Confirmed with Link: Canes Sign Defenseman Jake Gardiner to 4 Year Contract

[MinJaBen]

Took a day to think this over, read up a bit to confirm some of my thoughts, and I think Steve Dangle probably put it best:

"Jake Gardiner is broccoli. Broccoli is definitively good for you. It's a good source of fiber, various vitamins and surprisingly protein. It can also occasionally leave some people with a bad taste in their mouth and sick to their stomach. And those are valid criticisms of broccoli. But the good of broccoli still far outweighs the bad."

He's going to be a good player for us, but I get the feeling he's also going to be a major whipping boy on more than one occasion.

Counter point:

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

During the playoffs Rod was able to shelter Hamilton on the road by using Slavin-Pesce and DeHaan-Faulk. Swapping out DeHaan for Gardiner, and we now have to put one of Gardiner or Hamilton in the top 4 on the road. I won't know how much of an issue this will be until I see the guy play, but DeHaan was sooo-0-o-0 good defensively. But he was also near useless offensively, while Gardiner is an offensive beast of a dman on a dcore that only lacked a top end playmaking guy on the blue line and PP guy (5 lefties on PP1....haha why not), so for the regular season it's a switch this team needed to make. It will be interesting to see how much of the reputation is deserved vs how much it is that some guys just become a magnet of criticism for whatever reason, which eventually turns into a small but vocal portion of the fanbase utterly convinced player X is the worse player to ever lace up his skates for this team.

 

[RodTheBawd]

another thing to consider, and it's an indication of how the nhl is trending in terms of powerplay formation, is that the 1-3-1 is becoming increasingly popular. it's what tampa ran last season and it's what washington ran as well. in that formation you have one pivot in the center of formation at the point. you have two options on each halfwall and you have one player positioned as a low screen in front of the goalie and another as a high screen in front of him. this is primarily to exploit the penalty kill by starting at the top pivot and being able to work each of the players positioned on the halfwall, which is where you position your shooters. the two screens up the middle then become functional because as the defense extends out to defend the shooter near the dot once he gains possession, one killer will likely abandon either the high screen or the low screen and provide an opportunity to pass through the box. if they don't, they've likely abandoned the other player on the halfwall. if you can get to him through the box you can try it but it's risky. the best option is to quickly bump back out to the pivot on the point and have him whip a pass over for a one timer to the player that has collapsed down a little once the puck went to the opposite flank. the thing about our powerplay using the 1-3-1 is that we had shooters playing that top pivot. dougie and faulk are both shooters and are better suited to play one of those one-timing positions on the halfwall. especially dougie due to his wrist shot. we didn't have that top pivot that was used to seeing the ice from back there. i think we tried teuvo back there briefly but it just wasn't a fit. what gardiner does is give us a player that can play that top pivot and make hard and flat passes to those one timing options and won't have analysis paralysis that faulk had due to being accustomed to being the shooter. there were a lot of times last year where he tried to shoot through two levels of a screen in that structure and it's just not a great idea unless it's really there. this article shows in detail what tampa did with this formation to rip the league apart:

How the 1-3-1 Power Play Works

last year for the leafs, they used morgan rielly in that spot on the first unit and it really impacted gardiner's productivity on the powerplay. it was more of a deployment issue due to rielly just being transcendent in that spot. he's one of the absolute best in the league there and gardiner was left a diminished role. in attempting to fix the powerplay, i think we rightly identified that faulk is inadequate for the ask and as a result we needed to find our top pivot to make that unit work. gardiner will likely not be elite there, but he'll be more than adequate. i think our drafting and signings have reflected the need for an elite player there (honka, fensore, priskie), but that's tomorrow's problem. we solved today's problem here with a good but not elite option to distribute to guys like aho and svechnikov on those flanks.

It will also help to have a d-man that can skate and has some smarts to play that top pivot as opposed to a Faulk, who would get burned constantly (which he did anyway in our abortion of a PP).

 

[My Special Purpose]

Again, the Canes are still in a position of luxury when it comes to trading Faulk. They can fit ALL of their key pieces, including Haydn Fleury, and still be under the cap because of Gardiner's bargain cap hit.

Yes, we can fit them all under the cap, but we can't fit them all *in the lineup.* Same issues apply. TvR or Fleury is a healthy scratch now and Pesce, Faulk or Hamilton is on the third pairing. Teams can still jam us up because we jammed ourselves up.

 

[emptyNedder]

Do you have a link to the WAR model? I’m having a hard time locating it, for whatever reason.

Thanks!

Evolving-Hockey

It is under "Goals Above Replacement." Then play with the "skater" filters

 

[AD Skinner]

Joni pitkanen was awesome and I'm still baffled how many people think otherwise.

That being said I dont think sheltering will be that big an issue. Even without Faulk you could go
Slavin Hamilton
Gardiner pesce
Fleury TVR

It's not as ideal as having de Haan when you're trying to lock it down but none of those pairings should be playing with fire

 

[DougieSmash]

As of now:

Dzingel/ Aho/ Svechnikov
NN/ Staal/ TT
Foegele/ Haula/ Necas
Martinook/ Wallmark/ McGinn

Slavin/ Hamilton
Gardiner/ Pesce
Fleury/ Faulk

Mrazek
Reimer

And we have in the system:
F: Bishop, Luostarinen, Geekie, Mattheos, Gauthier, Gibbons, Maenalanen (not sure about him)
D: TVR, Bean, Sellgren, McKeown, Priskie, Forsling
G: Ned and Forsberg

Most stacked Canes team ever?

 

[FreshSeabass]

 

[GIN ANTONIC]

Hmmm 7 team no trade clause and 7 teams in Canada with overzealous idiot media markets...

 

[Lafleurs Guy]

I've seen a lot of Gardiner over the years. He's pretty underrated in my opinion and has taken way too much abuse over the years. His back injury makes him a risk but the Canes mitigated this risk by only paying him 4 mil per year. It's risky but I think the low dollars justifies it. If he's healthy it'll be an absolute steal for Carolina.

 

[Lempo]

Interesting... the salary rises steadily with no regard whatsoever to the possible lockdown seasons, being highest in the last which may be a lockout.

I would guess by now the agents have idea if NHLPA is planning to terminate the CBA to end after this season. I guess they are.

That's not optimal now when our window has just full opened.

 

[Big Daddy Cane]

CF has the team at ~$1.5 mil over the cap with a 24 man roster. Subtract Bishop, Gibbons and Forsling and they're ~$.75 mil under. Swapping Reimer for Nedeljkovic adds a little over 300k.

The FO has some flexibility here. That may mean Fleury on the wing in the event of a short-term injury up front. There's no need to force anything for cap reasons at this point. That's nice.

Just to clarify my prior post here, it’s only the month of October in which the cap is an issue in that regard. The cap is calculated on a daily basis; any cap space is rolled over to the next day and so on. If the Canes maintain ~750k in space for 29 days, they’ll then have ~890k, enough to call up any Checker forward not named Luostarinen, to use as needed from November onward. That grows as it goes unused. Given the proximity of the AHL, they can continue to roll a 21 man roster at full health to preserve cap space for the deadline.

Basically, the team doesn't really have a cap problem.

 

[bleedgreen]

During the playoffs Rod was able to shelter Hamilton on the road by using Slavin-Pesce and DeHaan-Faulk. Swapping out DeHaan for Gardiner, and we now have to put one of Gardiner or Hamilton in the top 4 on the road. I won't know how much of an issue this will be until I see the guy play, but DeHaan was sooo-0-o-0 good defensively. But he was also near useless offensively, while Gardiner is an offensive beast of a dman on a dcore that only lacked a top end playmaking guy on the blue line and PP guy (5 lefties on PP1....haha why not), so for the regular season it's a switch this team needed to make. It will be interesting to see how much of the reputation is deserved vs how much it is that some guys just become a magnet of criticism for whatever reason, which eventually turns into a small but vocal portion of the fanbase utterly convinced player X is the worse player to ever lace up his skates for this team.

This is a very 50/50 move for the reasons you’re talking about. A better team in a dream world would’ve kept DeHaan and added Gardiner to help the pp. We gave up some truly solid defensive flexibility for a hopefully better pp and an even more hopeful concept that Toronto is just wrong about this guy.

 

[AD Skinner]

Interesting... the salary rises steadily with no regard whatsoever to the possible lockdown seasons, being highest in the last which may be a lockout.

I would guess by now the agents have idea if NHLPA is planning to terminate the CBA to end after this season. I guess they are.

That's not optimal now when our window has just full opened.

Man I hope not

 

[Big Daddy Cane]

Interesting... the salary rises steadily with no regard whatsoever to the possible lockdown seasons, being highest in the last which may be a lockout.

I would guess by now the agents have idea if NHLPA is planning to terminate the CBA to end after this season. I guess they are.

That's not optimal now when our window has just full opened.

I bet that's a function of Gardiner getting squeezed by the market. He was looking for term, by his own admission, and Carolina was the only suitor that stepped up to give him that. He didn't have bargaining power in terms of structure. The team could have just walked away with ease if he pushed for it.

What happened this Summer to Mrazek, Dzingel, Gardiner and even the departing Ferland should be a cautionary tale to the upcoming UFAs in that locker room. Unrestricted free agency offers no guarantee of a big pay day.

 

[MinJaBen]

Interesting... the salary rises steadily with no regard whatsoever to the possible lockdown seasons, being highest in the last which may be a lockout.

I would guess by now the agents have idea if NHLPA is planning to terminate the CBA to end after this season. I guess they are.

That's not optimal now when our window has just full opened.

I don’t understand your logic here. If the agent knew the players were going to end the CBA, wouldn’t they have tried to get some protection for him in one of the possible stoppage years rather than a steadily rising salary?

I think they either know there won’t be any stoppage, or as BDC says, they had zero leverage to use which then means we can’t draw any conclusions from the salary progression.

 

[Lempo]

I don’t understand your logic here. If the agent knew the players were going to end the CBA, wouldn’t they have tried to get some protection for him in one of the possible stoppage years rather than a steadily rising salary?

I think they either know there won’t be any stoppage, or as BDC says, they had zero leverage to use which then means we can’t draw any conclusions from the salary progression.

@Big Daddy Cane had an excellent point of the market squeeze and also of the term.

I think what may have been possible was to get a moderate dip in the salary for the suspect years, but they didn't push for any. So I was pointing at same logic as you. Signing bonuses obviously are off the table.

It's also possible that Gardiner wanted it backweighted. The higher real salary may be an ever-so-slight protection against a trade when the contract is close to expiring. I think Canes would be okay just paying the AAV every year.

 

[FreshSeabass]

Does this rub anyone else the wrong way or is it just me. It seemed like the whole point of the interview was to be like why would you want to go from being an elite super awesome maple leaf to being a shitty carolina hurricane. Like media scrums are the most important aspect of hockey. Idk this just seemed stupid.

 

[Lempo]

Does this rub anyone else the wrong way or is it just me. It seemed like the whole point of the interview was to be like why would you want to go from being an elite super awesome maple leaf to being a ****ty carolina hurricane. Like media scrums are the most important aspect of hockey. Idk this just seemed stupid.

I like how they put it on the title that he's damaged goods and they didn't want him anyway.

 

[w e l o s t b o y s]

Does this rub anyone else the wrong way or is it just me. It seemed like the whole point of the interview was to be like why would you want to go from being an elite super awesome maple leaf to being a ****ty carolina hurricane. Like media scrums are the most important aspect of hockey. Idk this just seemed stupid.

Not really? They laugh at the comparison between the zoo that is Toronto's hockey media and what they have in Carolina, that's it

 

[AD Skinner]

Good lord did o'Neill balloon up

 

[Highest Boss]

Does this rub anyone else the wrong way or is it just me. It seemed like the whole point of the interview was to be like why would you want to go from being an elite super awesome maple leaf to being a ****ty carolina hurricane. Like media scrums are the most important aspect of hockey. Idk this just seemed stupid.

 

[TheBigKahuna]

Good lord did o'Neill balloon up

He didn't have far to go.

 

[The Jerk Store]

Does this rub anyone else the wrong way or is it just me. It seemed like the whole point of the interview was to be like why would you want to go from being an elite super awesome maple leaf to being a ****ty carolina hurricane. Like media scrums are the most important aspect of hockey. Idk this just seemed stupid.

O'Neill is a pisser!

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

Does this rub anyone else the wrong way or is it just me. It seemed like the whole point of the interview was to be like why would you want to go from being an elite super awesome maple leaf to being a ****ty carolina hurricane. Like media scrums are the most important aspect of hockey. Idk this just seemed stupid.

Not really. They are right about how much of a zoo it is in Toronto, vs here and had a little fun with it. I have no problem acknowledging that we aren’t a traditional market and even enjoy it.