Fix the power play

tarheelhockey

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Feb 12, 2010
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It looks to me like we brought him in so we could ask the question "I thought this guy was supposed to be a good player?"

I'm not seeing it for sure. Would rather have Young Noah back. At least he made bad decisions at full speed.

Hamilton's been an odd guy to watch so far. When he has the puck I usually feel like he's doing roughly the right thing with it, but nothing happens. It's like he doesn't have a theoretical grasp of what he's trying to accomplish, so he does hockey-player-looking things until the play ends.

The constant playing-up of his SOG streak while he has no actual goals is becoming kind of cringy because it encapsulates what he is as a player right now.
 

Drivebytrucker

Registered User
Jan 8, 2011
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I agree

TT on the point sucks... zero threat there

Staal winning face offs doesn't mean he should be on PP1. That guy in the middle of their box has to be able to move around and position himself to get fed pucks and then SNIPE....

None of that describes Staal. Put Aho there with TT on the half wall with zykov parked out front.

Then two absolute shooters on the back end.
 

geehaad

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Hamilton seems hesitant to shoot immediately. He takes that extra half second which blows his opportunity. Not sure if that's normal or he's just in his head.
Of his Calgary highlights, this was something that stuck out as a positive...how quickly hit got his shot away. However, there are times I've noticed that he's thrown a muffin at the net with no traffic, and that's no good either.
 

Big Daddy Cane

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I think in our attempt to rationalize the trade, we may have made Hamilton out to be more than he is and can be. Still a small sample size, but I see a player closer to Justin Faulk than Brent Burns or Erik Karlsson offensively. It might not have been the lack of 1st unit PP time that kept him from putting up elite numbers.

The one thing I did notice in watching those aforementioned highlight packages is that Hamilton is more of a goal scorer than he is a big shot. He was at his deadliest skating into soft spots in the zone and picking corners rather than just unloading from the blueline. Unfortunately for him, it's hard to activate to exploit breakdowns in coverage with that meat and potatoes forecheck being so effective as to limit the number of counterattack rush chances for.
 

tarheelhockey

Offside Review Specialist
Feb 12, 2010
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I think in our attempt to rationalize the trade, we may have made Hamilton out to be more than he is and can be.

That seems to be taking it a little far IMO. We weren't rationalizing the trade, as the rationale for the trade was pretty obvious from the get-go. Hamilton has come more or less as advertised, including the negatives that Flames fans warned us about. As noted by JH a few posts up, that includes a tendency to go into lulls through portions of the season.
 

Boom Boom Apathy

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Sep 6, 2006
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From the recent Checkers article:

Mike Vellucci believes a crucial point to being successful is winning the special teams battle. So far, his power play operates at 40 percent, scoring six goals on 15 chances, while the penalty kill hovers around 90 percent.

Maybe the Canes should consult with Vellucci
 

tarheelhockey

Offside Review Specialist
Feb 12, 2010
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From the recent Checkers article:

Mike Vellucci believes a crucial point to being successful is winning the special teams battle. So far, his power play operates at 40 percent, scoring six goals on 15 chances, while the penalty kill hovers around 90 percent.

Maybe the Canes should consult with Vellucci

Rod better not let Dundon catch wind of this.
 

SaskCanesFan

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Feb 27, 2015
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Any PK is going to give up high-quality chances. That's when you need your goalie to step up. It's a cliche that your goalie has to be your best penalty killer, but it's true. We don't have those type goalies. I think it makes sense that our PK struggles. If, on average, NHL teams have to ask their goalie to stop one shot per PK that probably should be a goal, our goalies are going to stop it fewer times than most others.

Sure, but the Canes had managed to have a top end PK the last number of years, with a similar misfit cast of bad goalies. How is that possible if it's mostly on the goalie? They should have been below average the past 5 seasons in that case. Something else has changed for the worse.
 

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