Toronto Maple Leafs president and general manager Brian Burke speaks to reporters during the NHL General Managers' annual fall meeting in Toronto, Ont. Tuesday, November 9, 2010. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren CalabreseDarren Calabrese/The Canadian Press
Here were some of the other highlights from Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke's conference call with reporters on Monday night after making the Kris Versteeg trade for two draft picks to the Philadelphia Flyers (full audio is below):
- Why he moved Versteeg: "From my perspective, Kris's best contributions would come on a better team, like he did in Chicago. He wasn't having the same impact on our team ... Not for lack of trying on his part or lack of effort. It hadn't been the fit we envisioned and he has tremendous value as demonstrated today. I'm not disappointed in Kris; he's a good guy and a good hockey player. In my mind, it wasn't happening for him here. We had a chance to acquire assets and we did it."
- On another deal in the works for a forward with a considerable salary: "The third-round pick has already been offered to another team and is in play. We're going to try and add a player; we have not conceded the last playoff spot nor will we. If we can add, we're going to. There's no change to our philosophy except that this was the best offer we had."
- On getting a first-round pick: "Well it wasn't a priority. This deal was on the table from Philly for a week. We shopped it hard, not identifying the team, but tried to add instead a player that was in the league or close like the Jake Gardiner situation. Not an 18 year old that you're going to wait three years for, but a guy that's in his third year of college hockey. If he comes up this summer, we figured maybe half a year in the minors ... We weren't able to, so we took the best package we could get. We felt Philly would make a move and that package would not be there by the 28th."
- On Tomas Kaberle: "The agent here has asked for complete secrecy and silence on all the dealings involving Tomas Kaberle. The player has respected that, the agent has respected that and we're certainly going to respect that."
- Marlies netminder Jussi Rynnas broke his finger in practice, making it more complicated to move J-S Giguere given two goalies are hurt. "We're not going to be doing anything with a goaltender in the near future. Now I've still got 14 days until the deadline, I have met with Jiggy, I have met with his agent and we'll go from there."