With the offseason here and the pace of just keeping up with watching and writing about games, the hope is to try some new things at Canes and Coffee over the summer. Hopefully a few will stick and become a regular part of the site heading into next season.

Up today is a first try at Canes Chronicle. The basic idea is simply to provide a Sunday edition of Canes reading from around the internet for the previous week — kind of like the old school big Sunday papers from year’s past — goes well with coffee too. 🙂 My thought is to include 1-2 of most popular Canes and Coffee articles to help guide anyone who only stops by weekly, but the majority of the articles will be from external sources and ideally mostly from outside the circle of Canes blogs and sources that most of us die hard fans already read.

REQUEST FOR HELP: Especially during the season it is hard to keep the site going such that many people read more Canes stuff. If you see a great Canes article during the week, please send a quick email (canesandcoffee at gmail.com) or ping us on Twitter. The more people participate, the better this can be.

With that, welcome to the first edition of Canes Chronicle.

If you are a multi-tasker who likes to listen and read at the same time, scroll down to the Chicago Blackhawks link which is an audio interview.

Canes news

I have good intentions of writing player-by-player evaluations for the 2015-16 season but am never that excited to do it, so it tends to drag on. The great Canes people at Section 328 are best known for their regular pod cast, but when they write its generally solid too.Here you can find Section 328’s 2015-16 grades for forwards. Grades/evaluations for the goalies and defensemen follow the initial post.

Canes prospect Alex Nedeljkovic is interviewed for this lfpress.com article.

5 decisions for the summer are detailed here in this article by Brett Finger at Cardiac Cane.

The Hurricanes web site posted a summary of Canes prospects (not in Charlotte) 2015-16 season.

Building the 2016-17 roster / potential trade partners and free agents

One of my writing themes recently has been building out the 2016-17 roster including posts on the financials, possible Canes who coudl be traded, etc. I am gradually working up to naming names and doing deals, but here are a few articles that are already pointed in that direction.

The New York Rangers are 1 of the teams built to win (in the playoffs) now who lost in the first round of the 2016 playoffs. Others include the Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks and Chicago Blackhawks. One would reasonably expect these and other teams to make a move or 2 to change their rosters and/or chemistry. Here are a few articles that look at possible trade partners.

New York Rangers

Matt Kirincic from Fulltilt Rangers discussed and priced Ranger restricted free agents Kris Kreider, Kevin Hayes and J.T. Miller. Between salary cap challenges, higher salaries and possibly a desire to change the roster it is possible that 1 of these forwards could be available via trade.

Chicago Blackhawks

Al Cimaglia was recently on Sirius XM NHL Radio for a short interview discussing the Blackhawks summer ahead. The Hawks salary cap challenges, continued desire to unload Bryan Bickell’s contract and a need for another top 4 defenseman makes the Hawks a potential trade partner.

Anaheim Ducks

The Los Angeles Daily News suggests that as part of the Ducks shake up Frederik Andersen (or possibly John Gibson) could be available. Either could be a fit for the Canes need to add a second goaltender.

Edmonton Oilers

Jonathan Willis from the Edmonton Journal suggested that the Oilers need for right shot defensemen could make them a good trade partner for the Hurricanes. 

The player that is most expected to be on the trading block to land blue line help is Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Matt Henderson at HockeyBuzz suggests that Nugent-Hopkins is not necessarily the forward to go.

Free agent forwards

Finally, Canes Country takes an early look at the crop of free agents who will be available if not re-signed before July 1.

With this being the first try at something new, please send any feedback via a quick email or comments below as to whether you found this interesting/useful or not and also suggested changes to improve it.

Go Canes!