The headline in the past week was obviously the signing of free agent Justin Williams, but along the Francis also made a series of moves adding depth forwards. First he re-signed Derek Ryan. Then he added Josh Jooris from the free agent pool. Then traded for Marcus Kruger. The additions increase the number of forwards on one-way contracts to 13 and that does not even include Phil Di Giuseppe who is qualified but not yet signed.

Today in the Thursday Coffee Shop, we will try to make sense of the sudden logjam of depth forwards competing for slots in the 2017-18 Carolina Hurricanes opening day lineup.

You can decide if you want to comment before or after perusing today’s Daily Cup of Joe where I profile the players involved and offer some thoughts on how it all ends up.

 

Discussion questions

 

Since the polls and discussion questions overlap and the poll answers are a bit long, let’s put the discussion questions first today.

 

1) What do you think Francis/Peters envision for the #9 forward and the fourth line? Do you think that vision will hold up through training camp?

2) If you had the keys to the castle, what would you do with the fourth line for 2017-18?

3) How do you think the logjam at the bottom of the forward ranks gets resolved (if it does at all)?

 

 

Carolina Hurricanes polls

Please remember to click ‘vote’ after each individual poll response.

 

What, if anything, do you make of the fact that Phil Di Giuseppe is not signed yet?

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If you take my list of 8 (Staal, Skinner, Aho, Lindholm, Williams, Stempniak, Rask, Teravainen) as a starting point, who now wins that final top 9 slot?

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Which three forwards fill out the Carolina Hurricanes opening day fourth line?

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Which direction(s) do you lean most in terms of stocking the fourth line? (Choose up to two.)

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Go Canes!

 

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