Today, the NHL hosted a teleconference for various media to ask questions of Vancouver Canucks GM Mike Gillis. Here is the complete transcript of that session.

Q & A

Q. There’s many reports out about your contract negotiations and Daniel Sedin and Henrik Sedin. How confident are you that those two players will be on the Canucks next seen?

MIKE GILLIS: We’re very confident. We’ve got a lot of common ground. They want to stay and we want to keep them.

You know, I think for both parties it’s really a matter of evaluating where the salary cap is going to go and how we’re going to manage the team best and how they can be the most effective players. I’m hopeful and confident we can get them signed.

Q. You’ve been one of the more active GM’s all year. You brought in Shane O’ Brien. Can you talk about his contributions to the Canucks?

MIKE GILLIS: Sure. Shane, he’s a tough, hard-nosed player. Big player. He came in here and worked really hard with our coaching staff to understand the philosophy and the style of play we wanted to see. He’s done very well.

We had a little talk a few weeks ago where he felt he wasn’t playing as much as he may have. We have high expectations, and we’ve tried to raise the bar here. To his credit, he sorted it all out and we’re quite pleased with him.

Q. You’ve seen how other GMs have dealt with players with no-trade clauses. How have you and how might you do things differently in discussions with those players at this time of the season?

MIKE GILLIS: Well, you know, having been on the player’s side for a number of years, I know that there is a quid pro quo that goes along with no-trade or no-movement clauses. The players are making a commitment to that city and team for a variety of reasons. There’s a price to be paid for that commitment and the security of not moving.

My philosophy has always been not to waive a no-trade clause. If a player comes to us and is dissatisfied or feels they might have a better opportunity elsewhere, obviously we would listen and try to accommodate those wishes.

But I am not going to ask a player to waive a no-trade. If we felt that there was dissatisfaction on the player’s part, we would perhaps discuss what his wishes would be. But that would be the extent of it.

Q. You talked earlier about no-trade clauses. Of course, we know about the no-movement clauses. As this pertains to your ongoing discussions with the Sedins, how much of that is a stickler point in your ongoing contract negotiations, not just no-trade, but no-movement? Are you a fan of those?
MIKE GILLIS: That is a term of a contract. And actually, no, I’m not going to discuss terms of a contract publicly while it’s being negotiated.

Q. you’ve got some significant cap space to spend. Is it your intention to spend it?

MIKE GILLIS: If we can upgrade. You know, my ?? the ownership group here has been completely supportive of everything we wanted to do. We have complete freedom to spend up to the maximum we can spend provided we’re making shrewd judgments about our team. We have absolutely no worries about spending to the cap.

Q. The success you’ve had this month, has that changed any philosophy going into March 4th for you, or has it had no affect at all on how you might have been thinking going into March 4th?
MIKE GILLIS: You know, we’re with these guys every day. And as you guys know, we had a lousy month in January for a variety of reasons. We had confidence that this group would rebound and respond.

You know, I felt all along this entire that we were building towards something. I felt that if we got Mats Sundin that may be our biggest trade deadline move we can make. We didn’t give up anything. It cost us money, and we brought in a Hall of Fame player into our group.

From my perspective, the pursuit of him was absolutely critical to how we made decisions going forward. The fact that he came to play for us, that made about the biggest change in our philosophy. We now have actually four high-quality center icemen. If you include Demitra we have five.

In our top six forward group, we have four guys that are capable of playing center. It’s really changed the dynamic of our team. We control the faceoff circle much more.

So getting him has really solidified our group in my mind. It’s presented much less of an impetus to do a whole lot at the trade deadline. So we’re going to take the next week and we’re going to continue to watch our team play.

Like I said, earlier, if something really good comes our way we’ll act on it. If it doesn’t, we won’t.

Q. Heading into the deadline, you referred to the injury situation. You don’t really have any right now other than Jannick. There are a number of games and the intensity of the play will probably get higher. Is there any one position that you would like to shore up or you’re a bit concerned about the depth if injuries hit that position?
MIKE GILLIS: Well, you know, realistically, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and you need 30 players to play in today’s NHL. You don’t seem to get away with a week of being healthy.

So depth is obviously something that’s a concern for everybody in this league. We’ve worked pretty hard at trying to acquire depth from the summer onward. But I think if you look at ?? if you can acquire good depth in pretty well any position, obviously you want to get center ice and then goal, so you know, we feel solid.

We’ve got four NHL quality goaltenders in our system now. Down the middle we’ve got a lot of depth. On defense we have quite a bit of depth. Really difficult question to answer.

I think if there’s a way to improve, you look at a way do it. That’s the only way you can do it. I still don’t know what we’re going to be presented, so it’s like asking a question in a vacuum a little bit.

Q. Just a follow up on Jannick Hansen. Have you been giving a prognosis on his recovery from this broken finger?

MIKE GILLIS: We’re not sure yet. They’re tried a different technique on the splinting thing. We’re going to wait for a few days and see how it settles down the line. We’ll probably know on Thursday or Friday.

– Transcript provided courtesy of NHL.com’s media site