GDT: Ride the Lightning

[Borsig]

And Burns and Orlov are off the books in July.

Hopefully not to return.

 

[Blueline Bomber]

And Burns and Orlov are off the books in July.

Hopefully not to return.

Exactly. Both are veterans with expiring contracts. Criticizing their defensive play, however accurate it may be, doesn't accomplish anything. Pointing out where Morrow could improve might actually accomplish the necessary changes

 

[CanesFanBudMan]

Exactly. Both are veterans with expiring contracts. Criticizing their defensive play, however accurate it may be, doesn't accomplish anything. Pointing out where Morrow could improve might actually accomplish the necessary changes

Appropriately adjusting their ice time would though. Although Ghost already gets too much time so they are kind of stuck on the left for this year unless / until Boom comes over

 

[baconandbread]

To me, it's more that comment didn't need to be made public. With Blake and Jarvis, we only heard "they'll make some mistakes" not there are parts of his game we don't like. The coaching them up part has obviously worked.

 

[CanesUltimate11]

Season 2 of the amazon show should just be nothing but Seth Jarvis.

 

[robbieberns]

The quote about Morrow is fine. It’s not anything Rod wouldn’t have said respectfully to the kid before ever mentioning it in public. He’s probably already clarified it with him that’s it’s just a quote about working on the kid’s big league game and it’s no serious slander. Say what you want about a lot of how or org operates but we’re a brilliant development team and they know how to handle these kids.

 

[CanesUltimate11]

He’s not our hall of farmer but somehow we are stuck with the retirement tour with Rod being the captain of the fan club.

I really don’t have a problem at all with the public comment on Morrow in a vacuum. Coupled with the complete blindness where it comes to Burns it bugs me. I get that Burns’ deficiencies at this point are due to age and will not resolve with coaching, but they could be mitigated with a more limited deployment. Would love to see Chatfield get ~ 3 of Burns minutes a night

If we assume that he's not just blind to all of Burns's faults then he's stuck in a no win situation. He can move him down and play a bad defensive d-man with another bad/questionable defensive d-man in Orlov or Ghost, or he can leave him with the best damn defensive d-man on the planet in Slavin and hope he limits the mistakes.

Are we better off with Slavin covering for Burns or having Slavin/Walker and Orlov/Chatfield playing about 30 mins a night each?

 

[Stanky and Janky]

It's not impossible that Slavin prefers Burns as his partner out of the available options because of familiarity. That could factor in.

 

[3CanesInTheBox]

It's not impossible that Slavin prefers Burns as his partner out of the available options because of familiarity. That could factor in.

Sounds like Stockholm syndrome lol

 

[Buenos Necas]

No problem with Rod's comments, how Morrow's defensive game develops at the NHL level is an important question heading into the offseason. This last stretch of regular season games will be great experience if he sticks in the lineup, and given how locked into the 2nd spot we are at the moment, I'd have no problem rotating out whoever is most banged up on D to keep him playing. If he shows he can hang I'd be more comfortable using the trade assets up front or in goal, but otherwise a new Slavin partner has to be the priority.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

If we assume that he's not just blind to all of Burns's faults then he's stuck in a no win situation. He can move him down and play a bad defensive d-man with another bad/questionable defensive d-man in Orlov or Ghost, or he can leave him with the best damn defensive d-man on the planet in Slavin and hope he limits the mistakes.

Are we better off with Slavin covering for Burns or having Slavin/Walker and Orlov/Chatfield playing about 30 mins a night each?

I suspect we'll find out on the playoffs.

 

[chaz4hockey]

he also did a spin move in the face of two tampa players at the blue line which led to a turnover and odd man rush the other way in the 3rd period

i think Rod's comment is fair, he just needs to get a better feel for the speed at this level and learn when to pick his spots

To be fair to the "kid" isn't that what he will learn by playing at this level? I'm hard pressed to remember a young defenseman that came into the league and immediately made few mistakes (maybe Ken Morrow in 1980). Even in a less fast/less skilled era, old-time Hall of Famers like Chelios and Potvin in the 70's/80's needed games to smooth out their play.

Thus, via video, feedback and yes playing, Morrow will get a better feel on what he can or cannot do at this level.

Now, if he makes the same mistakes over and over, staff can be more harsh but I'd still prefer that he keeps his "criticism" of the player private (yes, I know that every person requires a different method to motivate but......RBA, you hammered Necas publicly for years and how did that work out?)

 

[Discipline Daddy]

Morrow didn't play much last game but he stuck out positively to me a couple of times. On one shift, he made two Slavin-esque stick breakups of dangerous Tampa zone entries. It was back to back about 20 seconds apart. He has decent skating speed but more importantly he moved the puck decisively in the offensive zone. I also hope he gets more time playing against NHL teams.

Regardless, this year has been an excellent year for his development. To go from a college offensive wunderkind to professional hockey games, I think we all expected a lot of oopses offensively. He seems to be really working on his defensive game in the AHL, and his offensive game has translated. The fact he has done so well pretty quickly this year moved the needle for me to make me go from "this guy could be a top 4 D" to "I think he will be a top 4 D eventually".