from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,

Sportsnet: How would you characterize the last two years?

Jim Rutherford: Well, nothing surprises me because, of course, I've been around a long time. I've seen a lot of things. Obviously, we dealt with some things that we weren't expecting and we ended up making a lot of changes within hockey operations. Those are not comfortable. You know, you're dealing with people's lives and good people. But in order to make the changes and get everybody on the same path, that was something we had to do. So that was difficult. But the time has gone by pretty quick.

SN: Have you talked to your boss about a new contract?

JR: Is that my wife or son or daughter? Oh, my owner. We don't view each other as bosses, but we do make decisions as a family, so that's important. Francesco and I, we communicate on a regular basis. So, yeah, we've had some conversations about it.

SN: You hired general manager Patrik Allvin the month after you arrived, then 12 months later hired Rick Tocchet as coach. Along the way you built a new hockey-ops department. How much of the team’s turnaround is due to organizational alignment?

JR: You have to have alignment in your hockey operations, but alignment doesn't mean (you can't have) different ideas or long debates about different things that people don't agree on. That's really important. But as far as alignment, from ownership, to Patrik, to the coaches, to the players, to player development and scouting and everything else, our alignment is very strong.

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