Today's Press Conference

The streams at both amerks.com and democratandchronicle.com cut out quite a bit, so I couldn't get much out of it. But, I did my best.

Rochester's owner, Curt Styres, spoke only briefly, thanking the fans, players, coaching staff and families for the season, along with the goal of making the playoffs. He mentioned that there were discussions throughout the season with Florida, and that was that.

Jacques Martin, who arrived late, spoke much more in-depth and said a lot of what the fans would have wanted to hear. Whether it will come to fruition or not, we'll see soon enough.

JM emphasized that a winning environment is important in the development of young players and that there is a good working relationship between the two clubs.

He then moved on to discuss a bit of what the plan was for this past season, starting with goaltenders. The two sides knew that goaltending was important, and so they made a commitment to a goaltender. Without naming names, however, Jacques' thoughts on the subject included, "It didn't pay off," and "We were disappointed in the goaltending."

Beckford-Tseu, if you didn't know, was signed to a TWO year deal last summer. Before he was relegated to the ECHL, he went 3-14-1 with Rochester. His GAA was 3.96 and his save percentage, a stellar .868.

There was no mention of Beckford-Tseu's future, however. There wouldn't have been, anyway. The season isn't over and CBT is back with the team due to injuries to Plante and Brodeur. His future with the team may have been foreshadowed when Martin twice mentioned that the commitment to a goalie in the off-season didn't pay off.

The Steve MacIntyre ordeal was brought up by the Cats' general manager and he said that the plans for next season will include another physical presence, but that, as was said back when Florida lost MacIntyre to Edmonton via waiver claim (Mac's played 20 NHL games this season) there just wasn't anything they could do. He signed with an NHL club and had to clear to go to the AHL. He didn't.

Around December, Martin said that the parties met and also brought in, "a kid from the East Coast league," as a goaltender. That kid, of course, is Mike Brodeur. Things started to turn around after that and it was acknowledged by the GM.

He mentioned that a few weeks ago, "Curt (Styres - owner), Lewis (Staats - president), Jody (Gage - Amerks' GM)" and the Florida staff, "had a meeting to really put in place a plan that would help us develop a winning team and help us be a more successful team."

So next year's plan? It includes such things as signing Mike Brodeur; veterans, veterans and more veterans, and it will also see the Amerks' ownership opening up their checkbook wide to help Florida bring in those players.

Here are a few of the quotes that I was able to get in between freezes, crashes and silence. Each is from Jacques Martin.

"We're trying to make sure we get the goaltending resolved for next season. We have people in place that will be able to do the job. . . Goaltending shouldn't be an issue. I thought Mr. Brodeur did a good job and our plan is to get him under contract next year for this organization."

"We need to acquire more veteran players. That's not an easy task. Sometimes players have options with another organization, or a lot of players may opt to go to Europe. Our scouting staff has been identifying players that we feel will be able to help us next year. We've made a list of players. We feel we need to bring maybe four veteran forwards to fill in our top six forwards."

"We had some disappoitnment with some of our younger players. We've got four excellent young prospects on defense - Ellerby, Garrison, Henry, Caruso. We feel they're all individuals that will eventually play at the NHL level and we feel that they're on the right track."

"As for forwards, certain players didn't meet our expectations. When we looked at our roster, we're probably looking at acquiring four forwards that could play in our top six and another forward and defenseman that we could call veteran players or role players."

"The one thing that we realize this year is that we need to have more veterans in our lineup."

"Another area we feel will help is to expand our training camp. We will get to see more players that are playing in the East Coast league and get a better knowledge of the players that we could call up and fill those roles (after injuries)."

So, there you have it. Signing Brodeur, four veteran forwards, a veteran defenseman, returning coaching staff, an enforcer and Styres will be spending more money to make sure these things happen.