Doug Risebrough Quotes (23 Quotes)

He's been good this year, but I want to see him at another level.

We did it a year in advance, and we didn't get any credit for it.

We have to fill in some blanks. We have the (financial) flexibility to fill in those blanks. Our plan has to be executed, not just over this summer, but over the next two years.

His confidence is high, and I think he knows how he can affect games now. There's still going to be games he doesn't do it as much, but that doesn't mean it's him as it is just the game. But he's got to be able to present it all the time, and if it is in the game and he doesn't, that's the inconsistency you're trying to eliminate.

We're not going to add youth for youth's sake. Younger players will have to challenge younger players - not veterans - next year. And they'll have to be able to make an immediate contribution to the team.

Andrei could really add to the team's physical character and make us that much tougher to play against. He has the opportunity to make a real impact here.

Going to the tournament and talking to him about the decisions he made and asking him how he put it together gave me a sense of his abilities. I talked to him (about the Wild management job) before this year's tournament and he said he couldn't talk about it until after the tournament.

He's trying to identify quality people and people who have won. He got it (leadership) in a package with those two.

In hindsight, probably more time would have been better. Maybe making sure everyone starts on the same night or relatively close.

Because of the split, I'm not sure if we've ever been able to find out what Manny can do. This year's been Manny's year. He's had exceptional years. This year will rival anybody else in the league.

There's somebody who's going to say, 'I don't want to lose this guy so I'll put him out in four or five days' because they want to see what people might acquire.

This is the group, and I want to see what they can do. I want to see how many games we can win, and who's contributing to the winning. One thing I've learned in hockey is there's no guaranteed jobs.

It was simple, the value was there in making the deal. It was a difficult trade to make so Kevin had to understand that the value was going to have to be more, even if it would have been less had I moved him somewhere else.

I'm saying that the trade deadline is looming, and I'm not commenting about who I'm trading or not.

We have a number of players who are third-, fourth- or fifth-year pros. It's their time. We're not sure what they're going to do, but we need to find out.

I wouldn't have believed it. We are on a roll. But if you had told me that our team would be competing against all the teams that we played to date, yes, I would've believed that. Or that we would be playing hard -- yes. Or that they'd be close games -- yes. I think the difference is that all of those things have happened and some of those close games have gone in our favor.

Teams are more comfortable now taking on the risk of development of players than they were three or four years ago. More teams are realizing young players aren't a detriment. To me, there's no difference between a player at 19 and someone who's 21.

One role we've been trying to find is somebody at center who's hard working and kind of pesky. Erik's kind of done that at the U and done that as a pro. Maybe there's an opportunity to see what he can do in NHL.

The Wild's commitment to Manny and his commitment to the team are based upon his play this season and his performance with the Wild ever since he started the first home game in team history on October 11, 2000. We see this as a step that will continue to improve our team and help take us to the next level.

And he'll give his overall opinion on the state of the team.

Right now, we're not manufacturing enough goals. We're relying on our skills to score goals.

I think he's going to be able to be better with these changes. Where he probably has an edge is with his speed. So if transition means you can go to the far blue line very quickly, there's probably very few people in the league that can get there as fast as him.

He and I will deal with it at the right time. It's been a good relationship. We both rely on each other. I'd say it's in the right place.