Once the 2017-18 season wraps up, could’ves and should’ves and might’ves will be bandied around endlessly to fill another long offseason. Following on the same question in the Thursday Coffee Shop, today’s Daily Cup of Joe builds a set of questions that I and probably others would love to have answered.
For/on Ron Francis
1) What was his budget situation last summer and what if any limitations did he have in terms of making significant trades or other transactions given that the team was in the process of being sold?
Francis has taken his share of lumps for the 2017-18 season for not doing enough to improve the team last summer, but what we might never know is to what degree his hands were tied.
2) What, if any, deals did Francis have on the table or with the potential to complete last summer to add a scoring forward?
With Francis’ steadiness/stubbornness on not giving up the future, is it possible that a minor difference (upgrading a draft pick that was part of a deal or whatever) that Francis’ frugalness saved something small but lost something big?
3) With some big names with terms on their contract (Pacioretty, Karlsson, etc.) swirling around at the trade deadline, what, if any, offers did Francis make to try to land an upgrade with term past the 2017-18 season?
For/on Bill Peters
4) With no playmaking center added during the offseason, to what degree did Bill Peters consider adjusting course and shifting Sebastian Aho to center early in the season when scoring struggles first reared their head?
For/on Bill Peters and Ron Francis?
5) Who made the decision on the co-captains and what was the thought process behind it?
I continue to think that the organization missed a chance to provide a needed jolt to the locker room when it decided to name two co-captains instead of rocking the boat a bit by naming Justin Williams the captain.
6) Who had ultimate responsibility for not calling up thriving AHL players sooner, and what was the thought process in that decision?
The sample size is small, but early returns with Valentin Zykov and Warren Foegele suggest that AHL call ups could potentially have made a significant difference.
For/on Tom Dundon
7) What is the story and/or rationale for announcing Ron Francis’ removal from the general manager position at 8pm in the middle of the ACC Tourney with the local media nearly unanimously far away in New York?
Most of the other items rate higher in terms of significance for the outcome of the 2017-18 season, but this question might actually be the most interesting. There must be a story for why this went down the way it did. Did something specific happen that day that forced the decision at that point in time? Did Dundon intentionally not want the local media around such that there would be less noise? Or…or…or?
This Daily Cup of Joe is pulled together late, after the end of a long day trying to get to the holiday weekend with my head above water.
Continuing on the theme from the Thursday Coffee Shop, who has more questions on the 2017-18 season?
Go Canes!
3) and 7) are time correlated. Ron Francis was removed 10 days after a quiet trade deadline, with reason given that he was not collaborative enough. What other decisions were being made that required collaboration?
If the autocratic decision was (6) lack of AHL callups, then we should have seen a surge after Francis removal. We didn’t. My interpretation: Peters got what he wanted, no callups.
Which leaves a lack of collaboration at the trade deadline. This is the scenario where Peters didn’t get what he wanted.
There are two leading possibilities. A) a trade was offered that we didn’t take, or B) no trades were offered to us any we didn’t make any. In other words, we messaged our to teams that we weren’t interested and did nothing.
My human curiosity makes me want to know exactly what unfolded there.
In fact the canes were in the thick of a playoff race at Francis’ untimely removal, and tanked thereafter. While correlation does not imply causation, it can be indicative
If Dundon knew which direction he wanted to go and had a candidate, then maybe. But an impulsive subtraction with no addition left me less than impressed. After the season would have been lunch better for continuity.
Here’s a question, who else has noticed Morgan Geekie putting up 13 points in his first four WHL playoff games this year? Dude is on fire.
He, Mattheos, Elynuik, and Bean have all had good seasons and have all been playing well in the playoffs. Geekie is having the best playoff performance out of the four though. I believe 9 of those 13 points are goals and he’s ranked top five in his teams’ history in points (?) in the playoffs in far less games than the other ranked players.
Canes’ CHL prospects really seem to shine in playoffs. Helvig has won three games in goal playing solid if unspectacular to this point.
With Smallman lighting it up for Everglades the competition to make Checkers is going to be stiff again. One or two of these middle round picks will make a mark in NHL.
I think GMRF’s removal was a combination of both scenarios. I’ll bet a trade was on the table that he didn’t communicate or take, and that may not have sat well with either TD or BP. Likewise, reassigning RF during a basketball tournament (I’m not from NC so I don’t get the whole basketball hype) but anyway this was to serve as a media distraction.
I have a feeling the team tanked not because of RF’s removal, rather, the moves that were not made which telegraphed to the team no help is on the way. That was probably the icing on the cake for demotivation, hence the extreme losses that followed.
Quite possible.
In addition, imagine if you were one of the guys on the trading block and the GM got fired for not trading you. That would be a tough day and tough situation.
It would be hard to go to work and hang out with the guys as though it never happened. Hard to tell if the players would/could find out about potential deals. certainly would if someone had a no trade clause.
PS I am not very good at typing on my phone anytime but autocorrect is particularly vicious when I am out walking my three dogs in the dark. Sorry for the typos!
I agree with a lot of ashevillecaniac says – I absolutely agree that no call-ups was driven by BP. If BP wanted call-ups, RF would have delivered. Conversely, RF was not going to force callups on BP.
I really think RF was working the phones and looking at deals. I also believe he is very conservative in what he does and we all know how close to the vest he holds his hand. I really don’t think it was a specific trade left on the table or inactivity that led to RF’s promotion. I think it was the process that didn’t work for TD. And he recognized it. Making the move then was the smart move for him – whether he chose ACC night specifically to obfuscate it or not is hard to say.
I do want to correct ac and lfd – in the middle of February we were in the playoff hunt. But we closed the month with 6 straight losses going into the trade deadline – we would have and should have clearly been buyers but for those losses. But I wouldn’t say we started losing only after RF became PHO or after no trades were completed before the deadline.
Matt – I think all of your questions are well-considered. Do you think RF will write a tell-all autobiography?? 🙂
You’re right TJ, we did tank prior to the deadline. There was an excellent discussion here about 2 weeks before the deadline on what it would take to be buyers at the deadline, and the team underperformed even the lowliest of projections.
RF may have been removed for not being a seller.
I doubt it. I think RF is classier than that, he is a pretty classy guy in fact. His number is in the rafters of the PNC Arena, he led the team to the 2002 almost miracle, he has done a lot for this team and I hope the fact his managerial career with the team didn’t quite work out as everyone had hoped for won’t tarnish that. He did the best he could, he did a lot of good things, but in my opinion, he is a hockey guy, not a business guy, and was too close to the players to manage the club as a business. Another sign of a classy guy.
The unfortunate part for Francis, in my opinion, is that he went out and got Williams to help with scoring, but we also lost Stempniak. So instead of Williams being part of the solution to our offensive issues he ends up just being a Stempniak replacement. Not to mention Rask didn’t bounce back, Faulk and Skinner had bad seasons, and Darling didn’t pan out (so far). I hate it because I think his patient approach was going to pay off and be best for the team long-term. And I’m not sure a new GM will do a good enough job making the team competitive long and short term. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Well, not to get too bogged down in the RF discussion, but by the most objective of measures, the team, under his management, did not make significant progress, did not make the playoffs, and the few major signings he made did not pan out, especially his goalie blunders. Maybe he just had terrible luck, like JR had with the Russians, but ultimately the man in charge has to take the ultimate responsibility.
Also his single biggest mistake was to sign Williams and not make him captain.
Williams didn’t have the skill the team needed the most. The skill he does have is leadership and winning mentality. By bringing him in and then not taking advantage I think both the team and JW suffered.
Whether the prospects that were drafted under RF will transform the team, well, we don’t know yet (and in any case it was the Canes scouting staff that drafted those, not sure if change in management affected the drafting strategy much, maybe it did).
I found it weird initially that RF got the job, he was part of the existing management, being JR’s right hand man.
Promoting someone who was part of the problem didn’t seem to be what the team needed.
These are all interesting questions and we will probably never find out, but the most interesting ones have to wait for next year.
Will the team find its groove and make the playoffs again.
All are great questions and it would be great to hear the answers, but I doubt any light will be shed on most of these issues in the coming weeks.
If any trade deals fell through prior to the deadline, why weren’t any players called up at that time? It would seem that would have provided a jolt to the team. Certainly, the injection of talent from the AHL may not have provided the bump needed to put us above the line, but…
Very curious to see what Peters’ fate will be. Perhaps Dundun is waiting to hire a new GM and let that person decide Peters’ fate. (?)
Bottom line, like last year, the team is not far off, but we need to add some talented vets. The team definitely needs to develop grit.