On his hit on Adrian Kempe
First and foremost, I probably initiated contacted too late. I've been very open about that with this process, and I made a mistake at that time. As I think about the hit though, I watch it and I still see that my body doesn't change through the process of it. I think my shoulders are low, my elbows are low, my knees are bent and I'm in a pretty set positon and as it evolves, he tries to make a play back across my body which ends up maybe initiating some head contact near my upper back area and that's what I see. I think there's no injury, he came back and played but at the end of the day from what I've seen, it's a situation where we closed the gap on each other a little bit.
On when it was brought to his attention
I was told after the game from Bob [Murray] that I was going to have a hearing or have a call. I was surprised because no one said anything after the game to me otherwise. There was no media talking about or nothing was brought up so I was more surprised about that. Initially I was thinking back on it, wondering what happened and wondering if I did anything bad. Obviously you never want to injure anyone on the ice. That's a fact. I've played 11 years and that's one thing that I have stood behind and I'm glad he played the rest the game. From my end, there's zero intent to do any sort of head contact or hit a person to injure them. I think it was a situation where, like I said, I admitted to initiating contact too late and I think it was something that happened that ended up being very unfortunate for me.
On his 830-game streak
It's something that I don't really talk about too much as I've been going through it because you are in the process of it. It's a tough pill to swallow, I'm not going to lie. I've played hard and I've battled. I'm a professional in that I've played a long time and I've now missed a game.
On the support from his teammates and the organization
I'm probably being too dramatic about it. I'm sorry, just my emotions came for whatever reason. I've had a lot of support I think there has been a lot of people that have reached out and initiated that I have done something special and the more I look back on it, it's pretty cool. I think that playing 830 games in a row, not a lot of guys can say that and I think that's something that I will hold that to my heart. I appreciate all the texts. [Teemu] Selanne has been a big advocate in terms of reaching out. Like I said, I may be making too big of it, but I think when you go through the process and think back about coming to work and playing every single game for 11 straight years, I think it holds some value and holds some value to a lot of the guys in the league. Like I said, this is the last way I wanted it to go out. I'm glad he wasn't injured and I'll take the suspension, move on and come back and help my team.
