Lombardi quotes

Here are some quotes from Dean Lombardi after the first round of the draft. I didn’t get to ask him about Dan Cloutier because he had to cut the call short. I’ll get it tomorrow.

On his analysis of the two picks…
“Doughty’s hockey sense is off the charts. I think everyone has a handle of what type of player he is and the special player he could become. … I think we got (toughness) from Teubert and I think that element was lacking in our group.”

On the decision to trade back up in the first round…
“We set a target from (picks) 11 to 13. That’s where we had to be to assure ourselves that we had (Teubert). I was offered some good players (for Cammalleri) who could help us now but they didn’t help us in terms of this young core we have put together.”

On how the three-team trade came together…
“I couldn’t get anyone to trade with me outright. What was clear to me was that I couldn’t get into where I needed to be (to get Teubert). To give up Cammalleri, we had to be in that layer, where Teubert would be there. I couldn’t get there outright (trading with one team), so I had to work at sprucing it up a little. … (Pick No.) 17 was not enough for me to get what I wanted. I thought he was going in the 13-15 range so I was going to teams in the 11 to 14 range. I’m going to teams saying, `If I get 17, would you take 17 and 32?’ You start laying out your cards. We (Lombardi, Brian Burke and Darryl Sutter) were all upfront about what we wanted.”

On the decision to trade down from No. 12 to No. 13…
“There was a choice. I could have traded and moved down two spots if I wanted to get cute with it. There was an opportunity for me to move back two or three spots and take a chance that (Teubert) would be there. Finally I went to (Buffalo) and said I won’t trade with this other team if you tell me who you’re taking. So we wrote down who we both wanted and kind of turned the paper over. Sort of like blackjack, showing your cards. We didn’t have the same player written down, so we made the trade.”

On the idea that this is the most important draft in franchise history…
“I got pressure put on me by my owner (team governor Tim Leiweke), who said, `I want the best Kings draft in history.’ … That’s a little internal pressure, which is good. … I guess we won’t know unti we’re down the road a little ways, but I don’t know which draft isn’t important.”

On the decision to trade Michael Cammalleri…
“This kid is obviously a good player, but it became fairly clear to me that he was probably going to be a one-year asset, and it’s very clear that our ownership wants a young nucleus. … I think that arbitration process, people said the Kings won but you never win. Quite frankly it’s a lose-lose situation. That was certainly a factor going forward. OUr chances of losing him and not maximizing our value were pretty good.”

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