Don Waddell Played Quotations

His all-around game has been especially good. That's why he's warranted more ice time, because he's played solid at both ends of the ice. I thought he was capable of playing good defense because he's a smart player. When you grow up in Russia, you learn to play defense, even if you are an offensive player. We knew he was capable of it.

Certainly he was on the bubble as we started, but played himself on the team. That's what our goal was when we were selecting this team. Let guys play themselves on or off the team.

We're really pleased to have Peter guiding our Olympic Team. Peter knows what it takes. He played on our 1988 Olympic team and came back as captain of the 1994 Olympic team. He's coached our last two world championship teams. He's passionate about the game and we're confident he'll do an outstanding job as our head coach.

We probably didn't talk about Chris for the first two months and then on one of our (team evaluation) calls in early December, the name was brought up and everyone jumped on board with it. He played himself on this team.