Kris Draper
Kris Draper
Kristopher Bruce "Kris" Draperis a Canadian former professional ice hockey player and current special assistant to the general manager of the Detroit Red Wings, the team with which he played 17 seasons for during his 20-year National Hockey Leagueplaying career...
ProfessionHockey Player
Date of Birth24 May 1971
son hockey wings
Hockey was such a part of my life, as well as my family’s, that I knew we were all going to miss it. For the first few weeks my son was in tears sobbing, ‘I miss you being a Red Wing daddy.’ I didn’t know what to say so we just cried together. Nobody prepares you for that kind of stuff.
morning team winning
Actually it was easier than you'd think. We were the guys who had the opportunity to play for something. Only 26 players on the eight teams had that chance. We would wake up in the morning and have a reason to train. We are able to have four weeks to play at this level. Since the first day our policy was not to talk about the labor situation. Our goal was to win. We'll enjoy it for one night. Then the reality of the owners locking us out sets in.
bring game nice people plan schedule start successful
We're back where we should be. This is always a game when the schedule comes out where you take a look at who you're playing, and it's always nice. It's something that people plan to bring their New Year's in on. It's always a nice celebration, a nice atmosphere. To make it a successful night, it's up to us to go out and start it off right.
hockey hung veteran
We're a veteran hockey club, we know better than that. We hung Manny out to dry.
five four games night ourselves prepare start tomorrow
Tomorrow night is the start of four games in five nights, and we have to prepare ourselves for that.
next sitting
Why are you sitting next to me? Get out of here.
bit expects pay respond
You have to really pay attention. He expects us to be very businesslike, that's how he is, and we have to respond to that. It's going to be a little bit of an adjustment.
good season
We feel good about what we've accomplished so far, but there's still a lot of the season left.
certainly five four realizing regular scoreboard sure teams watch
Yeah, now we're on the scoreboard watching. We're realizing there's probably about four or five teams that are going to keep flip-flopping from here right on up to the end of the regular season. For us, you certainly watch that but the one thing we want to make sure is that we're concentrating on what this team does.
coaches hopefully open sake system
We have to play to these new rules, but we play to the system implemented by the coaches. Hopefully for the sake of the game, the coaches want to open it up.
couple
We've got to get better. We haven't done it for a couple of games, and we've got to find a way real quick.
game master played playing seen stirring talking tricks
We had the master of the manipulators, playing for Scotty (Bowman) . We've seen all the tricks before. The game is going to be played on the ice. Not talking or stirring things up.