Except during the COVID layoff, Canes and Coffee has always provided year-round Canes hockey coverage, so one season leads quickly into the next. But with the official end of the 2020-21 season, I would like to thank everyone who spends a portion of their Canes hockey time here. The site would not be the same without the community and especially the regulars who share great insight in the comments. I hope everyone has a tremendous summer, and I look forward to fairly quickly starting the process of debating how best to to build the 2021-22 Carolina Hurricanes. Go Canes — Matt
With the off-season ahead, no doubt there will be plenty of articles and time to assess the 2020-21 season for the Carolina Hurricanes. But for waking up the day after a disappointing ending, today’s Daily Cup of Joe will focus on the bigger picture which leans much more positive than negative.
The Hurricanes game 5 loss and second round dismissal for the the 2021 NHL Playoffs at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning was a massively disappointing end to a good season overall. The team competed for the President’s Trophy and won a series in the playoffs which would easily put them in the top third of teams in the NHL. But yet, the end results feel disappointing because they are. As I said on Twitter shortly after Tuesday’s game ended, the level of disappointment given the results is a testament to how far this team has come. Only three years ago, the goal very simply was just to make the playoffs. A short and crazy three years later, the bar for success has ratcheted way up and as a hockey community one can feel it today. During the off-season, we will definitely debate how close the Hurricanes really are and what is needed to take a next step, but this team is closer than it feels after the disappointment. The 2020-21 Carolina Hurricanes had a legitimate claim to being the best team in the NHL during the middle stretch of the regular season. Painfully obvious right now is the fact that all that really matters is reaching that level in the playoffs, but the regular season success does suggest that the team is at least in the neighborhood of being capable of winning it all.
Though I do think there is room for improvement from outside the current roster, at the same time I think the team will enter the 2021-22 season pretty similarly to how it entered the current season which is looking for a young roster to drive next levels of success. And though it did not work out tremendously this year, that is not a bad place to be. The core of the team is young and established but still with room to grow, and players like Martin Necas, Andrei Svechnikov and even Sebastian Aho can still reach a higher level.
Also worth noting is that winning the Stanley Cup, even for elite teams, is often a process. The current Tampa Bay Lightning team struggled mightily under the pressure of being a perennial regular season leader only to falter in the playoffs. The Washington Capitals struggled for even longer with even more debilitating setbacks before breaking through. Though just surging straight to the top of the NHL and winning the Stanley Cup would be more fun, the Hurricanes gradual progress with setbacks is actually a fairly normal path.
Put more succinctly, despite the disappointment right now, the future of the Carolina Hurricanes is still incredibly promising.
Go Canes!
Thanks for your generous donation of time and effort to the hockey maniacs /Caniacs who look forward to hearing from you about everything Canes! Will you be able to supply us with any DRAFT INFO? I’m always looking for any info about the future draft and the many prospects, ranking, and predictions, and analysis of the needs of the team etc! All you have time to disseminate would be greatly appreciated! Thanks again!
Will definitely cover the draft with more emphasis on potential wheeling/dealing during it and also the players drafted afterward.
For pre-draft, I find that there are great writers/analysts that do a tremendous job covering the literally 100s of players year-round (because it is a year-round, full-time job) and that those who try to jump into this in early June are mostly just borrowing/summarizing the legitimate research.
Draft info is going to be limited this year. Junior leagues had limited seasons and in many cases scouts were unable to attend in person. Watching a video feed isn’t the same as being there. It will be interesting to see how teams adapt to this situation.
Matt, thanks for all the hard work; you are clearly the glue that binds us together here and I often wake up and struggle to put into words how I feel about the team only to read them here. Thank you.
TBY just dialed it up in the playoffs. Their PK was a brick wall and their PP was unstoppable. Of course, after the final regular season standings, we might have been a little deluded into thinking we had narrowed the gap with them more than we actually did, but remember they didn’t have two of their best players (#86 / #91) in the lineup and those players would move every team’s needle.
In any event, the boys should be proud of their season even if they didn’t reach their ultimate goal.
Go Canes. The future is still quite bright.
Hey Matt
Maybe you can post an “offseason coffeeshop” topic soon so we can comment on ongoing developments and speculations (you can take a well-deserved break from creating content, just keep it open for conversation).
Things I’ve noticed:
The Canes signed Eric Gallines (or however you spell it) to a 2-way deal (he’s a bottom 3 pairing D-man with some experience), my guess is that Jake Bean will be exposed to the expansion draft and this is the insurance.
In an interview over on WRAL, Adam Gold said he expected Svech to be resigned on a bridge deal but that Hamilton will walk for max money deal on the open market (I think it sounds about right, the Canes will likely offer him a 6.5, max 7 deal but he’ll be wanting north of 8)
Rod has yet to sign a coaching extension. Rumors have it that TD does not want to pay the asking price for the assistant coaching staff and Roddie is holding out to see that they get a good deal. Regardless, unless we hear something this week I am beginning to get concerned. There’s a lot of demand for a head coach around the league.
Adam expects both of Lawrence and Geekie (+ possibly Fogele) to be exposed to the expansion draft for forward. I’m not sure, especially Lawrence.
What to do in goal, with Mrazek and Reimer both UFAs and Ned an RFA with arbitration rights, who played really well this season ..
Yes, there’s a lot of activity in the land of the Caniacs, now and in the weeks to come.
All good questions and I expect Matt will open up a post soon.
My guess on Hamilton is similar – but I expect it will be a sign-and-trade. With a flat cap most teams will have to offload salary/cap. It’s a bit trickier, but Hamilton will get his extra year and the Canes will get something back.
With 11Fs under contract or RFAs (and Necas exempt), we will have to expose 3. When we’re down to Lorentz, Geekie, Fast, Foegele we are talking “parts” and not critical or core players.
Bean was pretty exposed in the playoffs – I don’t see us protecting him over SKjei, who was getting big minutes.
But, all in all, I still think we might deal with Francis instead of just letting him pick one.
Ned has earned the starting role, and I expect we will pick up a backup either 1B or 2) in free agency. We could resign Reimer (after the expansion draft), but Mrazek wants to start. We have goalies in the AHL and ECHL we can expose to meet the expansion draft requirements.
The Canes have given Hamilton the green light to talk to other teams.
I hope they can at least do a sign-and-trade scenario rather than losing him for nothing, but it is what it is. I’m still hoping the Canes could sign him on no more than 7-mill 4-year deal, unlikely but players that are loyal to teams do take hometown discounts.
There was an interesting article about that from one of the Leafes’ writers, pointing out that Tampa’s best asset was to fix the salary of their core and not hand out frivolous contracts after that (like the Leafs did with Marner and Nylander).
In a salary cap era the goal is to get most quality per dollar, and signing 1 or 2 key players to near league maximum salary like the Leafs did limits the chance to build a championship roster around them.
I also wonder if the Islanders can go all the way against Tampa. It’s obviously way too early to tell but they won the first outing.
If they do, then we should take a second look at what they did at the trade deadline. They got some really good players and clearly signaled they were going all in this year, something the Canes could’ve done.
For Tampa, I still can’t believe they are allowed to play with a roster that is 20 mill over the cap. The Lightning team we played during regular season was roughly on par with the Canes, the Lightning of the post season has cap of over 90 million dollars with way more star power than any team can fit under the cap, so the idea that the cap does not apply to playoff roster is pretty ridiculous and threatens to upset the whole league parity.
Roddie will be back (signed a 3-year extension).
As for roster tune-up, sounds like Buf is shopping Sam reinhardt. I’d go after that guy to add more top 6 punch, if we downgrade on D.
Roddie is the Jack Adams award winner too!
I admit I had huge doubts about him taking on the role of coach-in-chief 3 years ago. Man, I was terribly wrong in my assessment, and I couldn’t be happier admitting that.
Congrats to Roddie!!
Cheers