With the first season of hockey officially behind Canes and Coffee, the offseason upon us and some time to breathe without having to write the next game recap, game preview, daily post or whatever, the hope is to invest some time tinkering and refining things a little bit before next season. But being that this has always been a hobby, a passion and a cause, things will remain pretty fluid.
Thank you again!
Thank you to everyone who has supported Canes and Coffee during its first season. We are nearing the day when I said what the heck and launched the Kickstarter to set things in motion. I am forever grateful to everyone who helped make the Kickstarter successful and also grateful for everyone who spends some amount of their Hurricanes hockey time at Canes and Coffee.
Summer hopes, plans and schedule
In general, the plan is to cover the team fairly similarly to the regular season. Tentative plan is to continue with the Daily Cup of Joe daily posts every day except Saturday and Sunday. Saturday will be a day off most weeks except when real stuff is happening like the draft, free agency period or any breaking news.
My hope is to begin posting a “Canes Chronicle” on Sundays that offers a healthy serving of Canes coverage from around the web for Sunday reading (just like the big old Sunday papers when people read stuff off paper). I will probably include a couple things from some regular Canes sources, but given that many regular CandC readers probably track that anyway, my hope is to especially include stuff from less common sources that people might have missed. My hope is to crowd source much of this.
First request for help: If you happen upon a great Canes article during the week, please send a heads up to us here at Canes and Coffee by sending a link to us either via Twitter or email (which is simple the site name with no spaces or dashes at gmail.com).
I also hope to do some additional work on the ‘digital museum.’ I have 2 things in mind but am not sure which direction I will go yet for this summer.
Finally, we will continue to be a daily or at least nearly daily source of Canes coverage, so please stop by regularly.
First try at a mail bag
I had good intentions of starting doing a semi-regular mail bag during the regular season, but to maintain my sanity and reasonable sleep schedule, I made a decision not to add anything new until the season ended. So with the season over, the hope is to do a semi-regular ‘CandC Mail.’ The hope is to post the first addition in the next week or so.
Second request for help: If you have Canes questions for Canes and Coffee, please either send them via email or tag them with #CandCMail on Twitter.
We gladly accept feedback (or even just emails to yammer Canes stuff) via email at any time, but sometime in the next few weeks, we will launch a survey to try to get a better idea from readers of what everyone liked most, what everyone liked least, suggestions, etc.
Hopefully my next post will be thoughts on which of a couple players the Canes are now eyeing with a first, second or third pick after winning the draft lottery tomorrow night!
Go Canes!
As a marginally knowledgeable fan, when it comes to the relative quality of draftees, Id like to know which players do you feel should be chosen in the draft, when our picks are made? Would you pick BPA, or pick by need?
THANKS!
I am not a prospect expert, so my opinions in that regard are mostly a summary of how the experts rank the players. I will write some about the draft when we get closer.
In terms best player versus need, I generally lean toward best player available. This said, the Canes are so overweight on D vs. F right now, that I think Francis will (and should) enter the 2016 draft with a reasonable bias toward selecting forwards. This does not mean that the Canes should not add a defenseman or 2 to the mix, but I do think it means the #13 pick is likely to be a forward and that the split of the picks in the 1st 3 rounds will also be weighted toward forwards.
As another wild card, I expect Francis to use some of the draft pick and even prospects at his disposal in a trade or 2 to add young but NHL-ready forwards to the mix.
When, or how will they acquire another goalie? …assuming they don’t resign Ward???
A couple of comments then some questions for the “mail bag”:
I, too, lean BPA, but in the context of team need. So if our pick comes around at #13 and Olli Juolevi of Mikhail Sergachyov is on the board (and Brown, Jost, Keller, and McLeod are not), I think you’ve got to pick one of those two or trade down a couple of slots. We need forward depth, but we should always be adding solid blueliners in every draft, period.
My hope is that we come away with 5 or 6 forwards and two defenders….maybe a goalie….and trade the other picks (and prospects) for another NHL player or two. I’m on the same page as Matt.
My questions are this:
What’s up with Victor Rask’s contract? Shouldn’t that be done by now?
On a related note, my take was that all of Foegele, Lorentz, Wesley, and Jenkins would get ELCs. Haven’t seen anything on any of them yet, have you heard anything?
Lastly, my guess is that Aho and Saarela haven’t signed ELCs because they are embroiled in tournament action. Do you think they get done prior to the Draft?