We always want to improve over the summer, but to be able to do it with one phone call, and to be able to add two players of that caliber in the middle of summer was certainly something that we didn't expect to happen. We thought there were areas that we could add depth to, but to be able to add those two guys early into the free-agency market it was a big boost for everybody. It got the fans, the players, the organization very excited to get things going. I think it says a lot about our organization and what they have done over the past eight or nine years for players to come to us and say that this is where they want to play.
Quotes about free-agency (4 Quotes)
The number in the first four years has basically been the same since 1998. Four years, 24, 25 million. So I assume they'd be very happy to keep that number there. The fifth and sixth years of a contract at that level are what would normally correspond towith a guy's free-agency contract. So that's why I don't think it's very unreasonable for the numbers to jump up then.
I would give full credit to ownership, because they provided us with the resources necessary to accomplish what we did. They were committed to a successful free-agency period.
We've never been a big free-agency team because we don't believe that's the way to put a team together, exclusively. We believe that the draft will always be the main part of your team, but we also believe that you'll have to plug in the occasional free a