Though activity was actually disappointingly light this past weekend, the NHL off-season is still scheduled to hit a higher gear this week with a couple days of Las Vegas speculation, the announcement of their team on Wednesday night and then the reopening of trade on Thursday morning only one day in advance of the 2017 NHL Draft which starts on Friday.
If you are returning to Canes and Coffee after a Hurricanes hockey hiatus at the conclusion of the regular season, the best places to catch up are our “2017-18 Carolina Hurricanes Roster Building Central” which has chronological list of all articles covering the building of the lineup for next season. Also check out “Carolina Hurricanes 2017 NHL Draft Central” which will be filling up this week with articles on the 2017 NHL Draft.
The Monday Coffee Shop features a mix of polls and discussion questions all focused on these activities.
Carolina Hurricanes Polls
Please remember to click ‘vote’ after each individual poll response.
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Discussion questions
1) In searching the lists of players exposed to the expansion draft, who do you see who could fill a need for the Hurricanes might be worth a call to Las Vegas general manager George McPhee?
2) If you were Ron Francis what specific calls would you be making and/or deals would you be trying to make leading up to the draft next weekend?
3) If a 32nd team is added to the NHL a couple years out and the Hurricanes are deeper and destined to expose one or more key players, do you lean toward stomaching the loss as an inevitability, brokering a deal with the expansion team to influence their selection or trading a player or two away to collect value?
Go Canes!
1) I still like Grabner–especially if the Canes lose Stempniak. He will pick up a few goals, is strong defensively, and would help replace McClement on the PK.
2) With the ED pretty much determined, I would think the activity this week is around the entry draft. So it would make sense that RF try to determine who has either A) a real interest in a player who would be available at 12 but not much lower; B) a real interest in 2nd round prospects since the Canes have three picks. That being said, not sure either A or B will be nearly enough to return a “difference maker.”
3) A 32rd team is the fear of this, and I would think many, caniac. However, the LV precedent might help. I believe the prospect depth in another 2-3 years will be substantial, so giving up a 1st rounder to influence who the expansion team takes won’t be that damaging to the pipeline (especially since the Canes might well be among the “final four” to draft in another couple years!!!).
1. Having watched RF over the last 3 years, there is simply no way I view him as interested in even participating in the Circus of one sided trading activity McPhee will stir up this week.
2. The unanswered question regarding the 2017-18 Canes roster is: How many slots does RF want to keep open for the prospects expected to be on the opening day roster? My sense is more than we expect. If that is the case, RF will be happy to just refill the pipeline with more prospects.
3. The 30 existing NHL owners just received $17mm. The 32nd team will have that same effect. The motivation to find and select the new ownership team is in high gear. However, it’s too early to put a plan in place today with the uncertainty of the timing of that entry draft. But, it might be possible the prospect of losing a good defensive player in a few years explains why the Canes pool of defensive prospects is not being used to buy the forward help the team needs today.
1. I think just because a player is exposed doesn’t mean he will be available from Vegas after the ExDraft. I expect most quality players have been protected via side trades and there is no telling now who will be moved. I am hoping we already gave them a pick to retain Stempniak.
2. We are a prime outlet for what Vegas will want to fill it’s cupboards – picks and prospects. I expect to see a trade with them. I doubt we will get a difference maker from another team with just picks and prospects so I expect very limited activity with other teams. I expect we will end up with 5 picks on Friday.
3. I think Vegas showed how the game gets played – side deals to protect highly valued exposed players. I look forward to Quebec getting its own team so we can put this relocation story to bed for a while.
Once Vegas has made their ED selections known, I expect a considerable number of trades, both with Vegas and other teams. Certainly, some teams will lose a player in the draft that they are going to want to replace… and of course opportunists will take advantage of “good deals”… Hopefully RF will get that “Difference-Maker”, that the team really needs?!! Eh?
Overlooked in these discussions is the fact that the overall effect of expansion is the dilution of talent in the league. There will be less talent to go around after the Knights have a roster, not more. Building better teams will get a bit harder, not easier. More pressure to build from with in will result, tightening teams grip on their prospects not loosening them. Trades will become less likely, not more so.
That’s a very interesting observation. If CAR doesn’t really lose a player all that valuable to them relative to the players other teams are losing, then simply the fact that there was Expansion helped us improve against the league. I agree that building from within become more valuable but I’m not sure that means there will be fewer trades. Teams without picks are going to need to figure out how to replenish their prospect pool somehow, and the best way to do that is to trade a very good player for futures.
I don’t think that dilution will be that noticeable, because of the imminent draft. Roster change of one player in the grand scheme of things is insignificant. Trades, promotions from the AHL,and natural player improvement of many players over the summer will have a counter-balancing effect. Every year some teams improve, and others…not so much! The Canes defense will likely be better this coming year due to maturity, if nothing else changes. Whether the forwards and goalies are better…TBD!
The presence of the Knights will create another “problem” for the Canes. Without the Knights in the picture the Canes salary cap room was a real advantage to RF. Vegas now enters the picture with more cap space then anyone. RF will be competing with the Knights to work deals with cap stressed teams. It will make his job tougher.
Well, I think we missed our opportunity. I felt that 5 or 6 teams would be dealing to avoid loosing a good player for nothing. We will see Wednesday but I think those teams probably made deals with LV. That resulted in very little in the way of trades.
You have to have partners to dance with and I think LV was doing all the trading.
We have a lot of draft picks but LV probably has collected a bunch, so not sure how much opportunity we will have now to do much with the picks we have. Trading will be more limited now.
1) It is going to be like normal trading now. It will be a bidding war for LV assets. Not sure we will participate in any of that. We will probably wait for UFSa and trading prior to the season start.
2) Any difference maker would be a bidding war with other teams. Pretty sure RF will not do that.
3) By the time that happens we would have our core intact and we would end up having to expose somebody good. Yah, we would probably play the same game many teams did here, trade picks/prospects to protect certain players.
After all the buildup from the past week about all the trading activity we’d see leading into the ED, and being completely wrong about everything other than Drouin moving to MTL, I’m out of guesses.
I still think our priorities haven’t changed, normal activity will return on Thursday which will in turn lead to plenty of activity around the Entry Draft next Friday/Saturday.
If sugalt is right – that adding another team dilutes the over talent-level of each team league-wide – and I believe it does – it will take less talent to win the Cup next year than this year. And since we’re going to lose less talent than most everyone else, I think we stand a good chance of being way more competitive by making the type of incremental moves that are RF’s specialty. Maybe that’s all we should expect even if we all hope for something bigger.