San Antonio play-by-play commentator Dan Weiss got a hold of Coach Dean for a 14 minute Q&A on Friday which can be viewed on YouTube here. Give it a look when you have a chance.
A couple of thoughts:
- First of all, it's fantastic that this even happened and is available for the masses to watch. Not only that but the Rampage invited fans to submit questions which were actually used in the interview. So far the access to information seems to be a big improvement over years past. Very encouraging.
- The interview itself is good, a few re-iterations of the basic mantra we've heard before: uptempo style, Western Conference teams are bigger & more physical, winning is important to development, young players need to earn time, etc
- Chynoweth expects most of the team to be back with a few additions obviously
- Wasn't in the video portion but there was a teaser of the interview in the San Antonio paper yesterday that said the Avs hoped to re-sign Andrew Agozzino. Pointless to link it from here b/c paywall.
- Said that Craig Billington was working on an ECHL affiliate deal for next year. Didn't say "new" affilate but didn't say it was going to be with the Komets again either. I keep waiting for some announcement one way or another to write an article about it, but there are several reasons why the Komets deal might not be the best one out there for the Avs.
- Also interesting was Dean saying that he and Coach Ladouceur were aware that the affiliation change was pretty close to happening when the Monsters travelled to San Antonio back in mid-March, a month before it was announced.
Thanks to Dan Weiss and the Rampage for doing this, both are worth following on the twitter: @DanWeissPBP and @sarampage