. No matter how big the ice surface is if you are a good thinker you can play on any ice surface, so I think we have got our minds open to what we think is going to make us a good team and we are not eliminating anything.

DOUG PALAZZARI: Well that is true. Six major countries did sign that agreement and as it is right now that is the way it stands. The only way it could be changed is if the IHF and certainly the NHL Players Association and the NHL itself would agree for that to occur. So there is -- some discussion would have to take place and there would have to be cooperation by all the groups that are involved for that to occur.

DOUG PALAZZARI: Remains to be seen.

LARRY PLEAU: We have got a pretty good player on our side, Gretzky. He mentioned before that he would like to see some kind of - whether it is a camp a skating camp or a get-together for the teams.

CRAIG PATRICK: Definitely. The rink's 200 feet just the same as the National Hockey League and everything ends up at the net and so you definitely need people that are power forwards for sure.

CRAIG PATRICK: I experienced it firsthand in Lake Placid. It means a whole lot to have your building filled with your fans each and every night that you play. And I am sure it was the same in Squaw Valley in 1960, I am sure it is going to be the same in Salt Lake City this time around. It does make a huge difference to be able to play on your home turf.

DOUG PALAZZARI: Well, basically everyone would be under the same rules and have to deal with the same situation. The format of the tournament actually where you play, I believe it is your first three games, and nobody gets eliminated at that point, so you really have some time to bring your team together as you are in the tournament, actually in the tournament. I think what gets lost in the shuffle of -- I just wanted to comment further on the home field thing, that is, I think, an important thing for -- at least for American teams it always has been. But the beauty of this particular event now is how good every team is. When you take the top 20 players from the countries that are involved here, you have no idea who is going to win this event or who is going to be out of the medals. So I think the hockey should be just totally incredible. Obviously the goaltender is going to be a big part of all the teams and I think that that is the story that should be portrayed. You have the best players in the world that are going to be in Salt Lake competing for their countries. I think it should be a super, super show of hockey.

ART BERGLUND: I think it is also important to -- this tournament is, as Doug mentioned, it's a round robin and most of our players are used to coming together right up through their linkage, through their under 20, under 18, going to world tournaments; they are used to coming together and bonding quickly. Most of these players have all been in our programs. They know one another and, you know, years ago we used to have younger teams, they'd play together all year long and they'd get maybe -- sometimes people would say they were too tired when they got to the games. But I think we have a pool of players that is pretty familiar with one another and I think there is players there that are looking forward to playing for Herb Brooks.

CRAIG PATRICK: Well, I have worked with Herb in a lot of different arenas. We worked together - Rangers, the Olympics, Pittsburgh. I find that he is a very, very bright individual, one of the smartest people I have ever met in my life - forget hockey, just as an individual. He brings that bright attitude to the rink and he can make excellent decisions after analyzing things. I just think when you have got to do things as quickly as we are going to have to do them that he is the perfect fit for what we are looking for.

CRAIG PATRICK: That is why I hired Ivan Hlinka so can I pick his brain for two years. Yes, sir we can learn from everybody, definitely. We are always looking to learn. I think years and years ago the National Hockey League or North America or Canada was looked at upon as being the role model that everybody wanted to follow. But that shifted over the years to Europe where the Russians and the Czechs were successful in these Olympic events and World Championships more so than Canada was. Now what we have -- in a different type of game that Canada played too. Now what we have throughout the world too, what I think is a global game, we play it in the NHL; they play it in Sweden and Czechoslovakia. We all learn from one another and I think we continue to learn as we go forward.

CRAIG PATRICK: We haven't discussed that at all at this point.

DOUG PALAZZARI: No, I just think -- I think it has always been the case, the history of a short term event, you don't win very often without good goaltending. So goaltending is as I think a crucial part of every team that is going to compete in Salt Lake. Not just our team, but no different if you are playing in the Playoffs in the National Hockey League or if you are playing in Junior World Championships or if you are playing -- you know, it is just a key position. Dave Petersen, I don't know if you know, old Dave was an Olympic coach a couple of times for us and coached many of our national teams and he said they should change the game of the game, call it "Goalie," in these type of events. I think if you look at the last Olympics and the Czech victory you'd certainly have to attribute a great deal of it to the goaltender as well.

BILL ROBERTS: Thank you very much on behalf of USA Hockey. We appreciate your attendance today.