News and Notes Thread VII: Ch ch ch changes

[Joe McGrath]

Anyone else think is the plan is to suck badly next year and trade everything that isn't nailed down at the deadline for all the draft picks?

 

[Joe McGrath]

I'll be disappoint if we don't make Richards an offer. Would Like Rostislav Klesla as well.

Didn't Klesla get waived three times last year?

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

Anyone else think is the plan is to suck badly next year and trade everything that isn't nailed down at the deadline for all the draft picks?

I'd be cool with that.

 

[Buenos Necas]

More from Chip:

Chip Alexander ‏@ice_chip 1m
Francis said he recently spoke with Joni Pitkanen's agent. Was told Joni still could not put foot in skate.

Chip Alexander ‏@ice_chip 23s
Francis said contract talks with Jiri Tlusty are continuing.

Good to hear about Tlusty. Gotta feel for Joni there, probably answers any questions about him playing again.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

I don't know, maybe I'm naive but see Francis as more a more measured, calculating guy. I don't see him coming in "guns blazing" and making sweeping changes in to the team in year 1. Yes, I know he's been with the team all along in some sort of managerial role, but at the end of the day, PK and JR were the decision makers.

I'll stick with what I said earlier. I'm willing to give it a year to see what the roster looks like to start this season and how the team looks under this coach before getting all worked up. If the team stinks it up again and he makes no major changes next off-season, then I'll be singing out of the same hymnal.

 

[Carolinas Identity*]

Anyone else think is the plan is to suck badly next year and trade everything that isn't nailed down at the deadline for all the draft picks?

It'd make sense, but you gotta think Ronnie is gonna try to make the Playoffs this year. If we miss, it'll be six seasons in a row and I don't think the fan base would put up with another "wait till next year" approach.

Not everyone is as die hard as us. Maybe we're all just a bunch of masochists in denile though?

 

[Joe McGrath]

Vagrant out of curiosity, what about this draft aside from the Wesley pick was anything like a JR draft?

 

[Vagrant]

I would be fine with letting the process play out if Francis himself hadn't already come out and made statements to the effect of there not being any major changes in the roster and that he's going to give Peters time to make his own calls. That's a little much in regards to faith in a head coach. Especially one that hasn't ever coached at this level before. I'm projecting a bit, and I know that, but it's nothing that Francis himself hasn't said was going to happen. He wants this roster to look similar to what it was at the end of last season for whatever reason with only subtle tweaks here and there. He has ruled out trading one of the Staal brothers. He has ruled out Skinner. He has ruled out Ward. Faulk is obviously untouchable. Sekera too as they should be. Semin isn't going to move. What else do we have to trade in terms of high end salary that is going to open up money for us to change the team? Nobody wants Liles at his money. For people saying wait until it's too late to criticize, I just don't see the point. It's happening right now. Free agency opens in under 24 hours and we're not doing anything to put ourselves in position to compete for players that might help change our direction.

Anyone else think is the plan is to suck badly next year and trade everything that isn't nailed down at the deadline for all the draft picks?

I would hope if that was the plan, we'd be doing more in terms of insuring that we'd suck. I could get behind a partial rebuild if we had already made moves like trading some of our older roster players for young assets. Right now, we know we're a team that is mired in that 9th to 11th place in the conference. The amount of skill we have will dictate that we don't take a Buffalo type plunge in the standings. It's just not going to happen.

If you're going to make it happen, you need to make it happen. Don't go halfway into anything. It's tough for me because this team has so notoriously rode the fence.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

One last comment about the thoughts of blowing it up and roster changes. I find this interesting:

Canes on the current roster that were regulars with the team 5 seasons earlier (09/10 season): 4 guys, Eric Staal, Cam Ward, Patrick Dwyer, Jay Harrison.

Canes on the current roster that were regulars with the team 3 seasons ago (11/12 season): 7 guys, Eric Staal, Cam Ward, Jeff Skinner, Jay Harrison, Justin Faulk, Pat Dwyer, Jiri Tlusty (if re-signed).

Canes on the current roster that were regulars on the team 2 season ago: 10 guys: Eric Staal, Cam Ward, Jeff Skinner, Jay Harrison, Justin Faulk, Pat Dwyer, Jiri Tlusty (if re-signed), Jordan Staal, Alex Semin, Riley Nash.

Interesting how much turn-over there actually has been. The only real move if RF wants to change the direction of the team completely is to move E. Staal. Anything else is kind of window dressing if you ask me.

 

[Joe McGrath]

^ get rid of Harrison....


Profit.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

Yep, it's pretty clear Dwyer and Harrison are the issue.

 

[StormCast]

These "where are the moves?" posts come streaming in every year at this time, albeit this year in a much wordier fashion.

Probably best to let a little more time lapse before diving in.

 

[Vagrant]

Vagrant out of curiosity, what about this draft aside from the Wesley pick was anything like a JR draft?

I wouldn't want to minimize the importance of the Wesley pick when making that comparison. Taking a player over slot from Plymouth is something so inherently JR that it's absurd. Additionally, taking a goaltender that ended up in Plymouth in the early 2nd is another avenue we've taken previously. Robb Zepp is another Plymouth goaltender we burned a pick on.

The fact that Kyle Jenkins' defensive partner last season was Tyler Ganly (2013 6th round pick) on a team where we already had two prospects we were watching is another JR move. One could argue that the Foegele pick was a lot like the Zac Dalpe pick in the sense that it was a player spurned by the CHL for being too small that had a growth spurt and then put up and unreasonable amount of points in a lower league. Was headed to the BCHL to play for the same team Dalpe did as well before early enrollment at UNH to play this Fall. Do we have any connections to UNH? Well only that our 3rd round pick from last season, Brett Pesce, also plays there.

If you get down to brass tacks, even the Wallmark pick has the six degrees of seperation feel to it considering we were watching Sweden at the WJC hard last season because of our interest in Erik Karlsson. It's just all too familiar.

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

I wouldn't want to minimize the importance of the Wesley pick when making that comparison. Taking a player over slot from Plymouth is something so inherently JR that it's absurd. Additionally, taking a goaltender that ended up in Plymouth in the early 2nd is another avenue we've taken previously. Robb Zepp is another Plymouth goaltender we burned a pick on.

The fact that Kyle Jenkins' defensive partner last season was Tyler Ganly (2013 6th round pick) on a team where we already had two prospects we were watching is another JR move. One could argue that the Foegele pick was a lot like the Zac Dalpe pick in the sense that it was a player spurned by the CHL for being too small that had a growth spurt and then put up and unreasonable amount of points in a lower league. Was headed to the BCHL to play for the same team Dalpe did as well before early enrollment at UNH to play this Fall. Do we have any connections to UNH? Well only that our 3rd round pick from last season, Brett Pesce, also plays there.

If you get down to brass tacks, even the Wallmark pick has the six degrees of seperation feel to it considering we were watching Sweden at the WJC hard last season because of our interest in Erik Karlsson. It's just all too familiar.

Truly you have a dizzying intellect...

 

[Joe McGrath]

I wouldn't want to minimize the importance of the Wesley pick when making that comparison. Taking a player over slot from Plymouth is something so inherently JR that it's absurd. Additionally, taking a goaltender that ended up in Plymouth in the early 2nd is another avenue we've taken previously. Robb Zepp is another Plymouth goaltender we burned a pick on.

The fact that Kyle Jenkins' defensive partner last season was Tyler Ganly (2013 6th round pick) on a team where we already had two prospects we were watching is another JR move. One could argue that the Foegele pick was a lot like the Zac Dalpe pick in the sense that it was a player spurned by the CHL for being too small that had a growth spurt and then put up and unreasonable amount of points in a lower league. Was headed to the BCHL to play for the same team Dalpe did as well before early enrollment at UNH to play this Fall. Do we have any connections to UNH? Well only that our 3rd round pick from last season, Brett Pesce, also plays there.

If you get down to brass tacks, even the Wallmark pick has the six degrees of seperation feel to it considering we were watching Sweden at the WJC hard last season because of our interest in Erik Karlsson. It's just all too familiar.

Sure saves money on scouting though. And time.

 

[Vagrant]

Truly you have a dizzying intellect...

How is this productive and in what way does it disprove my points?

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

How is this productive and in what way does it disprove my points?

It was a Princess Bride reference. It was supposed to be funny. I'm sorry you didn't think it was.

If you actually want my assessment of your points, I think a couple are good and a couple are REAL stretches invented just to try to prove your point. We drafted a guy from Sweden that played at the WJCs and all of the sudden it's "uncreative" because we already have a Swedish prospect? Foegele has a similar track to someone else and all of the sudden it's "JR all over again?" You can't be serious with the UNH-Pesce thing, that has very little if anything to do with the scouting process. Your Jenkins point is fair but many assessments have said that he's our best value pick. Our goalie (I'll learn to spell his name eventually) may be from Plymouth, but he was the consensus #2 goalie in the draft and many say a very good pick. Not to mention I would bet that Demko was our man and he got picked the pick before us.

Your point about not minimizing the importance of the Wesley pick as evidence of some of the bad habits that remain in the front office is a very good point.

 

[Vagrant]

It was a Princess Bride reference. It was supposed to be funny. I'm sorry you think it was.

It's embarrassing that I haven't seen that movie. Disregard and award yourself two points.

 

[Anton Babchuk]

Additionally, taking a goaltender that ended up in Plymouth in the early 2nd is another avenue we've taken previously.

peters was traded to plymouth a year and a half after he was drafted. very clever wording to make to completely different situations look comparable, though.

 

[Big Daddy Cane]

How about 3C and top-4 D?


Also on RFA qualifying offers:

Is there room in the budget for either one of those?

Skinner – E. Staal – Lindholm
XXX – J. Staal – Semin
Gerbe – Nash – Dwyer
XXX – XXX – XXX
XXX

Sekera – Faulk
Hainsey – Liles
Harrison – Murphy
XXX

Khudobin
Ward

Based on the numbers from CapGeek, the above lineup costs $54.7075 mil in real $$$. If you add in Tlusty (2LW) at ~$3 mil, McGinn (4LW) and Terry (13th forward) + a 4C, 4RW and a 7th D for ~$2.5 mil total, that number jumps up to $61.6 mil. That in and of itself is a lot of money for a team that has missed out on playoff revenue for 5 years and had understandably underwhelming attendance this past season.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

It's embarrassing that I haven't seen that movie. Disregard and award yourself two points.

One of my all time favorite movies (top 10, maybe even top 5).

 

[Francis10]

I wouldn't want to minimize the importance of the Wesley pick when making that comparison. Taking a player over slot from Plymouth is something so inherently JR that it's absurd. Additionally, taking a goaltender that ended up in Plymouth in the early 2nd is another avenue we've taken previously. Robb Zepp is another Plymouth goaltender we burned a pick on.

The fact that Kyle Jenkins' defensive partner last season was Tyler Ganly (2013 6th round pick) on a team where we already had two prospects we were watching is another JR move. One could argue that the Foegele pick was a lot like the Zac Dalpe pick in the sense that it was a player spurned by the CHL for being too small that had a growth spurt and then put up and unreasonable amount of points in a lower league. Was headed to the BCHL to play for the same team Dalpe did as well before early enrollment at UNH to play this Fall. Do we have any connections to UNH? Well only that our 3rd round pick from last season, Brett Pesce, also plays there.

If you get down to brass tacks, even the Wallmark pick has the six degrees of seperation feel to it considering we were watching Sweden at the WJC hard last season because of our interest in Erik Karlsson. It's just all too familiar.

Once again 100% spot on with your assessments. Sure hope Ronnie is moving away from the JR school of drafting, but this draft sure didn't seem that way. Until that day happens, we are stuck in no mans land of fighting for 8th place in the East every year and more often than not missing the playoffs.

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

I will say that, despite all of this, RF did say that this was still in the "JR school of thought" regarding drafting, and obviously his scouting reports were all from the JR regime. Despite that, I thought we had a very good draft.

 

[Guy]

"no big moves, possibly a 4th line center or depth D" - Jim Rutherford Ron Francis

 

[Blueline Bomber]

What big move would you like Francis to make?

The Staals, Semin, Skinner, Khudobin and Ward aren't moving. We're happy with (most) of them anyway. Same deal with Sekera and Faulk. He's already locked up Gerbe and Hainsey, both of which were considered effective moves. He's working on Tlusty.

So all that leaves is either minor players to move or minor roles to fill.