Discusses some of the decisions he faces during the next few months

During his first day on the job in his new position, Thrashers general manager Rick Dudley shared some of his views on which direction he plans to go with his head coaching search, the upcoming NHL Entry Draft and future personnel decisions. Dudley, played for and worked with a number of coaching greats, and likely candidates for Thrashers head coaching job to replace John Anderson. Here are some excerpts from this afternoon's media teleconference.

Q: Will you look for a coach with NHL experience, or will you consider one from the minor leagues?

Dudley: I will probably spend a lot of time with any prospective candidate and try to figure out exactly what he represents in terms of what we need, his technical abilities, those types of things.

Q: Do you have a preference on one who has NHL experience to one that doesn't.

Dudley: Not really. I think if you look back at the last number of years, there have been success stories, people like Jacques Lemaire in New Jersey has had great success, but there is also times where people hire former minor league coaches who have been very successful head coaches. And, then there's Dave Tippett, an old coach that was hired in Phoenix and has done such a nice job. There's lots of different situations where success stories have been reached in a variety of ways. I think the Islanders coach (Scott Gordon) was a great hire and he came directly from the minor leagues.

Q: Do you expect there will be another front office hire?

Dudley I don't think so. With Larry (Simmons) and I, we function pretty well together. I rely on him already as an associate GM, he's a very bright young guy. To be honest with you, I think he can do anything that is asked of him.

Q: Are Don Lever and Randy Cunneyworth on the short list of potential head coaching candidates?

Dudley: I would say that I am not going to commit to that only because if we go too far down the list that we are going to run very quickly into them. Obviously, Randy was an assistant coach here and is a guy I have a great deal of affection for, and in Donnie Lever, he has done a magnificent job turning around the Chicago Wolves. I'm not going to get into what would be on a list, simply because people at or near the top could be working for other teams. I would just say, because we are going to be a young team with a lot of talent, two things: the technical side of things will be very important, because in today's coaching you have to be probably more than a one-trick pony, you have to be able to adjust what the opponents throw at you, and secondly, you have to be able to teach. With our young players, with talents of a (Zach) Bogosian or a (Evander) Kane, or (Bryan) Little, or people like that, we have to nurture them so that we expedite the process. The success we are going to attain here will be predicated largely on on our ability to expedite the process to get those players to their optimal level.

Q: Do you have the type of players in mind you want to acquire in the draft?

Dudley: If you're speaking about the first round, I think we're looking at the best player available, but having said that, I think there is a prerequisite with us, we've talked about it, and we don't want to slow down, and we want to get people of high character. I think those are prerequisites although not necessities. Character is the one thing that they have to have… Ideally, we'd like to get somebody big, fast, with a lot of talent and high character, and I'm sure everybody would [he said laughing].

Q: You've played for or have been around Floyd Smith, Craig Ramsey, Rick Bowness, John Tortorella, Terry Slater, Jacques Demers, Scotty Bowman and Roger Neilson. Could you explain the coaching style or methods that these guys have that meshes with what the kind of coach you'd like to hire?

Dudley: You've named a variety of coaches, all of whom have had unique qualities to them. You'd like to get a mesh of all of them but that may not be possible. In Floyd Smith you had a less technical guy that made you feel very good about coming to the rink every day. He had a major impact on my career because he believed in me, and he was probably the first coach that saw me as anything but a pugilist. In him, I learned that players have to believe that you believe in them. Eventually, you lose players if you can't project that.

In Roger Neilsen, you had a guy who technically was on a different level than most people. He figured out every nuance of the game and I think one of his disciples would be Craig Ramsay, who is one of the great teachers in the game today. He was in Tampa, and if you ask Pavel Kubina, he'll tell you that and the people in Boston certainly know that.

In Terry Slater, he was a wonderful guy and I would have skated through the end of the rink for Terry. He was a blend of most of those guys. He would scream at times, but he could be your friend at times. He was the type of guy, that literally you'd kill somebody for, so I had a great time playing for him.

I had Scotty Bowman, you never knew what he thought of you, but that was part of the success he had. He was a guy that knew exactly what he wanted from each player. He also hired people that could complement him. He hired Roger Neilson because Roger was the best technician in the game. That is certainly a way to do it, is to be an overseer and have your underlings do a lot of the processing. Scotty was without question the best bench coach that I played for. He had a handle of the opponent and matching lines.

There are always differences in all those coaches. They're all good and they all presented something different, and I don't think there is a formula. I really don't believe that you can say this is the type of coach that wins, because if you look back over the last number of years, Dave Tippett is a completely different coach than Randy Carlyle in Anaheim. Tippett has had a wonderful year and Carlyle has won a Stanley Cup.

A lot of it comes down for me, a grasp technically or having the ability to delegate to those who do have a grasp and you do the work one-on-one with the players to get them in the right space mentally. 

Q: Do you anticipate making any changes to the scouting staff?

Dudley: At the moment, I think it will stay in place. To be candid with you, since I have come on board, I have tried to observe and each time I did I found that there were people who are very capable. Maybe they needed to get more of a framework involved, but they work hard and they are very intelligent guys. They've got a good staff here. I think it is evidenced by the work we have done over the past year. I think this team is in a much better position than it was. Personally, I like the people that work for us. That doesn't mean that there won't be someone added or changed.

Q: Historically, the No. 8 draft position hasn't been very good, would you consider moving out of that position?

Dudley: We actually, this morning, sat down and were trying to figure out where everything would likely fall. All you can do is project, because surer than heck someone is going to throw a curve at you. Because we have two first-round draft picks, if there was a significant player that we thought we could get in an effort to move up, we might do something. One thing in my travels this year that I discovered is that this draft is pretty deep. With an 8th pick and a 20-something pick, we are going to get a very good player at both spots.

Q: Would you trade a first-round pick to add a current NHL player to your roster?

Dudley: That would depend if somebody would want to depart with…if Sidney Crosby was available {again laughing], but obviously that would be completely dependent upon what was offered. The one thing I will say is that it is very unlikely that we would trade an 8th pick for an older player. We think we are moving in a certain direction and we want our players to grow together. And, when I say an older player, I mean one way over 30. If it was someone who could contribute a lot to our team over the next three, four or five years, maybe even two years, then there would be some interest.