Columbus Blue Jackets GM Don Waddell, a day after Zach Werenski's "I'm staying" statement.

Last one, Tim.

Don, um, obviously, you know, Nick earlier referenced, you know, those situations with, uh, Brady Tkachuk and Dylan Larkin, you know, what's going on with Zach.

I mean, how...

You've obviously been doing this for a while, but how different has it been, you know, when it feels like a different era as far as, you know, player empowerment is concerned, you know, players having more input like that? How much does that change, you know, what you try to do as far as, you know, conversations, you know, you have with them as far as, you know, if they have, need to have any more input or in certain things like that or is it just kind of just making sure that you're just focused on relationship building more than anything?

Uh, the, your last point is what I was gonna start with, you know, and I've always felt that you build relationship with your players.

You get to know your players, you get to know their families, and that's how you, uh, keep, end up keeping players.

You make them feel wanted and needed and, you know, what's happening, you know, what...

Th- this summer you saw two players particular, uh, that, uh, one got traded and one didn't.

Uh, I won't mention their names.

Uh, but this has happened a lot through the years where it's doesn't become as public as it's gone.

You know, I can think I have five or six cases that we talked about the other day.

You guys can figure it out who they were.

But so when it becomes public is...

I've had, I've been doing this for, I think this is my 22nd year or 21st year as a GM.

I've had numerous, numerous trade requests like these guys or these other teams are trying to do, but they didn't become public, and you deal with them, and sometimes you make the trade, sometimes you don't.

But it's when it becomes public, that's, uh, I think it just puts more focus on it.