Meltzer has the Fletch/Flahr transcript up.
HockeyBuzz.com - Bill Meltzer - Quick Hits: Fletcher/Flahr, Rookie Camp, European Prospects, TIFH
Here's a snippet related to the 'veteran' aspect.
In what ways do you like the roster that you put together better than last year heading into the veteran camp?
CF: I think we have more veteran leadership than back to last off-season. This falls on me, as I mentioned before. Matt Niskanen retired. We let Nate Thompson go, or we didn't re-sign Nate Thompson or Tyler Pitlick. We lost some players that are kind of low-maintenance, high-character veteran players and we replaced them with some younger players. Last year, when things started to go awry and we lost our way a little bit, we didn't have what I thought was maybe enough veteran leadership, enough players that could maybe help the younger players get through that situation. You throw the pandemic on top of it and the protocols. It was just a lot of situations none of us had been through.
I thought we were maybe a little bit too young to get through it. This year, when you look at our group, I think we're more of a veteran team than what we were last year. I think we have players that have had a lot of different experiences in this league. I think we're a deeper team. I think our defense in particular has been upgraded. Time will tell. Summer is great and the offseason is great. You make your moves, and you try to improve yourself on paper. Now, camp starts before we get into the games, but the games will start soon enough. We'll find out if we made the appropriate moves.
One of the themes this offseason, it seemed like was getting quality veteran guy on relatively reasonable contracts to fill out at the bottom of the lineup. Essentially at least on paper, you're filling spots that maybe had they not been acquired, would be given to prospects or young players. There's obviously going to be a lot of competition at this camp. For the young guys to essentially beat out those types of guys for spots, are they going to have to play dramatically better than the older guys because the older guys are established?
CF: Yes, definitely. That's where you want to get to as an organization. You want to make it so that young players have to earn their spot. You want the competition level to be high. That's how you get better. That's how young players get better. As we get deeper and as our group matures, we want this to be a difficult team to make. That will certainly ensure that we have a high-end team here. A second part of that as well is just this is a very difficult schedule, not just our clubs but for every club.
As I mentioned before, we have stretches of the season that are very difficult. I believe we're going to need a lot of bodies to get through the year. If you're dipping into your younger players just at the start of the season, then when injuries hit, you're really digging deep into your farm system to just even ice a roster in the NHL.
Besides making the competition level higher and make it more difficult for young players to make the team, what we hope we're doing is simply improving the depth of our team, so when injuries hit, we're recalling high quality players that are ready to play, step in and make a difference.
