Couple of new interviews out...

The first one is Ben Wright's outstanding one-on-one with Don Waddell. Outstanding chat about the needs of the team, who DW believes are the best people that we need to draft, and about the current players on the team and how he's pleased with them. I enjoyed his commentary on the WCs in Switzerland, but the 2nd to last question asked by Ben and Waddell's answer is great.

Q: If I was a season ticket holder who was on the fence about coming back next season, what would you say to me about where the team is headed?

Waddell: The team you saw the last seven or eight weeks of the season that was so exciting to watch is the team you’re going to see this year with some additions. We’re not really losing anyone of that team- we’re only going to add to it. The exciting part of it is, you look at how Ilya responded when we put the "C" on his jersey and at what he brings to this franchise, and you look at how the guys we’re building around are all younger guys. There’s Kovalchuk and Enstrom and Little and Bogosian and Lehtonen and Pavelec. Our best players are our younger players. It doesn’t take anything away from our older players- they’ve played great roles for our hockey club- but our best players are our younger players and that’s something to be excited about. If you got to see games in the last month and a half of the season, we’re a pretty exciting team. The difference for me was that in the first half of the season we went into games thinking we had to play a perfect game to win and in the second half we felt like we were going to win every night. It’s a whole different. When you go into a game expecting to win every night, if something goes bad you know you can come back from it. When you go in thinking you have to play a perfect game and something goes bad, you have a hard time coming back from it. These kids didn’t know any better. They had a lot of adversity in their face and they overcame it. Now the next step in the process is the bigger one, and that’s getting us into the postseason. It's going to be an exciting year for us.

Don's answer is, oddly enough, the arguement I've been using for a while as to why I renewed my season tickets (aside from the banging upgrade that I got). This offseason is Don's chance to continue his success as well as continue the team's. I hope that he can. I like the guy, and hopefully he can stop being so tied in to what the owners demand and can do what's best for the club.

The 2nd interview is a Russian language one with Kovy. This was posted on the boards, and I don't even PRETEND to speak Russian, so if there's someone out there who can translate so it makes sense, I'd dig (and so would scads others).

Scruffy Kovy. So this is what his playoff beard would look like. Hm.

From what I read, it seems like Kovy wants to end his career here and enjoys playing - he's not thinking about the future and he's going to play his hardest here while he can. Here's hoping that Don can work something out.