first thing I'd like to do is uh thank Donnie Granado Jason Christie and Matt Smith for their tenure with the Sabers uh Donnie told me I'm sorry that I let you Kevin our fans and our players down that goes to show you what kind of guy Donnie is uh he has left the Sabers in a better place and we appreciate that we're here to talk about the future but I do want to mention the past Kevin Adams and Lindy Ruff are two men prominent in Sabers history they both lost their jobs as coaches with the Sabers which connects them in that manner one has a Stanley Cup ring one without Lindy The Man Without the ring and most sabers fans eyes is probably a skap blade on a line away from winning a cup and then went on to coach that team that tore his heart out in the Stanley Cup Final afterwards um that had to be hard to do and how about the rash of defensive injuries that that the sabes team incurred late in the playoffs that cost us possibly cost Lindy possibly a second ring for all we know and the team that beat him in those playoffs that's Kevin's ring Lindy has coached three different teams to 50 wins or more in the National Hockey League there are four coaches all time who have done that and Lindy's one of them New Jersey won 27 games one year and 52 the next was a young team the Sabers back in the day when he was here his first stint went from 37 wins one year to 52 and 53 the two years following what I'm trying to get at here is the line line between winning and losing in the National Hockey League is a fine line some guys have cups because they got lucky some guys have cups because they were good some don't have cups because the breaks didn't go their way Lindy president's trophy with the sabes Jack Adams award 571 franchise victories with the sabes second most in the league all time to L Arbor when he was released his last time here as our head coach he had participated in 54% of Sabers games all time most importantly Lindy knows how to win and he knows how to take a team to another level he may be the most competitive person I've ever met in my life just go fishing with him and you may not ever go fishing with him again he's also not going to ask anyone to do something that he wouldn't do himself so I welcome Lindy as our next head coach and uh Kevin Adams is going to come up and say a word well I agree with everything Terry said except when he's talking about the 06 team for obvious reasons um Terry thank you for that I want to thank Laura for being here and the en entire Pula family