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NHL STANLEY CUP FINALS: FLYERS v BLACKHAWKSJune 2, 2010Don MaloneyPHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA: Game Three Q. Can you talk about being honored by your peers, the hockey community in general? DON MALONEY: Well, it's certainly -- it's humbling. I'm certainly honored. I think it really was more of a reflection of the organizational success, quite frankly. Starting with the great job our coach and the coaching staff did. It goes without saying, the players of being able to rally behind a tough situation externally. And even the people in the office, the ticket people -- you know, there's so much unrest last summer and into the fall. To be able to stick with it and stick with the plan and have relative successful -- at least regular season anyway. It was certainly rewarding. Q. Does it almost seem fitting you're the first award coming this season that you might have an experience nobody ever had? DON MALONEY: I hope nobody has this experience. I wouldn't say nightmare. Honestly, in my world, in my job, it really wasn't -- I think all the stuff you read was all external. I really -- it came back to last year at the end of the year we made -- this is two years ago, we made some deals. We had a very good finish at the end of the year. I thought our team was better than what was certainly predicted in the off-season. And then being able to make some deals and certainly hiring Dave Tippett was really a very important piece of our success this year. All in all, I thought we were better. We had a lot of things go our way. We were, you know, a lot of things we tried worked; and consequently, we had some pretty good success. Q. What are things like moving forward, free agency (Indiscernible)? What position are you now in being able to do the -- DON MALONEY: The nightmare continues, quite frankly. No, it's -- it's -- I'm like everybody else. I've spent a lot of time with Bill Daly working out how we're going to operate in this period. And basically it's agreeing to -- it's really a player budget. And then we have a lot of free agents. Actually, Kevin had a great story a month ago about our organization and what we need to do. A lot of guys we have to sign. We're talking to them right now, trying to see who we can sign. And we'll have to look. It's really no different than the other 29 teams. We're looking at what we have to work with and trying to put the best team on the ice that we possibly can. Q. You mentioned being older and more experienced last year. DON MALONEY: We certainly want to build on last year's -- when I say success, it's really more the culture of our team. How we want to operate. We need to infiltrate some young players into our roster. We will do that. Kyle Turris will make a serious run at the roster spot. Mike Boedker, Oliver Ekman-Larsson had a very good finish to the season. Those are the kind of players who will make a serious attempt to play for us. All in all, we still need to win. We need to build on last year. We got to the Playoffs, which was a goal. But next year it's winning in the Playoffs. That's what we have to do. Q. In saying that, is there some way that you can tie to, taking the regular season games, building in the community, this is a team they want to have still be around? DON MALONEY: I think it goes hand in hand. You see with the success the team had, the crowds were coming back. We sold out the last five games. We sold out every Playoff game. We got steam rolled in that Game 7. Still trying to get over that feeling. But all in all, it was a learning experience. But you have to learn too, and I've said this before. I thought we were -- we're not young per se as a franchise in Phoenix, but we're young to winning and what it takes to win. And I thought that was the first step to realize that when Detroit put their foot on the pedal, when push came to shove, they had the push and we didn't have an answer. That's where we have to learn and figure out what we need to do to respond better in those situations. Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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