Saturday, June 25, 2011

Paul Fenton Speaks before Day Two of the NHL Entry Draft

We spoke to the Predators' Assistant GM Paul Fenton briefly before the start of this morning's day two of the draft. The Preds have the eight pick in the second round. Fenton indicated that they had targeted a couple of players and had made some calls to the other seven teams about the potential of swapping their pick to get the player that they want.

On whether their man will be available at 38 he said, "We are hoping so, your list is your list and you identify the player you want, the type of player you want, the skill level, and what have you. We've got about four or five guys to get up to 38 and sometimes it is a nail biter to get there."

When asked if there were any regrets about not having their first round pick when Ottawa came up, Fenton responded, "Absolutely not! We'd do that every day of the week to get the success we had this year, to grow our franchise more. That's the price of doing business in the National Hockey League. We still got an asset here for a couple of more years to keep growing."

On the first round in general, "I saw a lot of guys coming off our list. But there are still some good players left too. Our strategy regardless was to come into this and take our two second round picks and grow from there. We tried to move up. It just didn't happen. You saw a lot of movement in the twenty's and we were right in the thick of things and when it didn't happen, that's just the way it is."

More Later...

Buddy Oakes for PredsOnTheGlass

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