Iain MacIntyre

So the fact that based on what Jim said at his press conference on Friday regarding the latitude that the new general manager will have to make all the hockey decisions, that it won't be the same setup or dynamic as it was with Rutherford slash Albine.

The new general manager will basically run the hockey team, and that second person may be a more sort of administrative president, someone who's going to be in charge, be importantly a buffer between ownership and the general manager, but won't necessarily have the impact on the day-to-day decisions and the big decisions that the hockey department wants to make.

Sure, sure.

In a way, I can see from a lot of people's view that this seems kind of backward.

Why don't you hire your president first?

But if the Aquilines still trust Jim Rutherford to make hockey decisions, I think they have a better chance of getting...

a general manager right now hired by Jim Rutherford than they would anyone hired by ownership if ownership doesn't have a president in place or if it takes them a while to get their president and who knows who the president would be.

I don't have as much an issue with this, although it does seem a little bit backwards.

I don't have as much an issue with this as maybe some other people do because I believe that

Rutherford will, you know, whether it's Ryan Johnson or someone else, I believe that Rutherford is going to hire a good GM for the for the organization.

And I think there's a there's a certain level of confidence in that that maybe I wouldn't have if it were if it was simply ownership right now, starting from scratch and looking for its people.

Well, the fact that he hasn't been fired and the fact that he was able to make the moves that he has made this season, the biggest in the hockey operations, obviously being the trade of Quinn Hughes, the biggest in hockey operations management in his managerial role being firing the GM.

And the fact that Rutherford was allowed to do that tells me that he still has the confidence of ownership because if he didn't,

why in the world would they have allowed him to make those decisions?

No, I don't read it that way.

I just read it.

I guess I'm taking him on face value at his answer, which is he thinks that Adam Foote deserves the opportunity to talk to the new general manager and the new general manager deserves the opportunity to talk to Adam Foote before they make that decision.

I think it's always the case.

And if you remember,

When the organization fired Mike Gillis and they brought in Jim Benning and Trevor Linden, they actually had a coach in John Tortorella.