NHL ENTRY DRAFT

June 22, 1996

Bob Gainey

We had Kevin Hatcher in a -- very similar kind of player and we used him in that role. I think we are looking for ways -- brought Kevin into our team in a trade for Mark Tanorde (ph) two years ago and that is quite a different type of player. This is more moving to a similar type of player, but hopefully there might be different intangible things in this player that will allow him or our team to perform better than we have in the last couple of seasons.

Well, I think our evaluation is based more on the outcome of our team production and although we weren't looking to move up into the 95 or 100 point range, we felt that we should have been much more competitive; particularly this year than we were, where we fell off and -- out of a Playoff position, legitimate Playoff position, somewhere into the new year and going along with the rewards that are there to be a top player on your team, I think the responsibility also falls on to those players to accept the outcome when the season doesn't go as well, and I can try to give you little elements of things that might make the trade good for us, but basically I think it is a change of chemistry for our team and Pittsburgh's motivation, you will have to ask them.

Well, I think that we feel he brings us a very, very high and consistent offensive effect on the game; whether it is in his ability to skate and control the puck and his ability to past the puck to work it from the top of the zone on the powerplay, I think he has shown in the last two seasons and as his progress came with the Rangers that he is a very good and one of the premier players in that part of his game and something that, in the mix of your defensive group, you need to have a player like that, somewhere in that mix.

Well, I mean that is part of the chemistry. We brought Kevin in to see if the effect of having both brothers together, they might be able to mold together their different styles and both become a little more effective. Darion (ph), a little more responsive offensively and Kevin a little more rug get and a little bit more responsive defensively. It is not so much Kevin's output because on paper you can see that his output has been within bounds that you can accept. But it is more our team results, as I said this year being the focal point where we fell behind a group of teams that we really thought we should be competitive with and that we should have been in that group in our conference somewhere between 6 and 9 searching down that Playoff spot down to the next 30 games of the year and we weren't.

Well, he was expendable because we could replace him with a similar type of player and I think that is the basis of it. We are really putting in a very similar type of player who we are going to ask to carry out the same duties that Kevin had with our team and we will hope that he does it a little bit better and we will hope that the effect that he has on the rest of the group might be different to accentuate some of the other things that the other players on our team or on the defensive group would have.

Well, I think we had a pretty good understanding of Kevin, who he was when he came with our team and that two years ago he came in after missing eight or nine months because of his situation with Washington and then locked onto the labor dispute. He didn't get on the ice and his first season with us, we really didn't see or weren't sure who he was going to be as many players in the League really were last year. But this year was an opportunity for him to be more comfortable with us; to have last summer to prepare; to come into training camp and try to make the kind of impact on our club that we needed and that we wanted and that we felt that we would get when we made the trade and when we have gone through a second disappointing season in succession, we have to look to ways to either change our team or to shape the team up that we have.