Anthony Petrielli: I’ve noticed a theme in your draft history where you give a late pick or two to Thommie Bergman to use. Has there been any thought in bringing him overseas to pick apart the OHL or the USHL, or something along those lines?
Dave Morrison: He comes over every year. On that note, and I’ve had to explain it a few times, some of these Swedish players we’ve drafted some of our North American guys have liked better than Thommie has. I don’t want to take anything away from Thommie, but it’s not just Thommie drafting these players. I really want to make a note that Peter Ihnacak, our number two guy in Europe, is really involved as well and does a lot of scouting in Scandinavia. I think to say it’s Thommie Bergman alone would be a little bit misleading. The picks Thommie has made, outside of maybe one in the last 9 or 10 years, have been seen by a lot of our scouts. Also, to say that we don’t lean on Thommie would be untrue because we do lean on him for some of the players in the area, like we would lean on any other scout when we draft a player from their area. When we drafted Morgan Rielly, I leaned a lot on Garth Malarchuk and Roy Stasiuk from the West. Those guys knew this player, they had a longer background. I just wanted to make sure that what I thought was right they believed also. When we draft a guy from Sweden, even though we like him as a staff and Thommie likes him, I am going to go to Thommie and say, “is this right? what we’re seeing, is that correct?” That’s where Thommie has done a fantastic job. He’s done a really good job. He has also identified them initially. That’s all a part of the process and that’s where Thommie has done a really good job, but it’s not just Thommie and nobody else sees them. That’s not correct. When we draft a player we draft them as a team, and everybody else is involved as well.
