More Lombardi quotes

Here's the rest of what Dean Lombardi had to say this afternoon about the signing of Patrick O'Sullivan. I put a call in to O'Sullivan this afternoon, but since he's traveling, I might not catch up with him until tomorrow morning. Here's what Lombardi had to say...

On the importance of getting this deal done...
``I think it's a relief because it makes your team better. That's always a help. Sully was the most urgent, in terms of where his status was, and obviously his age fits with this group. Stoll, his age fit with the group. We're going to continue pounding away on the other guys and staying with the plan, trying to keep these guys together. So it's not only looking at what it does for the team now, but fitting it into the whole. I'm as relieved about that as I am about getting him in. If you don't get him in right, then what good is it?''

On how it sets the table for future re-signings of Jack Johnson and Anze Kopitar...
``That's the problem. I'd like to think it does, but we've seen how the market has changed over the last three, four, five, six months. I think it works for us, but you're asking me if I can predict the market. There's an argument out there that with the economy, the cap might go the other way (down). It's kind of a moving target. I can't tell you what's going to happen. It's awful hard sometimes, because should be look at the economy? Should we look at revenues? Should be look at the value of the dollar? I don't know. Nobody can answer that question. Certainly you have a range that you can estimate within, but with any certainty, given the way this works? It's tough. It's made it, in a lot of ways, more difficult than what I experienced the first time I tried to put a group together. (Jeff Solomon) did a great job on this. It's a lot of work and we've been pounding away for a lot of days on this. He did a great job.''

On whether he's concerned about lingering bitterness, similar to the Cammalleri situation...
``(O'Sullivan) is here for three years, so that's the great thing. Any time you go through something like this, it's important for both sides to sit down and say, `OK, now we've got to be a team.' We will, I know we will, sit down and talk. It never got personal, for lack of a better term. The thing with Cammalleri went to another level in terms of some of the stuff, but I don't sense that here. I do think we will sit down, just to make sure. All the grinding that was done in the last couple days, that's where (Solomon's) experience really comes in, because he had more patience than I did. That's why it makes a good team.''