Carolina Hurricanes president and general manager Don Waddell spoke with the media today over Zoom following his team's first-round victory over the New York Islanders.
Waddell gave a few injury updates, addressed the current AHL situation and talked about Rod Brind'Amour's contract status.
Here's what he had to say:
On injury updates for Tony DeAngelo and Brett Pesce: Tony's fine. X-rays were all negative. Feeling better today so that shouldn't be an issue at all. Brett is out of his walking boot, doing things right now. So if everything goes as expected, he should games in this round. Maybe not to start, but he'll play games in this round.
On his impressions of Jake Guentzel and Evgeny Kuznetsov: If I measure the whole series, I felt like both guys have had impact on the series. Maybe there's been a few games where we haven't played up to our standards but when you look at the five games series and how they've performed, I would think that we've been very happy with that.
On what's impressed him about the way the team's performed: Every playoffs it seems that you're dealing with some sort of injuries and so forth and to be able to overcome that and never use that as an excuse. The Islanders, I think they went nine straight games getting into the playoffs without losing in regulation and they're a good team. Very solid goaltending and some stars on the team and they play hard. I give a lot of credit to us to stick with out game plan and wrap it up in five games.
On Dmitry Orlov: When Orly got here, it took a little time for him to get used to our system. We play a much different system than where he came from, but as the season went on, he started to get more confidence not in only in himself with that system but also with the coaching staff. You look at how he's played in the second half of the season and in these playoff games, he's been really good for us. It might have been a luxury when we started the year, but we also know it's a long year and you're going to run into situations like we're in right now and to have a guy like that be able to step up and play the minutes he's playing, is a big benefit for us.
On the AHL situation: We're working on it daily and have been working on it. I have another call today. I feel that in a very quick timeline we'll have a deal that we will be able to announce and get back to where we all need to be. We've been signing these prospects knowing that we're going to be able to reach a deal and it's just getting some of the finer points negotiated out, but I feel very confident that we're going to have a place for all of our prospects to play.
On the team's ability to bring Russian players over to North America: I think every contract is a little different. The last time I checked, the US dollar is worth a little bit more than the Russian ruble. So money always plays a factor in these things. When you draft players and the big thing about drafting players is their development, but it's also being in contact with them all the time and our staff does a great job having weekly meetings with them and making them feel like part of the organization so when it comes time for me to reach out to the agent to sign a player, most of the time it always works out. We've had some difficult conversations and difficult contracts to get done this past month and a half, but we've gotten everyone done that we wanted to secure.
On Andrei Svechnikov: I know he was excited about being able to play this year after what happened to him last year. If you look at our team, he's by far our best power forward. He finishes his checks, he's not afraid of anybody, he gives us some of that muscle up front that we missed last year, so we're very pleased with how he's responded. His talent, we all know what his talent is, but it's even more than that. It's what he brings to a team that doesn't have a lot of those types of power forwards and how he gets in on defenses and creates turnovers and all that. I talked to him before the series and he was excited about getting the opportunity to play and so far he hasn't let us down.
On what the team has done/communicated with the team about additional safety equipment: We've brought in everything that was approved by the league, and there was lots of them, into our locker room to show the players. A lot players tried some things in practice and just felt they weren't comfortable with it. But we are encouraging our players with not just the neck guards but some of the wrist guards and the ankle protection. So we are encouraging it, but it's going to be a player's choice. It's probably something that you're going to see more and more players wear as time goes on. Especially having the summer time when they start skating two months before camp wearing these types of equipment so they really can get comfortable with it. One complaint always with the neck protectors is that they overheat and feel hot in them so by the time we get through this year and get ready for next year, there's going to be so many more options for our players. Multiple companies are working on this daily so somebody is going to hit the home run on it and eventually you're going to see more and more players wearing it.
On Frederik Andersen: I don't know anybody who's gone through what he's gone through. Freddie has had a few injuries in the past but this was not an injury. This was a health issue. We always believed in Freddie. That's why we re-signed him. If we didn't believe in him to be able to do what he's doing what he's doing right now, we would have turned the page and gone in a different direction, but we always felt he could be a pure number one guy. Once he came back, he was outstanding. Nothing against Kochetkov, because he played good too, but Freddie was so good down the stretch here for us. That's why he got Game 1 start and he's carried us through the first round.
On Rod Brind'Amour's contract status: We talk daily about it. I feel very confident, as I've said before, that this deal will get done. Rod wants to be a Hurricane for life and to me, when you're dealing with contracts, there's always two sides. Rod's been great to deal with and there's going to be a solution here very quickly, I feel.
On Jesper Fast's injury status: It was determined that after multiple CT scans and MRIs that it is more of a sprain of the muscle that's going into his neck which I'm told — I'm not a doctor — that it's the most important one in your whole body, so he's in a neck brace for the next two weeks. Been in it for the last week or so and he'll get reexamined at that point, but the good thing is that there's nothing cracked or fractured. It's just a matter of doctors getting comfortable. When it comes to these decisions, this isn't a Don or Rod decision. This is purely a doctor's opinion. We're not going to take a chance with somebody especially when you're talking about the neck area. I talked to [Fast] yesterday and he feels good. Would like to get out of the neck brace of course, but he feels like he's making a lot of progress. He comes in every day, does his treatment, so we'll give it a few more weeks and then we'll do more CT scans and take a look at it.
On sports gambling: We still have plans for, as we all know we started mobile, we were thinking about having kiosks and the whole cage and ended up shelving that. We're looking towards that with the development of our property that we're developing here around PNC Arena. I'm not at all, by the experts we're working with, surprised by the numbers because it just shows you that there was a lot of gambling going on in our state before it became legal and people now are doing it legally and the state is capturing what I preached for two years that we were losing out on tax revenue and had no control of it. Now, the state has both of those. So pleasantly surprised that everything is going well, but not shocked by the numbers.
Recent Articles