Sunday, July 01, 2007

GMGM and Tom Poti Speak

Per Tarik:

McPhee on Poti: "Our scouting staff thought that [Poti] had the best years of his career last year and that he's really coming into his own. We needed a left-handed shot for the power play, he's excellent on the penalty kill and moves the puck, very, very well. We've felt we've got some young defensemen who are good at shutting the other team down, but we needed a little more skill to help us out with special teams."

McPhee on Kozlov: "Alex [Ovechkin] has spoken very highly of [Kozlov] in the past. He's can play center and the wing, he's also coming off one of the better years in his career. And he's pretty darn good in the shootout, too." [J.P.'s note: Kozlov had a career high in goals in 2006-07 and has only had more points twice in his 11 NHL seasons. He's also 13-for-25 in shootouts for his career.]

Poti on receiving assurances about more improvements: McPhee "said they have a list of guys they are taking a hard line to get. He said assured me that they are committed to winning and they want to put Washington back on the map."

Poti on his role in Washington: "I was able to show everyone what I could do, given the chance and given the ice time. "[McPhee] wants me to come in and do what I did for the Islanders last year - play hard, eat up a lot of minutes and play a lot of special teams."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please tell me the Caps didn't "cheap-out" over Souray....

I guess Schneider was out of the question from the start *sigh* ....

Anonymous said...

I'm actually really pleased with what Poti had to say... It sounded like he genuinely wanted to play here, which is a good sign.

As for Souray, I didn't want him. Poti was -1 last year, Souray was -28. Souray is amazing on offense, but he's rather irresponsible defensively. Poti's a more balanced player.