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NHL DRAFTJune 27, 2014Jim BenningPHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA Q. Which of your trades do you like the best? JIM BENNING: Well, you know, with Ryan, when I took the job, he came to me and asked, you know, to be moved. He's been a great player for our organization for the last 10 years. I said that I'd try to honor his wishes. He gave me a couple teams that he would agree to be moved to, so I worked with those general managers and worked with Bob a lot the last couple weeks and was finally able to get the deal done this morning. The Sbisa deal and getting Bonino, I think getting Bonino was an important piece. Ryan scored 25 goals for us last year. Getting Bonino is good on the power play. He scored 22 goals last year. So being able to replace his goal production for our team next year, and he can play the power play and he's a play making center iceman, I thought that was important. Getting Lucas, he gives us some physical play from the back end. He's strong. He plays like a heavy game, and I think in our division, his heaviness is going to come in handy for our group. Q. When a player asks to be out, and knowing that the market that you came into just had a two‑year saga with Roberto Luongo, do you think it's important to try to move an unhappy player away for that benefit? JIM BENNING: Yeah, yeah, I do. I didn't want this to fester. We did a lot of work. We talked to a lot of teams to get what their kind of take was, as if he was to expand his list. We thought if we could get the deal done before the draft, the asset value was higher because draft picks for this year would be included in the deal, so we were hoping to get something done before the draft, and I feel lucky that we were. Q. Was he willing to ever expand the list? JIM BENNING: We talked to him and his agent numerous times. His wish was to go to a team that he felt has a chance to win the Stanley Cup. We asked him for more teams over the course of the last three weeks, and he was pretty steadfast on going to one of these two teams. Q. And how close was the other team? JIM BENNING: You know, they were in it right until the end. I thought getting like what we feel is our second line center iceman in Bonino, a guy that we feel can grow into a top‑four defenseman in Sbisa, and then the 24th pick in the draft, we thought‑‑ and then the other part of that deal was getting the 85th pick in the draft, which we traded for Derek Dorsett, who's a heart and soul player. He plays hard for his teammates. He sticks up for his teammates. You know, like given the whole big picture, we were pretty happy at the end of the day. Q. He said he wanted out because he didn't think the Canucks‑‑ he thought they were four years away from having a chance to win. Was that what he told you? JIM BENNING: He never really said that to me. You know, he had his reasons that I'll keep between him and I. You know, he just felt like he needed a fresh start, and quite frankly we don't want somebody that doesn't want to be here. We're going to acquire high‑quality people that are going to come in here and want to work hard for one another, so we didn't give it much thought as to‑‑ we would have liked to keep him, but his mind was made up, so we did the best we could with the situation. Q. How about the Jason Garrison trade, a Vancouver guy who had a no‑trade clause? Was that pretty much just a move to free up some salary room? JIM BENNING: Well, I'd like to thank Jason for his two years of good service with the organization, also. The Jason move was‑‑ we're trying to get a little bit younger on the back end, so Lucas gives us youth on the back end. And going into free agency, we wanted to free up some money to be in the game on some of these free agents come July 1st. Q. (Inaudible). JIM BENNING: I wouldn't say it's a rebuild. We acquired players that we thought are going to have an impact on us winning this next year, and Bonino, we feel like Sbisa is going to develop into a real good defenseman for us, Dorsett is going to help us. He's a good penalty killer. We've been talking about bringing in some energy guys that are going to work hard, compete hard physically. He's going to do that for us, so that's kind of why we did it is to help our team. Like if it was going to be a rebuild, then maybe we wouldn't have tried to fight so hard to get players that can come in and play and help our team win next year. Q. (Inaudible). JIM BENNING: I haven't talked to Dale about that yet. That's a good idea, though. (Laughter). Q. Did you think when you got up this morning that you would have this much done to your team an hour before the draft even begins? JIM BENNING: Well, like I said, we've been working on these things for the last month, so I think getting the Anaheim deal done kind of led into everything else. You know, it just kind of fell into place I guess I'd say. Q. How much are you looking forward to getting draft started after what was a pretty busy day of transactions? JIM BENNING: Well, this is going to be exciting for us going forward. We have two firsts now. We have two seconds, and we have a high third. This is going to be a chance for us to, you know, add some good young players to our group, and our scouts are excited and I'm excited, as well. Q. Were the deals effectively done after you made the Kesler deal? Did you know they were going to fall into place like they did? JIM BENNING: Yeah, we made the phone calls, and we got the one deal done, then we moved on to the next deal, so they kind of ran in succession. Q. Did you put a high level of importance on being decisive and really changing a lot here to make your mark in a way on this right now? JIM BENNING: No, that didn't really come into my thinking. But like I said, I didn't want this to linger. I felt like the asset value of doing it before the draft was going to be better than waiting until after the draft. Like we got two picks, and we turned one pick into Dorsett, and we have the 24th pick where I feel we're going to get a good player. I don't think that was the case. Q. Why do you think Sbisa hasn't developed as quickly as some might have thought? JIM BENNING: I don't know the answer to that, but I really like him as a player. We've been following him. I've been following him for the last three or four years, his career. You know, he's a good skater, he can make a good first pass. He's physical. I think like if we work with him and we add structure to his game, he's a good teammate, he sticks up for his teammates, he's physical. I think that we can turn him into a real good player for us going forward. Q. Do you see yourself adding another NHL player here today? JIM BENNING: We'll listen. We're going to listen. I said that we're going to do everything that we can to try to make the team better. We've got July 1st coming up, so we'll listen. If something makes sense to us, we'll do it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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