- Rich Chere of NJ.com: Lou Lamoriello on if he’s being pushed upstairs.
“I don’t know if I’m getting pushed upstairs. This (Devils president) has been my job since I’ve been here. Right now what I’ve done is appoint a general manager who reports to me,” Lamoriello said.
On if he’ll still be calling the shots.
“I’m not going to get into some type of rhetoric like that. This is not something new to me. I was athletic director and coach at Providence College and I had to appoint a coach. I knew exactly what his duties were. I know what it takes to have autonomy. That is not an issue,” Lamoriello said angrily.
- Tom Gulitti of The Record: (Shero answering a lot of question, here are a couple) New Devils GM Ray Shero on if he’d be open to trading their 6th overall pick at the draft for a player that could help immediately.
“I think it’s one of those things that you never save never. Lou was very successful at the draft in Jersey (in 2013) trading No. 9 for (Cory) Schneider and that’s worked well for Vancouver and worked well for Jersey. But, you won’t know for sure until you get to that bridge. It’s got to make not just short-term sense, but longer-term sense as well because you do think at No. 6 or not matter where you pick in the first round you’re going to get a real good player for a long period of time that’s going to be cost effective for a little bit and that’s part of the philosophy moving forward and developing your own players and, having said that, just not ruling out improving the team in other ways and that includes doing what Lou did a couple years ago (with the trade for Schneider).”
Lamoriello has said in the past the Devils need two top six forwards to get back into the playoffs. Shero on if some top six forwards could become available due to other teams cap issues.
“Yeah, I’m sure. Every year what you find is the cap isn’t as high as what some teams think at the end of the day in June when it comes out. There’s only one team at the end that’s really, really happy, so there’s going to be some teams that didn’t reach expectations or want to make change that it wasn’t in the works a few weeks ago. So, that will be over the course of conversations with general managers and finding out and seeing where Lou is with some teams and what he knows. So, it’s a collaboration to find out where some teams are and see what makes sense for the Devils moving forward not just for next year, as I said, but moving forward the next few years to make something short term’s not going to handcuff the team long-term.”
- Sam Carchidi of the Philadelphia Inquirer: Flyers chairman Ed Snider clarifying GM Ron Hextall’s comments.
“People were misinterpreting Ron Hextall’s words,” said Snider, chairman of the Flyers’ parent company, Comcast-Spectacor. “All I did was clarify what Ron Hextall had been saying – which is simply, we’re going to be extremely patient with all of the young players we have coming. We’re not going to rush them along; we’re going to make sure they’re NHL-ready before he brings them up to the big club. . . .
“But the bottom line is, that patience was misinterpreted to mean that he was going to be patient with the team in and of itself. Which he’s not. He’s going to do everything in his power to produce a winner as soon as possible, which means it could be trades, it could be coaching, it could be all kinds of things.”