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Canes Sign Brad Malone 2 years/$1.3 million

Christer

Christer

Well-known member
I can't see anyone reported on it but The Canes signed Brad Malone. The numbers are unknown to me though.
 
Re: The Free Agency Thread

Can he play goalie ? Is he the tweak the canes speak of? By canes terms he's a sniper.
 
Might be a long offseason folks. Take a look at the rest of our division and the moves they are making and explain to me how Bill Peters is going to close the gap and turn us into a playoff team?

Brad Malone is maybe Craig Adams at best.
 
6'2" 207 lbs. Centerman - can play wing. 25 years old.

$600K this year, $700K next year.
 
Maybe I'm missing something, but I fail to see why anyone would take issue with Carolina signing a big physical center to give us some depth in the system. It's not like we're over run with guys like Malone.
 
JB, I think the comments are not directed to Malone, per se, but to the fact that we didn't do much on the first day of FA when everyone else seemed busy filling strategic holes.
 
ThinIce said:
JB, I think the comments are not directed to Malone, per se, but to the fact that we didn't do much on the first day of FA when everyone else seemed busy filling strategic holes.
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Malone seems like a nice depth signing to me, but it is hardly a reason to get excited about a different Canes team next season. Especially since, by all indications, it is effectively a replacement for Manny Malholtra.

Personally, I would've got charged up by a signing like Brian Boyle. He signed for 3 years a 2 Mil per in Tampa. He's a solid face-off guy (could help replace Manny), has impressive size, and represents a much better option at 3C than Riley Nash.

Given what I heard in the pressers, I suspect Canes management felt like that kind of money was just too rich for their blood. So Riley Nash at 3C it will be.
 
Brad Malone may be a fine 4th line guy (Dreger actually described him as 4th line/barely NHL quality), but he certainly isn't buzzworthy. PK is out there stating season ticket holder sales need to increase x% and we have nothing to parade in front of the fans (currently) except the coaching changes and Brad Malone (and a 31 year old minor league lifer goalie).

I consider myself somewhat NHL saavy but I'll admit that I don't remember ever hearing Brad Malone's name...like EVER. Yet he is likely going to be one of our marquee moves this offseason. Part of spending on UFAs is the buzz it creates. The Caps basically rebuilt their whole blueline. Yeah they overpaid, but you know what, they should be better. Certainly their fans are going to expect them to be better.

Fans grab on to acquistions to get them through the offseason. Brad Malone? I can't even tell you if he's better than Nic Blanchard, so all of these acquisitions do nothing for my 'we just got better' meter. This is a pretty unorthodox way to rebuild a consistant loser...do nothing but make a few 4th line tweaks, get a new 3rd string goalie, and lay it all on the new coach to get it to work with the same guys that failed last year. Even the bad Whalers teams of the 90s would go out and make a whole bunch of trades to change the mix. Didn't work most of the time, but you had new faces and new promise every season. All we really have is a new coach who apparently is convinced he can work some serious magic here and turn last year's losers to this year's winners. Oh, and he has NEVER done that at the NHL level before as a head coach.

Hopefully this works Ronnie, but good luck trying to increase season ticket sales while this is going on. I'm just waiting for PK to lob the first 'maybe we need to relocate' grenade.
 
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Brad Malone? Never heard of 'im...could be the guy who runs my local Target store or the kid I hire to mow my grass.
 
Who said every signing had to be a big deal player? He's not replacing Malhotra anyway. Seems to me that he's replacing Sutter as a depth guy who can fill in with the big club and provide some grunt.

I just don't get the angst when a team that has almost no size in their system signs a decent depth guy with size.

And if the judge of a good depth signing is whether or not we've heard of him .... ummm.
 
I expected depth signings, sure. But I also expected the Canes to go out there and land one or two players @ or around 2-3 million. If we don't have 4-6 million in cap space then my expectations where clearly wrong. Never the less, hard to be stoked about any signing - significant or otherwise - when the total output of our activity seems to have been to shed the only decent role players we had, granted none were the big bodies we needed but put me down in the category that I would have been much happier replacing Pat Dwyer with Malone (just body wise - not position/line-wise) and keeping Malholtra. We can convince ourselves till we are blue in the face that he was only good at face-offs but that is just not true. He was probably the most 'team guy' player we had on our club last season. Anyway... fine to change that piece - but make it an upgrade. Yes, now we lost a center /face-off specialist. I don't see the club being anyway better, on paper than at season's end.
Who knows...
 
We have cap space, JN, but we're not a cap team.

With what we're currently holding, we're at $61M (thanks, JR) and probably not going above $64M or so (sheer guess).

So, we have maybe $3M tops to flesh out the 4th line, find a 7th D-man (ideally a second-pairing right-shot D-man to go with Hainsey instead of having to use Liles/Murphy), and upgrade our 3C from Nash.

We weren't shopping yesterday because our payroll budget had already been spent before free agency began. So, we have maybe $3M left in salary budget, at least until a trade is made somewhere, and can't spend it all in one place.
 
jeffbear said:
Who said every signing had to be a big deal player? He's not replacing Malhotra anyway. Seems to me that he's replacing Sutter as a depth guy who can fill in with the big club and provide some grunt.

I just don't get the angst when a team that has almost no size in their system signs a decent depth guy with size.
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Nobody said every signing had to be a big deal player, and I suspect the angst has very little to do with Malone and more to do with next year's roster composition. At least that is where my angst is coming from.

If we grant the premise that Malone replaces Sutter (reasonable) then the present line-up is exactly the same as last year's except without Malholtra and Lokti.

RF's comments strongly suggested that: (a) the group last year simply underachieved, (b) Charlotte guys like Boychuk and Terry will be given the chance to step up into the open spots and (c) any more signings this off-season will be simply depth / 4th line / 7th D type signings.

As a fan I am having a lot of trouble getting excited about this team for next year. On paper they look like a slightly worse version than last year's clusterf$#k. But perhaps I will be proven wrong. Perhaps PK is right and this is a "very good team." They just need the right coach and some tweaking in the depth positions.
 
I don't think the team looks worse right now than it did last year. The Canes are one of the younger teams in the league and I expect them to be better just by having gained experience.

Apparently the McClement signing made the average age jump from the last third of the league to the middle of the pack, but I still expect the team to be better.
 
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Yeah ... I fail to see how the group we have under contract now is any worse than last year's roster. Mostly because it's virtually the same. I'm not saying they've gotten better but they certainly haven't gotten any worse. And I think anybody who follows this team will acknowledge that last year's group under-achieved rather dramatically. It's completely reasonable to expect more from the likes of the Staals, Semin, etc.

Not defending anybody here, but as we've established ... with VERY little available budget to work with, I'm not sure what anybody wants right now. Bulking up the fourth line and adding some depth on D is still something you can do. The first two days of free agency didn't take that off the table, and there's still a good chance of some bargains once all the shaking out gets done on the teams with Cap issues.
 
jeffbear said:
Yeah ... I fail to see how the group we have under contract now is any worse than last year's roster. Mostly because it's virtually the same. I'm not saying they've gotten better but they certainly haven't gotten any worse. And I think anybody who follows this team will acknowledge that last year's group under-achieved rather dramatically. It's completely reasonable to expect more from the likes of the Staals, Semin, etc.

Not defending anybody here, but as we've established ... with VERY little available budget to work with, I'm not sure what anybody wants right now. Bulking up the fourth line and adding some depth on D is still something you can do. The first two days of free agency didn't take that off the table, and there's still a good chance of some bargains once all the shaking out gets done on the teams with Cap issues.
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I applaud and second your appeal for patience and optimism. I will say that we have brought in a couple of bigger guys.
I really think this is it though, this season - contracts et all. E. Staal better get it together, personally I would have gone large and pulled a Columbus. Rebuild now around guys like |J. Staal, J. Skinner Fleury and E. Lindholm but E. Staal IS still on the youngish side so... who knows... and we better hope J. Staal has a good re-breakout year that never was with us.
I really wish we could land a quality, power forward RW.... that we could mix into the top 6 and drop the Patty Dwyers and Nathan Gerbe's from that mix. At least one of those two. Say... a Justin Williams type?
And if we could get a couple of 33-35, stay at home, good size, physical defenseman on the cheap'ish, with veteran presence, that are effective and can stay standing on their skates???? and NOT NAMED TIM GLEASON (REALLY HATE THAT SIGNING UGH!!!!!!!!!!) - I'd be really really optimistic on the direction too. Let's hope you're right and we'll see some other moves that will further tweak us in the right direction. Small steps so far, but they're there.
 
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