«I had a very interesting phone call with someone about all this stuff, about who's signing for what and everything, and they said to me that they believe one of the things that came out of this season was that Toronto wanted to de-emphasize the Core Four."
«Not that the organization feels anything negative towards those players, but I think there was a feeling among just the entire group other players on the team, some of the coaching staff, the front office of the organization that there's too much about them. Too much about the Core Four they felt it interfered in the growth of the team."
"And one of the things I heard that was talked about was if you take a look at the third and fourth line over the last few years, there's been a lot of turnover. And what someone indicated to me was, the feeling was that they haven't done a good enough job as a group like, everybody creating an identity for other players on the roster"
«I think it's just that they have to get away from that and I believe some of the depth players may have talked about this, is that they feel it gets in the way of forming a team identity. And some of that you're not gonna get away from because in the media we're gonna talk about the Core Four, right? So you can't escape it, but can you do a better job of creating an identity around some of the other players on the roster? And I heard that's a big thing that they're gonna try to work on.»