News & Notes XLV: Simply Having A Wonderful Canesmastime

[Derailed75]

Starting to get a little uncomfortable standings wise for the Canes.

Columbus is creeping up and the previous big Conference playoff cushion is now down to 8 points (with Sens having a game in hand....not worried about Boston). The way Columbus is playing (and Canes are not) could mean that the Canes drop to 4th as a wild card.

Rangers apparent to have cashed in their chips this year and I believe Tulsky-Borg-Dundon (listed because as noted he is involved in everything) need to decide whether to more highly compete this year or punt. If a punt, then Orlov and Burns need to be traded at the TDL and if Mikko says I'm going to market, then I would sell him too. If a compete, then Orlov and Burns need to be traded and better assets acquired (a consistent theme either way):

View attachment 985494

The NHL playoffs are too much of crap shoot to punt in a team that is still top 10 despite playing like crap.

 

[chaz4hockey]

The NHL playoffs are too much of crap shoot to punt in a team that is still top 10 despite playing like crap.

Ok but the top ten is only because of the hot Necas start. Too many games sub par since to think we have even a snowballs chance to win in may.

 

[Derailed75]

Ok but the top ten is only because of the hot Necas start. Too many games sub par since to think we have even a snowballs chance to win in may.

Selling when you are firmly in a playoff spot with 20ish games left is the most asinine thing i have ever heard.

2019 they made the playoffs in the second to last game of the season. Zero chance they could go anywhere in the playoffs.

Oh yeah beat the reigning champs on their ice, swept a "better" team and made it to the conference finals.

 

[chaz4hockey]

Selling when you are firmly in a playoff spot with 20ish games left is the most asinine thing i have ever heard.

2019 they made the playoffs in the second to last game of the season. Zero chance they could go anywhere in the playoffs.

Oh yeah beat the reigning champs on their ice, swept a "better" team and made it to the conference finals.

We shall see. Didn’t say they SHOULD sell but that’s an option.

I’ve written off this year since I believe our six defensemen are bad and not cup worthy (Last year was a different story).

 

[Borsig]

Burns - Bad
Walker - Meh to Meh
Gost - servicable and decent for the salary
Chatty - pretty good especially for salary
Orlov - Drink.
Slavin - God tier.

The question is, can we we replace Meh, bad and drunkeness with Morrow and Nikishin?

 

[chaz4hockey]

Burns - Bad
Walker - Meh to Meh
Gost - servicable and decent for the salary
Chatty - pretty good especially for salary
Orlov - Drink.
Slavin - God tier.

The question is, can we we replace Meh, bad and drunkeness with Morrow and Nikishin?

I’d like to see walker with Slavin but suspect they wouldn’t like the burns-ghost pairing. A cut throat team, cough Vegas, would move out both burns and orlov at TDL and replace with better defensemen.

Orlov is a head scratcher as he started the season bad, had a great period and then post the illness but has been very bad. Is it the illness or just age catching up?

Gold’s podcast from last night is worth a listen as he recognized the liabilities of both Orlov and burns. Plus, he lays out the Mikko options and comments on the deadness of the crowd last night .

 

[CanesFanBudMan]

Has anyone else noticed that every game with rantanen the visor tilt / 60 has increased for the rest of the team

 

[Svechhammer]

I’d like to see walker with Slavin but suspect they wouldn’t like the burns-ghost pairing. A cut throat team, cough Vegas, would move out both burns and orlov at TDL and replace with better defensemen.

Orlov is a head scratcher as he started the season bad, had a great period and then post the illness but has been very bad. Is it the illness or just age catching up?

Gold’s podcast from last night is worth a listen as he recognized the liabilities of both Orlov and burns. Plus, he lays out the Mikko options and comments on the deadness of the crowd last night .

Its funny you bring up Vegas. I mentioned looking at Florida the other day and how long it took for the Tkachuk trade to start paying off for them, but the same can be said for Vegas and the Eichel trade. For both, the team really did struggle for a while right afterwards. In the case of Florida they flat out stunk for most of the season before they turned it on en route to sneaking into the playoffs and making a SCF run. For Vegas, they outright missed the playoffs. In both cases, the next year they won the Cup.

I am not saying that we are guaranteed to win the Cup next year, but there's a lot of data to point to Rantanen figuring it out and us having a very good team next year if we extend him. We have to be able to hold onto him, its absolutely our top priority, and its a complete organizational failure if we don't.

 

[To Be Determined]

When i worry about the playoffs, i like to remind myself that florida made the finals in '23, but would not have even been in the playoffs if not for one of fleury's best ever saves. Get hot at the right time, hope someone else doesn't get hotter.

I also assume that save is directly responsible for saving us from "2023 stanley cup champion boston bruins" so i really appreciate fleury.

 

[HisIceness]

When i worry about the playoffs, i like to remind myself that florida made the finals in '23, but would not have even been in the playoffs if not for one of fleury's best ever saves. Get hot at the right time, hope someone else doesn't get hotter.

I also assume that save is directly responsible for saving us from "2023 stanley cup champion boston bruins" so i really appreciate fleury.

I'll be real I think we beat Boston in that year's playoff.

However, I seem to recall Vegas figured our team out in the regular season.

 

[TheReelChuckFletcher]

I’d like to see walker with Slavin but suspect they wouldn’t like the burns-ghost pairing. A cut throat team, cough Vegas, would move out both burns and orlov at TDL and replace with better defensemen.

Orlov is a head scratcher as he started the season bad, had a great period and then post the illness but has been very bad. Is it the illness or just age catching up?

Gold’s podcast from last night is worth a listen as he recognized the liabilities of both Orlov and burns. Plus, he lays out the Mikko options and comments on the deadness of the crowd last night .

It might be illness, honestly, but simultaneously, I dispute the extent to which both Burns and Orlov have been liabilities. Yes, they make a crap-load of mistakes, and yes, neither are exactly the fastest guys, especially Burns (of course). But both still move the puck way better than most defensemen even now. We now know from analytics that the biggest liabilities in the league are guys who either have no ability or have lost their ability to play the puck. Typically guys who move the puck a ton will also turnover the puck a bunch.

Also worth noting: outside of a few bad games, our team defense, when all put together, still has been one of the best shot-suppressing units in all of hockey even with all of our alleged liabilities. Maybe we need to be a bit more confident that our whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

 

[MyLuckyPuck]

Crowd was rather dead against the Oil on Saturday too IMO.

 

[AD Skinner]

Crowd was rather dead against the Oil on Saturday too IMO.

There wasn’t much to cheer about until the 3rd period

 

[Blueline Bomber]

The team has been bad lately, so the crowd is understandably nervous when the Canes aren't playing their best in a particular game. And that's been most games lately...

 

[chaz4hockey]

It might be illness, honestly, but simultaneously, I dispute the extent to which both Burns and Orlov have been liabilities. Yes, they make a crap-load of mistakes, and yes, neither are exactly the fastest guys, especially Burns (of course). But both still move the puck way better than most defensemen even now. We now know from analytics that the biggest liabilities in the league are guys who either have no ability or have lost their ability to play the puck. Typically guys who move the puck a ton will also turnover the puck a bunch.

Also worth noting: outside of a few bad games, our team defense, when all put together, still has been one of the best shot-suppressing units in all of hockey even with all of our alleged liabilities. Maybe we need to be a bit more confident that our whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Perhaps but due to Orlov and Burns’ inadequacies, I think that the Canes forwards are playing much more defensively (granted eye test) this year and as a result we’ve seen a lot less breakouts and odd man rushes.

Thus, less goals.

 

[TheReelChuckFletcher]

Perhaps but due to Orlov and Burns’ inadequacies, I think that the Canes forwards are playing much more defensively (granted eye test) this year and as a result we’ve seen a lot less breakouts and odd man rushes.

Thus, less goals.

That's a bit too eye-testy to me to reliably make conclusions about that dynamic. It's not like the Canes are slowing even a little bit when it comes to piling up the offensive possession numbers and chances this year, at least when it comes to the spreadsheet stuff. We may just be in a bit of an offensive results rut at the moment and are therefore in a bit of a rough patch over the last month.

 

[Chrispy]

That's a bit too eye-testy to me to reliably make conclusions about that dynamic. It's not like the Canes are slowing even a little bit when it comes to piling up the offensive possession numbers and chances this year, at least when it comes to the spreadsheet stuff. We may just be in a bit of an offensive results rut at the moment and are therefore in a bit of a rough patch over the last month.

I was going to contest this, but then I ran the numbers and January was much better than I remembered:

Month	GP	GF/G	GA/G	Pts
October	9	3.89	2.33	14
November	15	3.73	3.27	19
December	13	2.85	2.77	13
January	15	3.07	2.4	22
Feb-Mar	9	2.33	3.11	6

I combined February and March here due to small sample size.

December wasn't great, but 22 points in 15 games in January was quite good, and the defense was as good as the start of the season. It's really the last 9 games where everything fell apart.

Offensively they haven't quite been the same since November.

 

[chaz4hockey]

Update on Lenovo changes for next season. I’ve copied the archived article so it should be viewable:

https://archive.ph/EzF6w

This development mirrors what I saw at Florida’s stadium. Upstairs promises to have cool areas and downstairs will have mega $ locations. How that impacts fan noise downstairs is problematic as it will be more corporate folks and their guests versus hard core fans.