Richards_wrist
Mike Richards was on the Preston and Steve Show on WMMR this morning. Here are some excerpts:

Planned on sticking around here for a long time:

I had planned on ending my career there, in Philadelphia. My agent called me about 1:30 and gave me the heads up, “don't be shocked if this happens, there's about a 90% chance of it happening.” But then Jeff got traded, so I didn't know what was going on and then I actually get text messages from the Hockey News, and it gives you breaking hockey news, and I got one saying Mike Richards was traded.

 

Long-term contract:

Jeff and I signed long-term contracts thinking that we'd play together and stay in Philadelphia together, the city that we love… and win a championship together. That was kind of our plan and that's what we envisioned happening over the next nine years or 12 years or so. I guess they had other plans.

I spoke to [Jeff] a bunch of times yesterday and, um, we are both kind of, ah, baffled at what went on.

 

On rumors:

I did not expect it at all to tell you the truth. The conversation my agent and I had yesterday, it started out… I just thought it was a casual phone call to see how the summer is going, so I was "yo hey, how's it going, what's going on, blah, blah, blah.." And the next thing you know, he's like "Mike, I have to talk to you about something." And then right there I was like "oh." There's rumors and usually you hear them before hand. This kind of caught me off guard, which is tough.

 

Tough indeed.

Here's the audio (thanks Aaron).

This is all, of course, in stark contrast to Richie's phone call with Chuck Gormley (live from Cabo!), when he took full responsibility for this season.