Flames sign Hiller: Excited to 'join a team where people and the city care more' about hockey

The Calgary Flames made a splash Tuesday by plucking goaltender Jonas Hiller off the free agent market. 

The 32-year-old signed a two-year, $9-million contract with the Flames, and appears to be quite excited about the opportunity to play in a passionate hockey market like Calgary.

Here's what Hiller had to say on Sportsnet 960 Tuesday afternoon:

I’m definitely excited to kind of like join a team where people and the city care more about it. I’m really excited about it. Sure, it’s probably going to be a little change and it’ll probably take me a couple of days to adjust that there are probably a few more people in the dressing room after practice and after games, but yeah, at the same time I’m really excited to be part of a team where the city really cares and the people are into it and people really know about hockey.

Hiller added the following on how his tenure in Anaheim came to a rather disappointing conclusion:

I felt like I had a really good year, even until after the Olympics. I thought I played really well at the Olympics. Kind of came back and had one or two games where I probably wasn’t at my best and suddenly after that I didn’t feel like Bruce Boudreau was really playing me against the good teams and didn’t feel like there was the confidence there. Yeah. He made the decision kind of against me or for Frederik Andersen for the playoffs. It was definitely disappointing because I felt I played well and I deserved to play in the playoffs, but at the end it’s always coach’s decision and that’s kind of the tough part of being a goalie. At the end, there’s one guy playing and that’s kind of it. If you’re the guy, it’s fun. If you ain’t the guy, it’s a little tougher.

Hiller added Calgary appealed to him because he wanted the opportunity to "play quite a few games", and "at the end there kind of weren't too many teams really looking for a goalie."