Darren Dreger

Now, again, you know, if you revisit what Keith Pelley said, you know, he told us they didn't believe that a full rebuild was in order, that the retool was the direction they were going to go.

You know, maybe he and the group that was making this decision are sold that, okay, well, the knife might have to cut a little bit deeper than that.

And then that management group, whatever it looks like,

has that conversation with Austin Matthews and with Willie and everyone else that they would, would believe that they have to have that conversation with it.

It probably doesn't go a whole lot deeper than those two guys.

Maybe at that point, Matthews goes, all right, well, this is a three, four year project.

Obviously my contract is up in two years, so I'm not likely to stick around for that.

That wasn't,

the communication today, this morning.

You know, again, Berube met with the group first, and then Brandon Pridham and whomever the other management types were involved, maybe he was alone, I don't know, had a separate meeting with those guys.

And he was also acknowledged, those players need to be better.

Matthews needs to be better.

You know, Willie needs to be better, consistently better.

So I think all bets are off if all of a sudden

you know, retool turns into something bigger or you get to a point next year where they've added some of the pieces that I just mentioned and it's still not working and you're upside down again.

You know, maybe at that point, then their future becomes more of a question, but it doesn't seem to be today.

I think so.

You know, again, we're talking about the team leaders here.

I think there has to be a conversation, doesn't there, with Austin Matthews.

Again, whoever the head of hockey operations is to say, all right, you know, what do we think of the coach here?