"Let's play," he said, grinning through his famous silver mustache.
Over the past two days, Quenneville has watched from the sidelines with his assistants as Geordie Kinnear, the head coach of the team's AHL affiliate in Springfield, guided 25 of the team's prospects and future pros through a series of rigorous drills and up-tempo workouts.
Despite the small sample size, he liked what he saw.
"It's good getting started here," Quenneville said. "The rookies have looked good. They had a good summer. The last couple days, seeing them out there on the ice, I thought the practices were good. They were teaching them some of the tendencies we want them to have this year."
With training camp set to begin on Friday, Quenneville said the goal of the two-day rookie camp was to help give the organization's younger players some time to get comfortable and settle into their new surroundings before the veterans are thrown into the mix and the roster grows to 61.
At the moment, they're big fish in a small pond. By the weekend, that pond will be an ocean.
"I think it probably helps them get a little more comfortable with the setting, with their equipment, with their peers, and push themselves in the right way knowing that they're going to soon be playing against guys with experience and strength and speed and quickness," Quenneville said. "There's another level when they go into it -- be comfortable, be confident, trust your instincts when you're out there against the big guys. A lot of guys look like they're going to fit right in."
For Quenneville, the next month will not only be about finding who fits, but also where they fit.
Sure, it's easy to already pencil in guys like Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau into the Opening Night lineup, but that doesn't mean there won't battles to watch throughout camp. In fact, Quenneville said he can't remember a camp where there wasn't at least one surprise.
"The younger kids coming in, it's an opportunity for them to show that, hey, they're not happy with where they're sitting on the food chain or on the depth charts," he said. "Everybody should have an opportunity to move ahead and not be satisfied with where they're sitting.
"You've got some young kids in camp that we're watching to see. There's always a surprise or two that we're hoping comes forward and gives us something to consider. Almost every single camp we've been around, there's always one or two guys that end up making it tough on us."
The second-winningest coach in NHL history, Quenneville has already accomplished just about everything a bench boss can do. He's won the Jack Adams, amassed 890 regular-season wins and lifted the Stanley Cup four times -- once as an assistant and three times as a head coach.
But on the eve of training camp, Quenneville isn't looking back.
Now, it's all about what's ahead: a good start and a bright future.
"We're looking forward to getting acclimated and getting a better understanding of everybody and getting accustomed to how we're going to do things," Quenneville said. "I'm looking forward to getting off to a great start. That's what the whole focus of camp is going to be all about."
