Here is Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren's conference call transcript from today regarding the trade deadline, courtesy of the Flyers:
Q: Did you have any interest in Paul Gaustad today?
He was a player that we talked about prior to making any the moves that we made with acquiring our defensemen. He’s a guy that I think had a lot of interest around the league and you saw the price that they got was pretty steep. Once we added our defensemen, we didn’t really focus on that player.
Q: Were you getting a lot of calls today about James van Riemsdyk?
We received some calls about some of our players, with some scenarios that we talked about. But nothing really made sense for us in the short term or in the long term. I think we’ve stated here all along that anything we do needs to make sense both ways for us, and nothing really came up. We made our moves a couple weeks ago and I think adding the size and experience on defense that we were looking for with the absence of Chris Pronger for the rest of this year… we felt good with our group. We really didn’t go into this trade deadline, since we made those two deals for Pavel and Nicklas, we didn’t really go in with anything that really felt we needed to do. We like our team and we were quite comfortable coming out of it like we did without doing anything more today.
Q: So you’re not disappointed?
Absolutely not. Not at all. A couple weeks ago we felt we lacked some things on our back end just because of the absence of Chris, and we addressed those issues without giving up anyone off our team. I like our team. I think we’re a team that obviously the group for the most part has been together all year. We’ve put some young guys into the lineup over the course of the year, and we like our team. We like the direction we’re heading and we didn’t want to do anything to disrupt anything long-term for sure.
Q: Does the goals-against still concern you?
Yeah. It’s a function of how we’re playing. We’re still a little loosey-goosey from time to time, and obviously our goaltending needs to be better. I think the coaches and the players have spent a great deal of time going over how we’re playing, and we’re trying to tighten things up. That’s a situation that the team is addressing on a daily basis, and you hope getting down here where we’ve got 21 games left, we’ll start to tighten it up and play the style we need to play to be successful down the stretch.
Q: On JVR and Matt Carle not getting traded
Well, again, James is signed here for a long time. I can’t do anything when other teams call about him. I’ve talked to James a number of times over the season, and I think he feels comfortable… since he’s been back in the lineup I think he’s been a good player for us. It’s his third year now in the league, he’s been involved in some playoff games over the last couple years and was a particularly good player for us last year in the playoffs, so I would expect him to continue to get better. Matt’s a good player on our team. He knows we have an interest in keeping him, so we’ll see how that goes.
Q: On re-signing Matt Carle
I don’t know how to answer that other than to say we’ve talked at length. There’s mutual interest on both sides. I think Matt wants to stay here and be part of the Flyers for the foreseeable future. My belief is that there’s something out there that we can agree on that we can take care of that. Whether it happens in the near future or somewhere down the road here, we’ll see.
Q: Were you close to doing anything else?
No. I was going to say not really, but it’s easier to say no, because there wasn’t anything that was pitched to us that when you put it on the big board, would have made us as good a team as what’s on the board right now. We just felt more comfortable with our team the way it is, and quite frankly, since we’ve added the two defensemen, we’ve all felt that way. We believe we have to play better, but all the coaches, I include them in that. I think they like our team too. So we’re happy to move forward. It’s a crazy day for us here and for all the players around the league to go through that because you never know what’s going to happen. But now that it’s over I think you just march ahead and get on with winning some hockey games.
Q: On the new defensemen
I think they've been very good. I think Pavel hadn't skated in four or five days before he was traded ... he practiced one day and played the next day in Winnipeg. So he'll continue to get better. I think Nicklas has done good, too. Obviously, he got a couple points last game. I'm not looking for him to score points, but he's pretty solid in our end and he gets the puck out of trouble quickly. They're both big strong guys that can win puck battles in corners and take up space in front of the net.
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