so £1000 gorilla in the room. Um, what, what are your plans for the offseason? Obviously you're an R. F. A. So you don't have your choice of going anywhere necessarily, but do you want to stay here? And uh, you know, what, what talks have you and your agent had at this point? Yeah. No, no talks. Obviously we uh real focused on the playoffs obviously last last month and a half there, but I'm sure we'll start talking here pretty soon. Love to stay. That's uh, that's obvious. I think they know that everywhere from, from tom all the way down those I'd like to stay and, and I'd like to think they'd like to have you back. So we'll see. We'll see if we can figure something out there. But I haven't thought about it too much. All I know is I definitely want to stay. They were good to me and I plan on being as loyal as I can back. So hopefully we could, uh, we could come up with a little game plan and try to get something done. Well. If you look at last summer, I mean, there was, you know, not to go into too much detail. There's a lot of options that, you know, we thought we had and we're supposed to have in a sense that that didn't come to fruition as time went on there and then you come to Carolina and it was with open arms basically, we had good conversations from talking to, with ownership and coaching staff to management and I felt like they were, they were good to me. They listened to me, they, you know, they trusted me and took me in as, you know, kind of with no, um, trying to get the word I want to use, like no collar on you, basically kind of let you let you do your thing and then, you know, earn the trust and just play your game. There was no like, hey, if you do, you do or say any little thing, you're, you're out or whatever, you know, anything like that. And I thought I came in and just, it was myself around the guys myself around team and management and just played and played my game. And I thought that it translated into, into a positive thing for the team and myself. So that's probably how I say, You know what I mean? Good to me in a sense, I probably could've used better wording, but I'm a loyal guy and I told him that from the beginning, I said guys, you know, you guys were good to me and use it again and I, um, I'm very loyal. So hopefully we're able to do something together. That is that another way of saying that you went better than expected? Well, my play was never a question for myself, I'm confident in my game and I thought that, you know, I played was gonna get right back to where maybe it took a little bit longer than I would have liked the training camp wasn't my best training camp ever, but I hadn't played in almost a year, so it's uh, it went well. Obviously this is really disappointing to even be talking to you guys right now. So really we had, it's the best team I've been on since I came in the league by by a wide wide margin. A lot of, a lot of talent, a lot of good players, great coach. It's uh it's tough. But that's what happens if it happens in a playoff series and stuff. So it is what it is. We got to just try to got to try to figure it out. I hope I'm part of it. I hope we could if I am part and we continue to get better and take that next step. Yeah. I mean when the series is over, you, you congratulate those guys, they've still got a lot of friends on the team. Obviously we're as you're tough on each other as he gets during the stuff with sticks and words and checks. But when it's over, you know, you wish them well. And I told them guys, I said, go, you know, go try to win it. All right. So obviously it doesn't, you don't want to lose two to them, especially for me personally, the other guy's room that goes for anybody, any other team you're on. But it's just anybody we lost two is going to be, it's gonna be the same feeling, especially, especially that early in the playoffs is for us. I just think it wasn't not the way I should have went in in my opinion. I think everybody will tell you the same thing, but that's the way it goes. Especially when you give team chances to to push you to 1/7 game. You know, you got to find a way to close out series and we weren't able to do that. And in a game seven, anything can happen. You know, you look at that and you get the goal here early in the game, we get a couple of chances to tie it right away. Don't another goal, another chance to make it to one. Nothing. Then you try to catch up and it's too bad. You don't have so much time in the game, right? It doesn't matter how you play, it's 760 minutes later. It's over. Was it difficult in the sense of when we talk to you when you first signed, you talked about give me a shot and because there was a lot of pushback from fans and you also talked about it, I have to prove it, you know, that I've learned and I've moved on. Was that how difficult was that process now that you've gone through a whole year of kind of settling in and making all those things work in that regard. It wasn't too difficult. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that people don't, you know from the outside looking in, they have no clue what was whatever happened in the past, what was going on, what was said, what was done, what happened in new york, they have zero idea. It's not something I'm never going to go into really. It is what it is, it's in the past. But Carolina, when talking to these guys, listen to what I had to say and there's a couple other teams obviously that listened to it as well. And and I told him, I'm pretty honest guys. So when I talk to these teams and said that you're gonna find out everything, you gotta find out no matter what, there's a million hockey people that have been around before. So I told them exactly what happened, my side of every story of anything they wanted to know. And I said, this is how it is 123, whatever we go through it. And I said, you know, there's a lot of other stuff too confident that people try to bring into it may be politically or whatever that tried to go into, but it had nothing to do with it. We talked and and I said, once I get on the ice, that's that's what we're gonna be worried about right and off the ice. I think I've proven. I think the guys like me a lot and I think that the people around here, I have come to like me a lot. So I wasn't worried about that at all, but I just was happy to be given a shot like you said, and I said, if you give me a shot, I said I'll make it worth your while. That's that's my, that's my word to you. And I think I tried to do a pretty good job of that when you were out earlier this year, Rod said something about, well when he's not in the lineup, we have to do it a different way. And and that's a compliment to you and saying you're a unique player in what you bring. Is that part of what's attractive about being here is the role you can play in your development individually. Do you see yourself having reaching a level that you haven't yet reached, that you could really be an impactful player? Yeah, I think there's more level to get to. I think this year started to get to that all around level, like offensively I was there already, right? But I thought this year defensively started to round in the shape big time and obviously learning office level has, you know, has to help in that you watch him play defense and you're like, I gotta, you can learn a couple of things over here on my side of the ice. But you know, I just, it was a good system for me too. I think the system fit what I'm what I what I do on the ice, but I thought I defended a lot better and I think that was, you know, a big step in what I'm trying to do here to become an even better player. How would you assess your? That was pretty good. I mean, listen, I think I think I played real well, but at the same time, you know, I like to say this if you consider yourself a, you know, big big time player, which I like to consider myself. I think that I need to, I need to find a way to finish some of them chances I had in the second round here. You know, I had a lot of chances. I gotta have a lot of, a lot of good chances in this series to put one past and I don't care how good of a go away is. I gotta gotta find a way to put one of them in and, and I didn't do that. So I was disappointed myself a little bit there. I would like to, I would like to be able to find a way to get one. And I mean there are some chances there to get a big goal, whether it's in Game seven to make it to one or whatever the case may be, but it wasn't able to do that. But I mean, hockey wise, I thought I played well, I thought I tried to, you know, bring a playoff type mentality. I tried to do it all the time, but especially in the playoffs and You know, play a full 200 ft game, a hard game, tough game. And then uh, yeah, I like my game, but at the end of the day it's just not enough and I thought I could have done a little more, especially in the gold department to try to help the team but off the ice stunning. I mean this is not Manhattan obviously okay, what was it like living here and being a part of this community and obviously people have come here and play so you know, they love it here and I want to play here. I mean like for you, your four. Yeah, I mean I was there. I was always uh a fan in new york, just a good living and stuff, but it gets you get text sometimes. So you come down here and I wake up in the morning, I'm not panicking to make sure there's no traffic, you know, it's not going through my head. I might sit in an hour and a half of traffic today on the way to the ring. So I get, I get up, I'm at the rink in 10 minutes and hanging out with the guys who have breakfast, not rushing into the rink or getting up earlier, different lifestyle, but it's better hockey style. So I was much happier with the hockey and and what was going on here. So that makes my life much easier outside the rink, right, But I'm not gonna compare Manhattan thoroughly. But I'll tell you what, the fans here were a lot better than any fans I've had, we had we had allowed building, we got loyal fans. I mean, I know a couple nights ago stuff, people probably buying all kinds of stuff on ticketmaster or whatever they were doing, but uh we've got great fans, we've got great, you know, energy around the city. A lot of people realize who we are, which I didn't expect to happen in in Raleigh, but it's a nice city. It's good living easy to get around. There's some pretty good food actually, if you if you look around and find some places, I didn't know where to go at the start. I ordered City barbecue a couple of times and and I was like, where the hell is the barbecue in this place in Raleigh? And uh I started to find it after a little while, sorry City barbecue, but it's a good, it's a good city and the spot to play in and I've been on a good amount of teams now. So I know a lot of guys around the league and I've and I've told guys, you know, not that they're all free agents or whatever just in general, like you guys got bad perception of of Raleigh maybe. I said we sell out crowd almost every night. It's a good organization. It's a good place to live. Like there's a lot going on, half the league as golfers. I think they're pro golfers in the NHL. So I said, there's, you know, there's great golfing and stuff. So I think, but you know, half the league is pretty good. It seems. So I said, you guys got golf and stuff too. It's, there's a lot going on and I think the city just keeps getting better and better from what I see going on to a lot of buildings going up and all that. So it's good. I like it. You're not talking any slower. Say that again? No, I'm still on, I'm still on Northeast time zone. My, my mouth here. No, I can't slow down. There's one speak the one that I want to add to the comfort level when now looking back like was that right away, did you feel much quicker than I, but I'm pretty laid back until I get to know guys and then I don't shut up as chips just starting to realize now. Um, but uh, you watch on the ice to, I took me only, I'm telling you 2, 3 weeks now granted I had a couple of guys here that I already, I already knew, which makes it a little bit easier when you're, you know, going out to lunch with maybe they know somebody and you go hang with them. Next thing, you know, you're, you're talking about this guy, that guy or whatever, but two weeks I got here right after labor day and by the start of the season, my yap was going, going going and I think the guys, uh I think they don't mind that, you know, sometimes if people talk way too much as they might, they shut this guy up. But I think, I know I know what I'm doing there. So we had a lot of fun. So it's a great group of guys here. Yeah, he's uh, he's awesome. I mean, everybody said the same thing about him. He's the best. He's he just, he played and he was such a good player when he played and played for so long. He just gets what's uh, he understands the player so well, so much more than than previous years for myself that you just play right? And this is the way we're gonna play. He's the boss and you, you follow the boss's lead and that's something I like. Like, you know, here's the structure, that's what we're gonna do. You just do it within the structure. And if you play, you're gonna continue to play and you know, your minister, your minister gonna reflect what's going on. Obviously in his opinion. That's all you need to know. You don't need to be in his office and say, hey, how do I play last night or it's not really my style. They can just, you show me in in minutes and and opportunity, you're giving and stuff like that. And, and he's a motivator to, he motivates you stuff to play. And you guys are, you've seen it now for four years. It's tougher to go 82 games of the season to have guys playing hard And he's mastered that. Have you guys played hard one through 82? You know, you look at, look at how hard we go the whole entire season. Obviously there's some games where you guys were like, what the hell is going on out there? But it's, it's tough. It's a long season. You're traveling, you're going back and forward to practicing and the way he's able to get us to, to buy in for 1 to 82 you know, give it your all and then obviously in the playoffs, everybody, everybody definitely gave a draw. I know that in fact it's just that it's an impressive thing for the coast when you're the quote unquote power play quarterback. How much do you take and realizing that needs to improve next season. And I know in the regular season it was, it was fine playoffs. Obviously. It was, it was a yeah, that's true. I think you were gonna say atrocious. Um, you know, um, you know what I lost and this is not even lost some sleep. I've been rolling around embedded for not even just about the power play, but just in general, the last couple of weeks and the last couple of days, especially, it's frustrating because there's such a good talent on both units and this series, I'll tell you what, I'm not, not to make excuses or pick up for pick up for us because this was a good time. But I gotta go to the net, I don't care how many particles you have. But this series it really was good puck movement. There was sustained zone time. There was good entries. There was, I can't even tell you how many posts we hit in this series, maybe 65 or six just on the power play. So that isn't as bad as you know, the first series to me was really a struggle and we wind up getting through. But this series just the part needed to go in. That's it. I'm not gonna tell you that the power play was bad in this series. I really don't think it was. I mean we had a ton of his own time. We had a ton of shots, ton of pressure. We just, we couldn't score. So that was, that was frustrating. But you gotta score is the end result. But It was a little bit of a struggle from getting 60 on and hopefully we could, we could fix in the future After you had that Gordie Howe hat trick. Remember you said you thought you won? People over there are still people who you might not ever win over. Does that bother you at all. And do you understand that point of view at all? People who have whatever point of view they like? It doesn't bother me. I never have uh never have a problem with somebody else's opinion. They don't, you know, I think we've got a lot of support here. I'll talk about the positive side. I think I got a lot of support in the fans and and stuff around here, so that's that's all I care about. Everybody's entitled to their own opinion. They could I think what they want, say what they want. They definitely say what they want, especially on social media, and, like, they say a lot there, but now it's it's fine. I hope that we can continue to win over more, but it is what it is. All right, Thank you guys.