“My whole point was that there's a time and a place to make hits like that. I'm a firm believer that pre-season isn't the time for those kinds of hits. And both of us are guys that been around, our jobs aren't at stake.”
“I'm trying to calm him down a little bit. He goes to a different level than I do, ... I don't think I would ever single out one specific group of people and demean them. But hey, I've lived by the media and I've died by the media.”
“Our team has been awesome, ... I've been very pleasantly surprised at how awesome every guy in our locker-room is. I've just had a great time with these guys.”
“Let's put it this way: The owners are having a hell of a great time saying, 'We have a partnership now.' You're not going to hear the players saying that.”
“[NHL contraction would be fine if] mediocre European players ... typical of most French guys in our league with a visor on, running around and playing tough and not backing anything up.”
“The owners can sit there and do giveaways and lower ticket prices to get the fans back to the game knowing that what they are really doing is taking it out of our pockets, ... It's important to get people back into the arenas to watch hockey, but it is a lot easier to do when (the owners) know they still get money back because they are taking it out of our paycheck. In essence, the players are paying for all the giveaways and free stuff that the owners are doing. Which is all well and good, but you don't hear about it.”
“When we watch hockey games and see 8,000 fans in (Washington) D.C., you cringe as a player, ... Those cities that aren't pulling their weight in terms of drawing fans and revenue are hurting everybody as a whole, not just that city.”
“When they saw that 12 per cent out of the paycheck, the guys on our team were [griping] and moaning and complaining about it, ... This is after we already had given back 24 per cent and taken a ($39-million) salary cap.”
