Carolina Hurricanes majority owner Tom Dundon addressed the media Monday at PNC Arena as part of team’s annual exit interviews. Among the topics raised were the team’s ongoing general manager search, the future of head coach Bill Peters and possible changes to attempt to return the team for playoffs after a nine-year absence.

Here are some of the highlights of Dundon’s availability.

On the situation with Peters: “I think right now he does have an option to consider things. And I’ve got options to consider things. Today, he’s the coach, he’s a hard-working guy and he does a great job. … I wish I could give an answer that it’s the goalie or the coach or the toughness or goal scoring. It’s everything. There’s no silver bullet here. There are a number of things.

“There are a lot of positive things about Bill, and there are a number of things that Bill needs to work on. There are lots of positive things about every player and things that every player needs to work on. There won’t be anyone that come back doing it exactly the same way they did it this year or we probably didn’t do our jobs.”

On if there’s an understanding with Peters: “I don’t think I have an understanding with anybody about what’s going to happen tomorrow. It’s not about Bill. I don’t want anyone to feel comfortable. Everyone has to do it different if they want to be part of the way I want to do things.

“But we do have an understanding. He’s the coach of the team. He’s still the coach of the team. We want him to be better. Him and I are going to work together to be better. Assuming we get where we need to get, we’ll be fine.”

On the budget for hiring a general manager and the reports of low offers: “I think the hockey business isn’t any more complicated than any other business and I’ve hired lots of people and figure out what to pay them. I don’t think it’s much of a story, really. If there’s somebody I want, I’ll get them. I don’t think of things in budgets; I think of things in situational awareness, really. If you want somebody, and they have a market value and they think you’re worth it, you’ll hire them. If we get to that position, then that’s when we’ll hire somebody.”

On what he’s learned about the team: “I think it’s fairly obvious on the hockey side that we’re not good enough. We didn’t make the playoffs. The record tells you who you are. We were pretty healthy and when we weren’t good enough. I think you all write about it and people know we probably aren’t hard enough to play against. We probably don’t score enough.

“There’s something missing in terms of our engagement. I met with most of the players in the last couple days and they agree. They know there’s something missing. Everybody that loses is missing something. It’s easy to figure out that it’s a combination of many things, but I think for us, it’s probably more about, and I think Bill talks about it, we’re probably not engaged in the battle throughout the lineup to the level that the better teams are. … I think what we learned is we’re not good enough. Part of that’s talent but most of it is engagement.”

On the budget for adding players to the team: “We always have to get a fair value for any asset we acquire. Very fairly to teams go to free agency and add assets and feel like that was a good idea. We’ve done a lot of things; the organization has a lot of assets. It’s more about getting the most out of those assets and moving those assets around. If you trade for a player, because you think that’s a fair value, the contract they’re signed to and give up something of fair value, those are usually rational, winning decisions. But to think that you want to go be the highest bidder for someone who someone else allowed to get to free agency and think that that’s going to be the path to us winning, it’s foolish.

“It’s not the plan. It’s not going to be part of the plan, regardless of how much money you’ve got. It’s never worked, as far I know and I can’t say it’s going to start working because why are these people free agents. Teams keep their best players most of the time and let you have the players that they don’t want at a higher price. We can’t fall into that trap. I think the more likely scenario for us is to look at all of our players and decide do they fit here or do they need a change of scenery and other teams have that same conversation. I think that’s the most likely way to get better.”

On if the team needs a major shakeup or one or two pieces: “I think it needs a major shakeup. How much of that is from the organizational leadership and how we get more out of what we’ve got, what our expectations are, what we talk about. I think we’ve talked a lot about being tougher. How do we do that. I think the players want to figure that out, so either the players have to be tougher or you have bring in tougher players. I’m easy. I’ll take either one, as long as we get that same result. It’s feasible that there’s a lot of turnover.”

On the goaltending and Scott Darling’s struggles: “I think Scott has to dedicate himself and he has to be better. But it’s still a team and the team didn’t win. He didn’t play every game and he didn’t have all bad games. He had good games too. Do I think if he plays better, that magically we’re a great team? I don’t think that. I think that he can be better. I think he needs to prepare better and I think he needs to play better. But I don’t think that’s enough.”

On  possibly leaving spots open for young players: “We need it to be hard to be on this team. There’s no number of spots. We need to go bring in some more players to fight for these spots. We may have 19 new players next year or we may have zero. It’s unlikely it’ll be either of those things, but I think every spot’s open. The conversation I had with most of the players is it’s our job to find players better than you and it’s your job to make that hard. But there’s none of them I’m not trying to replace. Every one of them, I want a better player than every one of them. That’s our job. Everybody in the hockey business, that’s their job. … It’s going to be greater than zero though. I can tell you that.”

On who will make contract decisions without a GM in place: “Don Waddell’s interim GM right now. He’s done it for a long time. I don’t think we’re missing any pieces.”

On the progress of the GM search since Francis’ reassignment: “I’ve talked to a lot of people. I have a lot more information now. I don’t have clarity about what I think is the right long-term decision.”

On the team’s leadership group and Justin Williams not wearing a letter: “I keep saying everything needs to be re-evaluated. Clearly it was wrong because we lost. Everything we did was wrong. We can’t be comfortable with anything we did. Whether we would do it different next year, that’s the process we’re going through. But everything we did was wrong, and whether or not is something that there’s a whole bunch of people sitting around talking about right now. It’s reasonable to believe, after you fail, that you should be more aggressive in reconsidering whether or not you made the right decisions.”