The closest Canes fans will get to playoff hockey for the 2017-18 season starts tonight when the Charlotte Checkers kick off their playoff series at home. If you missed it, please also check out my Canes-centric Charlotte Checkers playoff preview from yesterday.
Today’s Daily Cup of Joe offers a few quick-hitters from the NHL playoffs thus far.
Offense wins
The playoffs have historically featured close-checking hockey with tamped down scoring, but that has not been the case thus far for the 2018 playoffs. Of the seven teams who have either already advanced or are up 3-1 in their respective series, five of those teams are above or very close to four goals per game. Vegas advanced behind stingy defense and goaltending, and Winnipeg has not been quite as lights out offensively, but the other five teams have mostly won by scoring in bunches. Where will the Hurricanes find more offense this summer?
What might have been with Marc-Andre Fleury?
One has to wonder if the Hurricanes could have had Marc-Andre Fleury this past summer. The Penguins were going to lose a goalie and were committed to keeping young Matt Murray which meant Fleury was leaving. Could the Hurricanes have brokered a trade directly with Pittsburgh before the expansion draft? Or if Rutherford would not have been willing to deal him within the division, might Vegas have given him up during their early wheeling and dealing phase? And what difference might Fleury have made in a Hurricanes uniform in 2017-18?
Star power carries the day in the Eastern Conference thus far
Time and time again playoff games and series are being decided by huge efforts by star players. Sidney Crosby has 9 points in the Penguins three wins. Evgeni Malkin has five points in those three wins. Even with Patrice Bergeron missing game four, Boston’s top line of Marchand/Bergeron/Pastrnak has led the way with 23 combined points in only four games. And not surprisingly, the Tampa Bay Lightning are led by Nikita Kucherov who has a whopping nine points in four games. Is Sebastian Aho capable of being one of the difference-makers when the Hurricanes return to the playoffs?
Former Hurricanes management is well-represented
If the first round continues on its current trajectory, the eight teams remaining for the second round would feature three former Hurricanes coaches and general managers in Peter Laviolette with Nashville, Paul Maurice with Winnipeg and Jim Rutherford with Pittsburgh. With the Hurricanes general manager and possibly coaching situations in limbo, could the team be about to chuck more personnel out into the league to possibly make this list even greater in the future?
Potential trade partners
Teams with high hopes that exited early from the playoffs can sometimes become potential trade partners because their attempts to shake things up and improve. In that vein, Anaheim’s sweep at the hands of the San Jose Sharks jumps out. Still unable to get over the hump, the Ducks could be looking to wheel and deal. If Winnipeg finishes off Minnesota, the Wild could be another team trying to figure out a way to gain the extra boost needed to advance in the playoffs. Finally, if the Boston versus Toronto continues on a path toward early extinction for the Maple Leafs with trouble keeping the puck out of their own net, the result could spark another round of the Maple Leafs seeking to trade a higher-end forward for blue line help.
What say you Canes fans?
1) What do you think of these Canes-centric NHL playoff observations at this early juncture?
2) Who has more Canes-centric or just any observations on the NHL playoffs thus far?
Go Canes!
This is may be a bit off-point but is Canes-centric …
The thing that’s hard to miss in the playoffs this year – that’s hard to miss in the playoffs any year – is how chippy and physical and borderline dirty the play is. What I find myself wondering is who on our roster other than JW is going to be our chippy player when we make the playoffs, or the player that puts a heavy cross-check onto someone that draws a suspension, or just generally, that player that levers up the tension by pushing the envelope by using elbows and sticks.
Put another way, I think too many of our players are too attached to their teeth. We have to be willing to lose a few of them to make the playoffs and then to make a run in them. This is what strikes me as one of the missing elements we need to fix this offseason.
Yes. That’s the toughness element that is lacking with the current lineup. Some misinterpret that term to mean fighting but it really is playing playoff style hockey during the regular season. Make your team tough to play against. In basketball, if you don’t have any fouls in a game it usually signifies you took the game off. You certainly didn’t play any defense. Hockey is similar in that regard. No penalties, no passion. The Canes are always one of the least penalized teams and while to some that screams discipline, to me it is more an indicator of passivity. It appears as if Dundon shares that view and I’m anticipating some new faces in Raleigh that play playoff type hockey every game.
Just as a humorous aside, who do you think would be the Canes most effective face licker? We need to find one if the Canes are going to face Bostn in a playoff series.
Also, goodbye Bill Peters. He was a good guy, he build a good system with the players he got. It didn’twork out fully, and I think the team and he both needed the fresh start, but I am thankful for the good things he did in Carolina and wish him well (especially since he is most likely headed to western Canada so the Canes won’t see him too much).
That being said, in some ways we can say the team is in a complete state of disarray right now, no GM, no coach, no direction.
I hope there is a plan, but the owner is waiting on some things to happen, the playoffs and the international events. But an action is needed well before the end of May if the team is to be effective at using the draft and the offseason to retool for a 2019 playoff appearance.
Hm. Avicii died today. Sad. Only 28. Wonder if we’re gonna change the victory song now. Also, how much you wanna bet Calgary makes the 2019 playoffs (if the rumors of Bill going there are true as I expect).
Calgary should have made the playoffs this year. It took some real “expert” coaching to get them to miss. Pluto (the dog…not the God) could go there and coach next year and they will make it.
Players play up to playoff hockey toughness when the playoffs start. Players like JStaal, JW, and McGinn are natually tough guy. PDG brings the same edge. Aho doesn’t back down from anybody. Dahlbeck, Nordstrom and Lindholm are all capable of playing that way. Almost all NHL players, including the Canes, have played at levels of hockey where violence is more allowed and almost all of them can play up (or down) to that level.
I honestly don’t think Fleury was ever an option. He was the player Rutherford offered so he could protect more valuable assets and it is hardly imaginable that VGK would have considered trading him for anything. It it hadn’t been an expansion draft year last summer who knows? But the price for Fleury was going to be more than just picks and prospects.
I am not really following the SC playoffs so I can’t comment very much on them. Maurice looks like he has the real deal in Winnipeg.
And I think you are right on the Leafs. Their defense was suspect going into the playoffs and has pretty much been exposed. And we certainly have the young D to trade for a young F as part of a package or straight-up. I won’t speculate specifics but we seem like a natural trading partner.
A couple of comments not relating to the playoffs:
Paul Krepelka was named as VP of Hockey Operations yesterday. RF seems to be a lame duck at this point. TD is assembling his new team and now he has his player contract negotiator, and a very good one at that. Next he needs his experienced and well-connected deal-maker which I expect will be the new GM. Good luck BP in Calgary. Hang on tight, this off-season roller coaster ride is gathering speed.
1. Rutherford was never going to let Fleury go to a conference rival if he had any way to keep it from happening.
2. Regarding star power…you have to grow your own stars. No one is going to trade you one in any deal that will help you. We have some difference players on the roster right now to build around. What’s wrong with Skinner, Aho, Terravainen, Staal, Slavin and Pesce? It’s the goaltending and depth that we are lacking. Imagine what Aho and Skinner might do if other teams had to concentrate on other lines to defend and not just load up against the two of them.
3. Regarding the representation of former Canes management…yeah they are related all right. Rutherford fired both of the other two, one of them two times.
4. The obvious candidate to pursue for sure is James VanReimsdyk. We know he is at this point headed for free agency and Toronto is loaded at the forward position. Toronto needs defensemen. We have them coming out of our ears. Can we make a deal? Is he really a player we want to spend a lot of resources on (offense is his game… forget the two way player dribble)? In the past we have insisted on playing only players who can excel on both offense and defense and if they couldn’t excel on one of the two, we only went after them if they could at least play sound defense. It’s time to change our thinking. Let’s understand the value of a Kessel type player (offense only) as well as the value of a Kruger (defense only).
I need not go further…just read raleightj above if you haven’t already. He’s got the right ideas. Actually, my friends say you might be better off reading any of the other comments and just forget to read mine. I guess it’s a little late to tell you that. Hopefully, some have discovered this already having been exposed to my brilliant ideas in other posts.
Whoever said that heavy hockey is dead, was wrong. These playoffs are interesting so far. All teams are playing heavy hockey this far. And the refs are employing their usual “no blood, no foul” play off philosophy.
Watching the Philly-Pittsburgh series shows something very important to this Canes fan. Philly has their share of goons; Gudas, Simmonds, etc. Pittsburgh has only one. 6′ 7″ 254 pound Jamie Oleksiak. In an early game, Oleksiak took a swipe at Nolan Patrick. Wayne Simmonds confronted Olesksiak, but had to look up. Simmonds backed off. In the last game, Olecksiak flattened Claude Giroux. Radko Gudas dropped his gloves and started punching Olecksiak. But because he was 7″ shorter and 50 pounds lighter, he lost the fight. Olecksiak was picked up from Dallas for very little. He is giving his teammates the opportunity to make plays and score with very little trouble. He is worth his weight in gold.
We have several gritty players. We need either someone with Olecksiak’s size and aggressiveness, or someone who, like Lucic, who will distract and intimidate. This will inspire our gritty guys to play an aggressive game. Our scorers will feel free to do their thing.