I will be away from Canes hockey for something more important from Friday night through mid-day Sunday and mostly out of pocket for that time, so I am trusting the neighborhood Coffee Shop to chime in with a recap and notes later tonight. There will be a placeholder post up before the end of the game.
If I catch a few minutes late Friday, the comments here will be my first source for what happened against the Blues. Otherwise, this will be my first stop when I roll back into town on Sunday with just enough time to catch up before scrambling to Sunday’s 5pm start against the Ducks.
Your turn to recap…Go!
I am imagining if we won we would have posts here! 🙂
We had troubles all night clearing the puck. And both Blues’ goals came at the end of long cycles and multiple failed attempts to clear.
We couldn’t get the puck cleanly through the neutral zone. It looked like a 2-3 trap – we couldn’t skate through it, the Blues were in all the passing lanes, and we resorted to passing to the walls to try to force breakouts which didn’t happen. Williams said you need the “will” to get out – and it wasn’t there.
In the offensive zone we did have a few good looks but our passing was sloppy..
Ward was solid – he deserved the second star.
Fatigue may have played a role, but so far this season we have done poorly against close-checking and grinding teams – be they CBJ, WPG, or STL. We have to fix that.
With Turbo out Kuokkanen should get a chance to be a difference maker. I also think it may be time to move Aho to center.
Trying not to get too discouraged but here are some facts:
We have been held to 1 goal 5 times. In 9 games. Off the top of my head if I’m not mistaken that’s 56% of the time. Small sample size… but that won’t get it done. At all. And otherwise we have six goals against a completely lost Frederik Andersen and a bad defensive team, five against a low end Edmonton backup goalie (and a team missing multiple key players that’s not great defensively), four against Minnesota’s backup, and two against a solid defense/goalie tandem in Calgary. Every other team you could classify as “good” (and even tonight St. Louis was playing their backup) when it comes to goaltending and defense, we’ve essentially done nothing. It’s been the same story for eight years. We don’t have finishers. We have no desperation and hunger to get to the areas you HAVE to get to to score consistently in the NHL. At least, not until it’s too late usually. I don’t know what it’s gonna take. Maybe this is just a bad stretch and the team hasn’t hit its stride yet, but it has to be sooner than later before we dig a hole like basically every other year the past decade. Most of these games I could easily swallow as a one off and not get too discouraged, but eventually you have to start beating good teams occasionally if you want to make the playoffs. Here’s hoping these don’t become trends and are just blips on the radar that we’ll look back on as “the early season feeling out process as the team came together”. Need a win Sunday. Then another after that. And a couple more after that would be lovely.
raleightj basically said what I’m thinking. This was the kind of game we were expecting and we ended up on the wrong side of it. Except for a few brief stretches, they were clearly the better team all night. Frustrating game to watch.
I mentioned yesterday we are a better team when playing a more freestyle run-n-gun game. Grinding out 1-goal games is not the way we are built. I agree with bwstanley26 above, if you breakdown our wins v. losses you easily see what our team identity is. Our offense fires on all cylinders when we play against higher offense/weaker defense teams (EDM, TOR). When we play better defensive teams we turn stone cold (CBJ, WPG, STL, DAL, TB…prior to that we almost lost to CGY).
The key problem is in two areas:
1. We tend to play to the other team’s style too often. Having a strategy is one thing, but just because some teams have better defenses doesn’t mean we should play into their style. I think this is a mentality that needs to change, because I highly doubt other teams playing the Canes are saying the same things. This over-analysis needs to end if we want to be a playoff team.
2. We have the same problem we had this offseason and for the last 8 years. We only have one consistent “finisher” and that is Skinner. We need another veteran “finisher” to play on our top line. We needed a Duchene or similar to come in and take the scoring pressure off our young talent, Aho, Lindholm, etc. The young guys are still learning how to loosen up and score against grinding teams, and as JWilly said during post game, the team is still learning how to win these types of games. Here’s the kicker, we are almost 10 games into the season and we are still trying to learn how to play these games when 2/3rds of the league plays this way.
By my count even if we win Sunday we are .500 if you count the OTL for what it is, a loss. The next 10 game stretch may determine our playoff hopes.
Just curious, can you explain with example what you mean in 1.? Also, would you have traded slaving or pesce for duchane? That was likely the only options he had.
While I don’t blame the team for losing (it was a tough assignment, with the back to back and travel), I am not happy with some of the decisions and the way we played.
1. If there ever was a chance to give some fresh faces a tryout, this was the game. JK has traveled with the team for weeks just to sit in the press box. The team is coming of a road game with travel, how can we not use the chance to play him, and maybe bring up one or two guys from the Checkers to inject some energy and legs into the team, when it is needed the most? I know that is no guarantee of a win either, but we had nothing to lose.
2. The powerplay is atrocious. I think the pp yesterday literally cost us the game (or at least 1 point in the standings). I thinks Rod needs to be transfered to other team duties such as a conditioning coach (man, he would be good at that). The guy is a legend and a legit hall of famer, but that does not necessarily make him a good coach, and the powerplay has been bad for years. We cannot afford a powerplay that not only fails to convert in tight games but actually costs us. WE can’t change up the personnel like that, but we can change the coaching. I’m not saying we should panic and do it now but we need to look at this as a position of weakness going forward.
3. It was good to see a good game from J&H, probably our best defense pair on ice last night, but we overplay our top defensemen and it showed. Also kudos to Ward for a great game, it has to be frustrating when two stellar saves are not enough to prevent a goal against. I hope TT’s injury is not serious, just when he was on a streak.
We must beat the Ducks on Sunday, else I think our spiral to the bottom has officially started.
Hindsight is a great thing. We probably would have had a lot of comments on “I can’t believe he changed the line up after such a good win”….
It’s not a hindsight decision. The reason would have been that we knew the team was tired after the Tor game and could do with a spark, and we have players like JK that have enough potential to travel with the team but don’t get a chance to play (worst of both worlds, they get no time to practice in Clt while getting frustrated sitting in the Canes press box).
Win or lose, I think the Canes should have given some of the younger kids a game. There was an article recently over on WRAL that discussed this.
I said the same thing about Niicahs and the Dallas game (the Canes had a lot of travel but played the same lineup that beat the Oilers).
Of course I am not the coach of the Canes, nor do I have the faintest idea what goes on in the locker room, but as an armchair GM I find these decisions strange (and being an armchair GM is one of the fun things about being a sports fan). 😉
Regarding Brind’Amour – for several years prior to being promoted to assistant coach, Rod was the development coach which is the type of position you are describing. I agree that given the PP, he is not an effective X’s and O’s coach.
I mean J&N (Justin and Noah).
I really can’t disagree with much that the rest of you have said. I think it was obvious we had no skating legs last night. St Louis is not a fast team, but they made us look slow. One thing St Louis is they are an experienced group that know how to play the game. I think our inexperience showed at times. IMO we wouldn’t have even been in the game if Ward hadn’t played so well. The shame of it all is our goalies are holding other teams to two or less goals per game most of the time and neither has an above 50% win percentage. We are wasting opportunities to build a cushion in the standings. The power play is costing us dearly.
Enough of the gloom and doom for me. I’m with Breezy. We must beat the Ducks Sunday.
On another note I saw on various sites that the Greenberg ownership deal is probably dead. I also saw where we recently had offered Faulk plus other assets for Duchene and Colorado turned us down. In the offseason I was negative on such a deal. Right now I’m on the fence as our scoring just doesn’t appear to be enough to prevent another season out of the playoffs. Faulk is off to his usual slow start IMO and by the time he gets things dialed up our season is usually over.
Humm, that is the first I have heard of a Faulk plus other assets for Duchene being anything close to real. I kind of left that thought as I felt Colorado wanted way too much for Duchene. If true, sounds like they still want too much. Stranger things have happened but I thought that ship had sailed. I commented on Shipachyov below, certainly Wallmark could be brought up as well. I do not see many #1 center options.
I don’t think it is “dead”. Karmanos called out Greenberg for something that has been suspected since the start – Greenberg doesn’t have the dollars. There are all sorts of reasons why Karmanos may have gone public with this. But the deal is not dead – one reason may be to put pressure on Greenberg to make it happen.
I also agree with the things said here. I do believe we can play with anybody. We just do not have the scoring to win one goal games. I felt Ward played excellent last night, too bad because he deserved a win for that effort. I also felt Justin and Noah put it together, they looked good. We lost, but it was a good game and one we could have won. We have been keeping teams to two goals most games, that should be a winning formula. The power play stinks and it is costing us games. I agree with the above comment that it may be time for Brind’Amour to be assigned another task.
On the positive side, that pass from Williams to Skinner for the goal was like play of the year stuff. That was pretty.
Okay, so sharing something I was thinking about, Vegas has Vadim Shipachyov at the AHL and available. 9M two year contract. I watched a Vegas game a week or so ago and there was one guy who looked to be really dangerous. Shipachyov was the one who caught my attention over an over again. Now, when somebody gets put down to the AHL level you always wonder. This guy is not proven in the NHL but he was ripping it up in the KHL (the next best league). He may not be a number one center but could help the Skinner Williams line. I love the story of the Doctor working hard several years to get to the NHL and I believe BP really has his heart set on him, but, I was watching last night and it was bad pass after bad pass, loosing battles, etc. And really lacking in scoring on a line with Williams and Skinner. I have always been a proponent of Ryan but I know others have raised the issue. It may be time to get some help there. I do suspect Shipachyov could be obtained on the cheap and he could be a real catalyst. Just curious what others think? I do recognize the risks.
clarification, when I said cheap, 4.5M a year is not cheap. I meant that we would probably not have to trade much, low round pick, etc.
Where tired legs (or lack of effort) show themselves most clearly is in lack of movement away from the puck.
We had difficulties in transition because of poor movement away from the puck. Players weren’t consistently creating passing lanes to create options for the puck holder.
Anaheim had very good movement away (and with) the puck in transition last night in Tampa, creating point-blank opportunities in the slot. Carrying the puck into the zone with speed creates a whole different type of opportunity than a dump and chase on the boards.
The Ducks got Sami Vatanen back last night and Ryan Miller back tonight, but both should have a little rust.
If the canes put in the effort with good movement away from the puck tonight, look for lots of scoring chances. Anaheim has the back-to-back with travel and we need to
1) jump on them early
2) wear them out with the cycle in the o zone
3) take advantage of their tired legs late
Fast transitional hockey will create a big win tonight.