Ken Hollandilta mielenkiintoisia näkemyksiä nykyisestä CBA:sta:
http://redwings.nhl.com/team/app/?service=page&page=NewsPage&articleid=353472
Holland talks about upcoming trade deadline
Feb 14, 2008, 10:01 AM EST
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm David Keon of the National Hockey League's Public Relations Department. I'd like to welcome you to our call. Ken Holland's team leads the overall NHL standings with 87 points on a record of 41-13-5. Thanks to Ken for joining us. We'll open it up for questions.
Q. Ken, with the injuries you're suffering, does this make you change your trade program going into the trading deadline; are you still on the same program you would have been if everybody was healthy?
KEN HOLLAND: We'll be on the same program. We expect our players back before the playoffs start. In Nik Kronwall's case, he's skating. I think he's still probably - we don't have a definitive date, but certainly think in the next two weeks, give or take a few days, he'll be back in our lineup. In Dan Cleary's case, we definitely think he's going to be ready for the start of the playoffs. Hopefully he can play a couple of league games before we go in.
So I think injuries are a part of the league. And there's lots of teams around the league that have had real key injures and they've found ways to win games. That's what we'll have to do.
Q. Do you sense this year that the teams won't be as willing to give up as much to get rental players?
HOLLAND: I'm interested as everybody. The calls are slowly starting to come in now from general managers basically saying, you know, we're on the bubble and we're going to see here over the next week or 10 days whether we're a buyer or a seller. And if you look at last year's trade deadline, there was some real steep prices paid and ultimately only eight teams can win a playoff round.
When you look at the way the CBA has - I think we're three years into the CBA. We're starting to get in my opinion getting a real feel that the draft developing in the back-end of your roster have to be cheaper players. If you don't have those players through the draft, through development, where do you get them? And I think teams are going to have to make harder decisions about trading first-round picks and real good prospects. I'm not saying it's not going to happen. But I think as we go along here it's going to be harder and harder to do just because of the way the CBA is starting to flush itself out now.
We're starting to get into the system, and I know in our case we've got 15 players on our roster that make a million two or less. And over the next two or three years some of those players will retire. Some of those players will move up into our group where we're going to pay them more. How do you fill out the back-end of the roster if we continually trade away high picks and prospects?
On the flip side, I guess when you get a legitimate chance to - anybody that makes the playoffs in my opinion can win the Stanley Cup when you get a legitimate chance for a playoff run it's hard not to spend some assets to try to go in a long playoff run.
I think every team, depends on the depth of prospects and depends on where your team is age-wise and I think different decisions for different teams certainly expect to see lots of trades between now and trade deadline day. I'm interested like everybody else to see who is going to step up and pay some steep prices. But I certainly think in two or three players' cases you hear some rumors out there that somebody is going to pay a pretty good price.
Q. When the CBA came aboard and there was a lot of talk about how GMs had to adjust their thinking and maybe accept the idea that guys were going to ride off into the sunset in free agency and you weren't going to get anything in return. But I've taken note and I wonder if you agree with this, that it's been more difficult than maybe anyone anticipated for general managers to sort of get away from that thinking, that even now do you agree that it's still hard for GMs not to get anything; it's hard for them to say, well, I'll just play it out. Or do you think they are crossing over in that?
HOLLAND: Well, I think, if you're a playoffs team - obviously in our case Dan Cleary is an unrestricted free agent and Andreas Lilja is an unrestricted free agent. And (Dominik) Hasek and (Chris) Chelios are different circumstance because of their age. But teams that have got a chance to go for a long playoff run, you're going to hang onto your unrestricted free agents and deal with it prior to July 1 and in some cases playoff teams are even acquiring players who are going to be unrestricted free agents because when you get a chance to go for it you want to go for it.
But I think what's happening, the feeling coming into the new CBA was on July 1st there was going to be lots of players to choose from and players were going to move around. And I think what's happened is we've all realized working with free agency, teams are tying up players for longer term and I think you'll see less and less top players hit the market on July 1st. And to me that really puts the importance on drafting and developing. And you need to have home grown talent, because you can't rely on July 1st. It's just - the players that do hit the market, everybody's got money.
Lots of teams have cap space. So there's no guarantee you're going to get a player that's important that you draft and develop. Again, that dovetails what we were talking about earlier about how aggressive do you get. It's something we're internally deciding. We kind of know some of our assets that we'll trade and there's assets that we won't trade.
And because of the importance of the way the CBA works.