[Hawks general manager] Dale Tallon and I have known each other for several years. We played a little golf together. We had talked about doing something like this for a while. He called me and asked me if I was interested in working with skaters. I said, 'Sure.' So here we are.

It's not so different from the person who plays golf three or four times a week. He probably spends as much money as we do over the course of a year. I really don't think we're any different from anybody else; we just have different interests.

I remember standing on that podium, ... and for the first time probably before or since, wishing our national anthem had more verses.

Maybe that slip in the 500 actually helped, ... The 500, I was on the last turn and trying, maybe, to get too much out of it.... When I slipped in the 1,000, in a split second it went through my mind: 'Don't panic. Don't try to get it all back in one stride. Just ride it out and try to accelerate out of the turn.'

NHL players are amazing hockey players, and you watch and go, 'It doesn't look good. They don't skate very well,

I think faster and, maybe more importantly, more efficiently. Not only as the game goes on, but as the season goes on.