Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on the 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – Putting the C in Calgary on Anaheim Ducks and their RFAs Jamie Drysdale and Trevor Zegras.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Marek: “Speaking of the Anaheim Ducks, anything new with Drysdale? Anything new with Zegras?”
Friedman: “I just, again, it’s one of those things you’re so careful to talk about Jeff because, because, especially at this time of year things can change with one phone call but it just didn’t sound optimistic. Like, nobody I was talking to was optimistic about it.
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Like the team just doesn’t seem like they’re going to budge. Zegras just doesn’t seem like they’re going to budge. I don’t think Drysdale wants to budge either.
Again, I’ve said this before, the thing with Pinto, people understand that the Senators are trying to win and they’re capped out. They’ve got to find a way to solve this problem cause they need him. But they’re trying to win and they’re capped out. Anaheim’s not trying to win this year and they’re definitely not capped out.
And again, I feel like I’m a broken record, it doesn’t mean you have to fill their car trunks with cash. I think you have to be, you have to find a way to get a solid ground and, someone just told me that Anaheim is just risking, risking something here. I would be very careful with that if I were the Ducks.
Verbeek’s tough. We’ve jokingly called him Yzerman-like before. I think on some level he manages like he played. And is a guy who was a freakin’ great player. A really tough player. A guy who if you were between him and what he needed to do to win a game, or win a playoff series or win a Stanley Cup as he did in Dallas, he would do anything he could just to run right over you and win the battle for that puck.
And I kind of wonder if he’s bringing that same successful mentality to the GM role. And I’m just not sure if you can do that in this day and age. This level of athlete, they just don’t blindly accept it, right? You can negotiate hard and you can demand a high standard but you also have to be able to recognize that you have to bend in certain ways too. And Verbeek as a player, he never bent on anything. We’re talking about a guy who once severed his finger in a farming accident and just kept on going.
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So, I just think that, I just look at this and I say, ‘Sometimes you need to bend a bit more than you’d like to, to get players on your team to buy into what you’re selling.’ You don’t have to bend a ton but you have to bend a little bit. And I just wonder if he’s just not interested in doing that. We’ll see where it goes.”