Craig Patrick Quotations

I was surprised. He came in, he closed the door. ... It became pretty apparent once he started (talking) that he was heading down that path.

I would say he's been our best player, ... He's been very good.

Obviously, the nucleus of our team is a lot younger.

If we didn't pick up Sidney this year, I'm sure Kris would have been in our lineup.

Guys are starting to gain a lot of confidence. Hopefully, it's time to climb up the ladder, and if we keep playing like this, we will.

He's played well, but the bottom line is winning hockey games. We want to win hockey games, and hopefully, he can help us do that.

He wasn't playing like he was two years ago, and I didn't see us re-signing him. This was a good opportunity to get a player for the future and someone who can do the job defensively this year and possibly beyond.

He'd been complaining about his hip since Montreal. Actually, he had a little tightness there before, but in Montreal (on Jan. 4) he hurt it in practice. We didn't think it was that serious, but it kept bothering him and bothering him, so he decided to get an MRI done.

He didn't make the trip because in the third period last night he was having a recurrence of an irregular heartbeat. Obviously, we're concerned about it, so we left him at home.

He hasn't achieved what we thought he'd achieve, based on the way he played two years ago. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of explanations for why things haven't gone that well this year. But a lot of guys haven't played up to the level that we'd anticipated.

Hopefully there's a chance of another one getting there next year, too.

He's going to be an off-ice conditioning program for the next 10 days to two weeks and then he will be reevaluated after that. They are going to try and get the right level of medication that he needs. Medicine is not an exact science, so you have to test things and try them. They are in that process now.

He meant an awful lot to us, both on the ice and off. He had a great career, obviously, everywhere he was. But here, he solidified our team in the sense that he gave us a top two line person that made it a 1a and 1b situation, which no other team had at that time. He was very, very important to us winning our Stanley Cups.

He made some nice moves on that play. That was great.

John is a big, strong winger who is a proven and consistently productive goal-scorer. His presence further strengthens the group of forwards we're assembling here in Pittsburgh.

Jocelyn brings a wealth of experience to our goaltending corps and will help us tremendously as we move forward.

I think the more experience he gets, the better. He could play in a tournament like this every other week as far as I'm concerned. It makes you a better player.

I think we'll take our time. The doctors said he could be working out in as soon as three days, but we'll monitor it and see how he's doing when he gets back.

I thought they did very, very well. The whole staff did. They had a lot of energy, they played hard and they did a good job.

We've talked on the phone and he's been doing things, but we haven't had a chance to sit down because we've been gone and he's been out of town so our schedules haven't meshed very well yet. We'll just talk about what I'd like to see him doing for this next little while.

You know I don't talk about that stuff.

We didn't sense that there was any problems with the shoulder. He passed the physical.

That's the one thing we've got to be careful of -- him feeling the pressure, putting it on himself to get back on the ice. We've got to calm him down from here on out, we've got to make sure it's right. We've got to not listen to him this time and say, 'No, Mario, not until we say you're ready.

We're delighted to have Kevin back where he belongs, with the Penguins. Kevin brings a passion to the game that is second to none.

We've talked about it. If we sign anyone, it will be for the upcoming season, not this one.

We did this for the first time in the summer of 2003, and we believe it's a good way for some of our young prospects to come into town and get to know a little bit about our organization and our city before training camp. We'll put them through a series of tests, and they'll also have a chance to meet with our coaches and trainers.

We're done negotiating. We're just waiting for the answer.

We're down to a bare-bone operation in terms of players. After this weekend, we'll be down to 12 forwards, six defensemen and two goalies, and any time you get in that situation and have an injury, you can bring people up (from the American Hockey League) on emergency, and it doesn't affect what's going on down there in terms of being able to go back and play in the playoffs. That's important for us because we want to see these guys as much as we can this spring and make some decisions on them for the future and for our lineup in the future.

We thought the best precaution was to have him enter the hospital for observation.

We're starting to get used to each other and play more like the way I thought we'd be able to play. But we get a good lead and we're still giving up some goals I wish we wouldn't give up.

Definitely, in John's case. It's very special to get these kind of people ? not just great players, but great people in the locker room.

This is our third time around at it. It's going to work this time. The players will adjust and there will be a different game. Definitely.

You're going to do it his way or not going to play, and from what I've seen this year we need that. We all believe we have the ability here.

I know we're having dialogue with everybody and seeing what's out there. We've had dialogue with just about every team one way or another.

I'm not going to talk about our discussion.

Not necessarily. He does have to get it surgically repaired, and he is going to get it done rather quickly. We'll see how quickly he can come back.

His biggest benefits are his passion and his energy level.

I haven't talked to him but from what everyone's telling me, he's doing fine.

He's started his medication already and it will solve his problem. He's in great shape and he's in great spirits. This has been something that has been lingering on and off and they finally figured out what it is.

He's working out, and he's hoping to skate sometime soon.

It's like it was back in the early '90s when we were coming to camp with a chance to win a championship every year.

We were positioned well for what we had to deal with, and it's worked out very well. For the first time around in this, it was hard to really anticipate what might happen, but we're very, very pleased.

We look pretty on paper, but what are we? We'll find out what we are, starting today.

We look pretty on paper but what are we? What are we? I don't know, but we're going to find out.

We expect that he will be able to begin exercising in a matter of days and return to the lineup in a brief period of time.

It was real simple. I surrendered right away. It's great to have his name on a contract, and now, we can move forward.

We want to give him a good look here, see what he can do. We're hoping he can show us something.

It's good for hockey, and it's good for his area. It's interesting, the way it worked out. It's good to have this many hockey players in town.

He really hasn't had a great opportunity to play in Carolina. He's been behind some guys who are probably better than he is.