Colby Cohen: What is your feeling on this new era of player empowerment and players calling the shots? Where do you sit on this? Because you played the game at a different time. You just interviewed to be a team president… Where do you sit on all this right now?

Chris Pronger: The pendulum was so far skewed and the teams had all the power. I was traded five times. I asked for a trade once. I got vilified because I asked for a trade. But nobody complained the other four times when I got traded.

Players are understanding, I think more so than ever, how short their careers are. And they’re really thinking more intelligently about the opportunities that are in front of them, post-playing, all the rest of that. And I don’t think it has impacted the product on the ice, which is first and foremost the most important thing, in my opinion… The electricity and the anger and the vitriol of playoff hockey is back, where these players realize how meaningful and what it means to your career to win a Stanley Cup, to win a championship and all the rest of that. So you can see on the players’ faces a heartbreak when they do lose. and the excitement and just what it really means to win a championship with that group of guys in locker room for those that have been there a long time and fought through with guys to finally get it done.

I think the players should, and rightly, when they have the option (control their careers). We can go down this whole rabbit hole of no-move clauses and all the rest of that, it’s certainly within the players, right? They’re providing the service. But just because you ask for a trade doesn’t mean they have to trade you.