Brian Lawton

I'm always rooting for them, to be honest with you.

Warren Coolis called me this morning just by chance.

Asked me what I thought of a couple things.

He still follows the lightning like a diehard.

A lot of people don't realize that when we went there, that team was dead last.

I got hired literally right before the draft.

Three years later, they were in the finals.

And I think Oren's point to me was talking about Toronto, that you can turn around quickly, but that was still two full years of us basically getting rid of players, trying to lose some contracts.

trying to build some depth in the minors.

It's a real process.

It is.

You know, it's striking to me when you look at the players that Montreal was relying on game one, you know, Hudson, Pazooks,

You know, right on down the line, Sapkowski, those are essentially the guys that played the most minutes.

You know, those four under 23 years old, basically, kids are leading the charge for Montreal.

I had Marty St.

Louis when I was in Tampa.

He's an outstanding character person.

He's really surprised a lot of people with his coaching, but the reality is he is about as real and as connected as kids as you can get.

in this league, and it is a perfect team for him.

I think the combination of Jeff and Kent has been really powerful.