With the Carolina Hurricanes being officially eliminated from the playoffs on Tuesday, this week’s Thursday Coffee Shop does a little bit of looking back on the 2016-17 season a little bit of looking forward to the summer.
Carolina Hurricanes polls
Please remember to click ‘vote’ after each poll response.
The first 2 polls were the topic of Tuesday’s Daily Cup of Joe entitled “When the Carolina Hurricanes 2016-17 season got away.”
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The last poll is the subject of Thursday’s Daily Cup of Joe about the potential to re-sign Jaccob Slavin early this summer.
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Carolina Hurricanes discussion questions
1) What are your thoughts on the risk/reward of re-signing Jaccob Slavin early? Do you like a 2-3 year bridge deal or prefer to just lock him up with a 5-6 year deal? What do you figure for annual salary for a shorter and also longer deal?
2) What are your predictions for Hurricanes transactions that we see before the end of June? Re-signings? Buy outs? Trades? Expansion draft maneuvering?
Go Canes!
1. Sign Slavin to a 4-5 year deal at most hoping to get a better dollar value. A two or three year bridge deal just leaves you with another negotiation 3 years from now with no real upside for the team. If I were to suggest a salary for a 4-5 year deal it would be for $4M to 4.5M. At the end of this contract he would still be in his prime and if his play merited it he could go into a higher number of dollars.
2. Predictions
a) We obtain a goalie expected to be a number 1.
b) Resignings: Stalberg would be a good starting point. He’s a step up from McGinn and DiGuiseppe which means an improvement.
Slavin and Pesce
c) Buyouts: None
d) Trades: Either Ward or Lack to make room for the new goalie.
Trade with Vegas for a goalie sending draft pick(s).
Trade with Colorado for MACKINNON (to hell with Duchene and Landeskog). Give up young defenseman and/or picks.
e) Expansion draft: Anything is possible. Very hard to say.
The Nathan MacKinnon thing (if true) is interesting. The combination of age, caliber of play/experience and contract is great. He is signed long-term for a reasonable $6.3 million which provides cost certainty and a reasonable price if he just keeps doing what he’s doing. But there might even be some upside if he finds an even higher level (which is possible – he’s only 21).
I always learn something from Matt and think RedRyder makes good points. But I think you are both missing this one. From what I understand there is little precedent for players who have made it to the NHL by 21 or so to make significant improvement (and I unscientifically validated this by looking at careers for Duchene, P. Kane, Towes, Marchand, Staal, Skinner, and Taylor Hall–only Kane and Marchand made really “jumps” later in career). So MacKinnon is most likely to produce 20-25 goals and 50-55 points. Not bad, but not really a value at $6million.
And there seems to be an exception to the improvement issue. European, specifically Scandinavian players seem to improve. Probably because it takes 3-4 years to really get accustomed to the rink size and style in the NHL (again not at all scientifically verified by Granlund, Joking, Filppula, Backstroke, where only Backstrom didn’t make significant progress, and he had 100 point season at 22). So trading for MacKinnon would be risking that he is at his peak, which seems 60-75% likely, while also risking that Rask won’t get his production much closer to MacKinnon at 30% salary discount. And Rask improving for another year or two is probably 50/50.
I think Francis is doing something similar to what Epstein did in baseball. RF appears to be determining what makes the most sense up and down the lineup based on salary constraints, not just changing things because a player is slightly better than one on the current roster. And that is a great strategy for 2 reasons: 1) As Dmilleravid pointed out, it makes more sense in hockey to improve marginal players than add top-flight players; 2) Aho, Lindholm, Pesce, Slavin, and Skinner all need contracts in next 2 or 3 years. They should all be part of this team for the long haul. Signing a $6million 55 point-a-year player might jeopardize them.
Interesting comment with merit to boot.
I was talking to someone about MacKinnon yesterday. I put him a little bit in the same category as Skinner in that he has that dynamic ability to create his own shot. I like that because what I think it means is that a player’s floor is fairly high. He’s not a sniper who needs a high-end playmaker to create chances for him. He will create most of what he needs himself. That showed fairly well this season with MacKinnon having a respectable season on a team that was 1 of the absolute worst in recent history.
I think the key for the Canes is making the right best in the $4-6M range. Even less than salary cap budget can stock about 1/2 of a roster in that price range as long as it has good young players on entry-level contracts to fill most of the rest.
When did it go bad? Easy, when RF decided to go the cheap route and keep poor goalies and forgo upgrading our forwards…
It’s the old insanity thing again, keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome!
Let me elaborate on my concerns… making the p-offs is not a major accomplishment, when you realize 8 out of 16 (one-half) of the conference will be there!!! This team was not better than eleven teams…OR BETTER SAID…ONLY BETTER THAN FOUR TEAMS…4 TEAMS…
OH YES, RF DID A GREAT JOB…REALLY??? Now, let’s remember (its so long, I can’t remember) how many years is it since the candy-canes
played better than 8 teams?
Give Slavin the deal Faulk got, if he’ll go for it.