I don't want to talk about today's market anymore because nobody can make sense of what the market is. It's all over the map. There's a bunch of lunatics out there throwing money away. I'm sick and tired of it. It's lunacy. Punch me in the head and tell me I'm stupid, but that's the way I feel. There's no sense to it anymore.

So I think I know a little bit about winning, if there's ever a concern.

It is easier to recognize the quality of leadership in the behavior of their followers than it is in the behavior of the leader.

I don't want to get into who was available and who wasn't because that's not fair but Dwayne was certainly one of the guys at the top of our list and we figured the price was what we needed to pay to get him.

It's frustrating. I see why kids join gangs. At least someone would have (Ray's) back. Those kids get to go on with their lives, and my son sits here.

It's more difficult for high-end teams to overspend on free agents. Toronto and New York could give up anything and outbid everybody to replace the player. Even Philly.

It's a difficult time, obviously. But he just amazed us all.

Thanks to Mark, ... the Islanders couldn't touch us after that.

There's a good chance that Sidney could be the leader of the team in 2010. But at this time we felt that we wanted to go with proven veteran players that have won at the World Cup level, and the world championship level and the Olympics.

We had room to improve and we feel we have. Just how much we've improved, time will tell.