It's not a good feeling, but at the same time, our staff worked hard and we left nothing on the table. Unfortunately, the numbers, while strong, were not where they needed to be.

If we didn't feel confident...we wouldn't be going through this. We have seven or eight full-time people on staff this year with no guaranteed revenue coming in. (But) I don't want to be so overconfident or arrogant that we think it's a done deal - we're going to have a really tough six months ahead of us.

I think it's gone well so far. We've renewed at a fairly high rate so far, and quite honestly these fans had nothing to go on. They didn't know the team name, they weren't sure exactly what was going on - today's announcement will help that. It will make people a lot more confident about what is going on and what the plan is.

We need 2,000 full-season (tickets), and we have never had 2,000 full-season (tickets). We've already done the projections for what an affiliation deal would cost, and that 2,000 number will put us in range for being a good partner for an NHL club.

If we didn't feel confident...we wouldn't be going through this. We have seven or eight full-time people on staff this year with no guaranteed revenue coming in. (But) I don't want to be so overconfident or arrogant that we think it's a done deal - we're going to have a really tough six months ahead of us.

We need 2,000 full-season (tickets), and we have never had 2,000 full-season (tickets). We've already done the projections for what an affiliation deal would cost, and that 2,000 number will put us in range for being a good partner for an NHL club.