On whether the situation was discussed with Rick Tocchet: “I did discuss this with Rick, but ultimately this is my decision and Rick should not be held accountable for it. If it works and it does make that eighth-finish difference he should take all the credit. And if it doesn’t work well then I’m the one that made the decision and I should be crystal clear on that.’‘

But was Tocchet in on the decision: “When I go through a decision like this, I talk to the head coach, I talk to the rest of our staff, the assistant general mangers, I talk to the players. That’s the process that I use whenever I make a major decision, or minor one for that matter. What is this one, I wouldn’t say it’s a major decision but it’s not a minor one either, I would say it’s in between. I went through that process and then I take the input from everybody involved and then I ultimately am the person responsibility for a decision.’‘

Is Tocchet’s job in danger: “No, this is not an indictment against anybody. This is similar to what we did at the start of the year. Over the summer we identified that we needed help on the power play and conversely Adam Oates was in here, worked for three weeks and eventually was hired. Adam runs our PP, that’s his job on this staff and he’s done an excellent job with it. This is no different than that. The only difference that one can point to is that we are 61 games into the season, but you have to recognize that we have a unique opportunity where with eight practices over this time, it’s more than we have at any other point including in training camp, we do not get eight straight practices, it just doesn’t happen. This is a unique opportunity and we are going to take advantage of it to be fully prepared.’‘

Why now: “We wanted to get to this point when we sat down last year as a group to be playing meaningful games for the playoffs and we are there now, and that’s not good enough. Finishing ninth is not good enough for the Tampa Bay Lightning, coming up a little short isn’t good enough. We’ve got high expectations that runs from our past ownership to our eventual new ownership, that is crystal clear and everybody should understand that.’‘

On when he started thinking about this move: “The last three games were tough, just the way we performed at a critical time, that was difficult but you can’t have a knee jerk reaction. I went back and talked to our staff and analyzed how we played the past month and we came to the conclusion that we are going to need to be active here, and there are opportunities with the trade deadline, to do everything that we can, quite frankly to a man, from one coach to another from one player through the rest of the organization, do everything we can to get to that goal. And we are single mindedly focused on that.’‘

On adding Jim Johnson as an assistant coach: “It’s really pretty simple, at the end of the day I think this makes our staff better adding Jimmy. He’s done everything we asked him to do – in our player development he really excelled at that, he ran our rookie camp and our prospect camp and did a fantastic job. He went in as an associate coach to Norfolk in charge of the PK and the defensemen, that was his primary role. As I’m sure everybody read, our penalty kill is ranked third in the league down there, first on the road overall. We have young group of defensemen down there and he’s done a great job with them. Ty Wishart is having a career year, Scott Jackson is showing great promise, we are finally getting Matt Lashoff back on track, he’s really back on track from where he started, so that was exceptional for us. And then of course we made him head coach, and then he blew the lights out there. We had a team that was six games under .500 embarking on a seven-game road trip that was almost an epic odyssey. He brings a lot of passion, enthusiasm and energy and that’s the way he approached that task, and the team went 6-0-1 on that trip on the road and since then the record has been there as to what he has done, it’s really pretty remarkable for a team that was at a level six games below .500.’‘

On what Johnson brings: “His role here will be to add in any way that he can help. That passion, enthusiasm and energy will help to be a big part of it. Today he just got in, he’s doing some video work, familiarizing himself with the system up here and we look forward to seeing him on the ice right tomorrow.’‘

On what role Johnson will hold: “Those are decisions to be made by Rick Tocchet. He’s just here to add to the overall credibility to add to the staff and help in any way that he can.’‘

On offering Walz Norfolk job: “It speaks to the progress that Wes has made, having come in having just retired as a player and never having coached and he made progress over time, I just feel this gives us the best opportunity as we enter the final 21 games to earn a playoff spot.’‘

On Johnson possibly working on penalty kill: “For me it’s just a little bit of a fresh twist. I was really happy with the job that Jim was doing on the penalty killing down there and I think some of those points can really help us here. We are ranked 22nd in the league. Special teams are such a key to our success overall and it’s an area that we can get better in and we have to get better in. He’s got a little bit more experience in implementing that from A to Z and that will be an upgrade for us for sure.’‘

On what taking Johnson out of Norfolk means at this time: “my plan for managing this club overall is that it’s critical that we do well in Norfolk and that’s why we were so thrilled since this transition since letting Darren Rumble go, and it’s tough when you let people go, it’s tough to make changes, but that’s part of managing and I accept that responsibility and I take it very seriously. Anything that I do is generally geared toward making us better, the trick for me is to balance out long term versus short term. In moving Jimmy here I definitely think it will benefit us in the short term and we are going to have to come up with a real good decision in Norfolk, too because that is in our best interest long term.’‘