Could Chris Pronger be back in a management role in the NHL down the road?
Hockey Hall of Famer and current NHL analyst Chris Pronger joined Sirius XM NHL Network Morning with Scott Laughlin and Gord Stellick on Wednesday morning. Pronger was asked about his time in management and his current role, and whether he would be interested in returning to management, having already been there.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
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Gord Stellick: “So to be clear about, your names come up quite a bit, and we’ve got guys like Keith Jones, President of Philadelphia, Jeff Jackson was an assistant general manager, President of Edmonton, Luc Robitalle has been the President of LA forever. You were in management with the Florida Panthers. So, just any team in general, Team X and Chris Pronger’s willingness, or non-willingness, to talk about some kind of position and management, President, whatever may be. I mean, where are you on that?”
Chris Pronger: “I did a couple of interviews the last week or two, and maybe it wasn’t specifically on this job, but I was asked if I would ever consider getting back into hockey ops. And I learned a lot. I learned during the lockout in 2004 never to use the word never, and I said I would never play under a salary cap. And well, guess what? I played under the salary cap. Right away, that immediately said, Okay, I need to remove this from my vocabulary, because there’s always some semblance of a situation or something that you are going to do something.
And I never say never. I think it would take the right opportunity. I think it’s going to take the right people to want to bring me back and want to kind of get immersed in what it would take. It’s a lot of work, and I’m not opposed to hard work. I work pretty hard at my current job, I like to think. But if it’s specifically this job, there’s a lot of things that need to be handled and managed in a quick time frame to kind of get this thing back on the tracks and moving in the right direction. But I haven’t been contacted.”
NHLRumors.com Note: There is a reason Chris Pronger’s name is coming up: people inside the NHL are impressed with his work. It is no accident that the top insiders are dropping his name in connection with managerial roles. He understands what it takes to win in the NHL.
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We are seeing more and more former players get into the management side of things to lend their opinion and analysis on how teams should operate. Again, there is a gamble with a first-time general manager, but there is a good chance a team out there is talking to him about the future.
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