"I'm super excited to be here, there's no other team I'd rather go to," he began with when meeting with reporters for the first time ahead of his new club's
win over Tampa Bay
Tuesday night.
Quickly reminded that players say that all the time, he continued with the reasoning as to why that was a portion of his response to the first question faced.
"I've always said that this team has so much depth and so much talent. When you come in here you have to either play against Jaccob] Slavin or take draws against [Jordan Staal] and that's never fun. Then you get into Svech, Aho, Teravainen, the depth is just crazy."
A key piece to that depth is Jesperi Kotkaniemi, who played with Domi from 2018-20 as members of the Montreal Canadiens. Including a season in which the newly acquired forward posted a career-high 28 goals, the Winnipeg-born forward left a strong impact during the first two years of Kotkaniemi's career.
"You can see him when you're in the stands and you're going to feel him when he's on the ice," the
[recently extended #82
offered. "He makes a lot of things happen when he's out there and every guy likes to have a guy like that around."
In addition to skating with Kotkaniemi in Montreal, Domi's also spent time on the same roster as Tony DeAngelo, Derek Stepan, Jordan Martinook and Antti Raanta when the batch was all in Arizona together. Maintaining a strong relationship with DeAngelo since then, the Canes leading point getter among defensemen was elated to find out that the two would now be reunited.
"He's been a really good player in this league for a long time now," DeAngelo said post-game. "It gives us a little more jolt. Every top contender added somebody and we did as well."
"If you look back on his seasons, the year he scored 28 goals, he also had 40 assists, so he can do a little bit of both. And he's feisty, he's tough, he plays hard. He finishes checks. Getting to play for Roddy and a contender is going to reenergize him a little bit," #77 continued.
