2016-17 The Positives

Best thing about Lindholm 3.0 (or is it 4?) is his ability to avoid the big hit. He has never had a problem skating into the high traffic areas, but he often took heavy punishment for doing so. He seems to have that figured out and is in fact, now delivering some punishment of his own.

I can't argue with what's already been said:

Negatives: Goaltending, Scoring, Hanifin (he really regressed, IMO), Physicality, Rask (strong start/weak finish), Road games, Lindholm - 1st half
Positives: PK, Slavin, Aho, Pesce, Home games, Skinner the Streaky Sniper (when he's good, he's really good), Lindholm - 2nd half (Jordan Staal, our big center performed competently and consistently - but wasn't outstanding.)

I would say that we started poorly, rebounded and then went into a mystifying tailspin in January, which pretty much doomed our playoff chances.

Looking at this from a realistic role perspective, I think the positives were very good for this team. I think their shortcomings were largely because the fact that we were missing some top end talent especially 1C, and missing the veteran leadership on the blue line, and missing some grit and snarl from someone big enough to make it hurt.

Positives:
Top of the heap - Aho, Slavin, Pesce, Skinner, Lindholm, Nordstrom, McGinn, Stempniak. I have some guys in here because they did a great job in their role.

Then there is a big bunch of guys here that filled their roles very well. PDG, Brown, Ryan, etc. Guys came in and did what needed to be done and did a solid job.

Negatives/Underperformers:
Not a lot in this list because with so many young guys playing key roles, I don't think any of them were really disappointing. That leaves some vets who we needed more from.

Faulk - we needed him to be better. Maybe seeing Slavin and Pesce out there has changed what we think good is, but it seems to me Justin was off this season. He was a liability in a lot of cases on D, and it seems like moving Hainsey actually made our D better because of what it did to the combinations. Hainsey and Faulk just wasn't good enough or fast enough to recover.

Staal - He wasn't bad by any stretch but for what he's making we need more from him. Either get some more snarl and attitude, or stop shooting high all the damned time, or both. If the goal was 1 foot taller, he'd be leading the league in goals. I also think he's one of the few vets out there and I think part of the cliff dive that was the end of January and most of February was exacerbated by a lack of leadership, and again, given the money and the fact that he's one of our very few vets we could have used more in this area. Would have been nice during that stretch just once for 11 to pick this team up and put them on his back.

Tripp - he continues to discover new levels of blah blah blah. I barely noticed it out of the corner of my eye as we were making a great line change that was a result of a perfectly called timeout that lead to pivotal goal.

Murphy - I don't think it's fair to put him on this list. I just don't think he's good enough for this league, and I don't think anyone here expected anything more out of him than we got. I do take issue with the coaching or GMing on this though. If he was your plan to cover the D for the expansion, he needed to get to 35. Now it looks like he'll end up short of that and that being the case, what was the point of him being on the roster?

Unrated:

Ward/Lack - I think they did as well and at points better than we expected. Other than the January/February slump, they have been at least reasonably solid for the most part. They needed to not ride Cam so hard while Lack was recovering from the concussion because I think he broke from overwork, and the team collapsed when that happened. Had Lack not gotten hurt, things might have been different because Lack has looked good since he's gotten back into things after that. Lack might be a reasonable backup. I don't think Cam is good enough to be the number 1, but it's hard to blame Cam for that - I think he performed above expectations, the expectations were that he would not be good enough and he wasn't.

cmon3 said:

........

Unrated:

Ward/Lack - I think they did as well and at points better than we expected. Other than the January/February slump, they have been at least reasonably solid for the most part. They needed to not ride Cam so hard while Lack was recovering from the concussion because I think he broke from overwork, and the team collapsed when that happened. Had Lack not gotten hurt, things might have been different because Lack has looked good since he's gotten back into things after that. Lack might be a reasonable backup. I don't think Cam is good enough to be the number 1, but it's hard to blame Cam for that - I think he performed above expectations, the expectations were that he would not be good enough and he wasn't.

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Not sure you can rate the goaltending as anything other than a complete failure. The Canes have been in the bottom 6 of team save percentage for the last 5 years. That is a huge goaltending issue and not a one-year anomaly at this point.

For as nice and likable as Eddie and Cam are, there is no getting around the fact they are not NHL caliber starting goalies on a team with playoff aspirations. Something has to change here. Even average NHL goaltending would have this team with a realistic shot for the 8th spot this year as you figure there are probably 2 or 3 additional wins solid goaltending could have produced this year.

CarolinaPen said:

Not sure you can rate the goaltending as anything other than a complete failure. The Canes have been in the bottom 6 of team save percentage for the last 5 years. That is a huge goaltending issue and not a one-year anomaly at this point.

For as nice and likable as Eddie and Cam are, there is no getting around the fact they are not NHL caliber starting goalies on a team with playoff aspirations. Something has to change here. Even average NHL goaltending would have this team with a realistic shot for the 8th spot this year as you figure there are probably 2 or 3 additional wins solid goaltending could have produced this year.

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I agree that goaltending is a complete failure, I just don't blame that on Ward and Lack because they did as good or better than we all expected them to. The goaltending failure is on the management and coaching. It was a bad idea from the beginning, and it got really really bad when Lack got hurt, and wrecked the season when we rode Cam til he broke.

Lack has been very good since he came back from injury. He didn't play much before that.

CarolinaPen said:

Not sure you can rate the goaltending as anything other than a complete failure. The Canes have been in the bottom 6 of team save percentage for the last 5 years. That is a huge goaltending issue and not a one-year anomaly at this point.

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I'd actually go a few steps beyond the starters and say that the entire organization's goaltending has taken yet another step backward this season. The Checkers have had to rely on netminders that we're not even trying to develop in the system. Drafting a goaltender in the first round might actually be a good option in this draft... unless the prospects there are even weaker than the skaters. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, anybody?

Focusing on the Positives, the most noticeable positive for me is the change in the team's culture that has occurred.

Longtime fans can recall many seasons of drifting through shifts with lazy loops instead of start/stops, slow returns to the bench area, a completely non-physical game both before and after whistles, and inconsistent play from game to game and even within a game.

Partly through coaching and partly through changing up some players in leadership roles, those days now seem to be in a distant past. I see hustle through entire shifts. I do see stopping and starting instead of loops. Beginning to see a more team-first psyche in effect post-whistle and more playing the body before the whistle instead of just poking with sticks. And the culture is good honest shifts for the entire game, every game.

This is a huge positive change that has occurred, not only for team success, but also for sheer fan watchability. We have flat turned into the team that used to routinely beat us. We skate, we pass, we score. Puck goes in the defensive zone, puck goes out of the defensive zone. We can actually make passes onto sticks, not into the feet.

Yes, we're still lacking a handful of parts. But, I do like what I see on the ice these days. The change in team culture is still evolving, but definitely a positive to me.

positive - meaningful games in March and perhaps even April.

brassbonanza said:

positive - meaningful games in March and perhaps even April.

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I was joking with my wife about buying tickets for Jesus Christ Superstar on 4/15 and it conflicting with a playoff game. But they'd be on the road, so we figured we were safe...

Elsker said:

We can actually make passes onto sticks, not into the feet.

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Sometimes We are still pretty good at the pass to skates.

Skinner - not sure if this is the right thread for this or not. As positive as Skinner has been in terms of scoring goals, it's often frustrating to watch him attempt to make plays that just are not there, or, not quite the same thing but similar, cough up the puck in the neutral zone or at the for chances going the other direction.

He seems to think he can skate the puck through however many defenders are there and he ends up losing possession.

Or we'll be in the midst of extended pressure in the offensive zone, to the point the defense is exhausted, and he'll take a low percentage shot resulting in loss of possession and release of the pressure on their D.

He doesn't ever seem to curl and look for help, and his one on 3 battles are lots of times high between the circles.

I know the part of him that makes him do these things is part of why he scores so much, but I sure wish he could see what a dominant player he could be if he was able to adjust that part of his game.

I agree with you cmon, and the problem there is that you don't want to stifle Skinner's offensive aggressiveness because on many nights his skill and drive to score goals is most of our offense. I think the solution is balance across the forwards in terms of scoring, which hopefully we can achieve over the coming seasons. But even there its going to be hard to reign in Skinner trying to take everything on his shoulders. I think this is just one of those flaws you have to live with that makes him an imperfect player. Maybe as he matures more this is something he will outgrow.

Teravainen demonstrates the same flaw out there sometimes. There is a big difference between going 1 on 3 down low versus trying to go through 3 players at the blueline and top of the circles which as you said cmon3 is a bad area to try to be a hero.

cmaleski2 said:

But even there its going to be hard to reign in Skinner trying to take everything on his shoulders.

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Him wanting to take everything on his shoulders is one of the things about him we need more of. He plays with the kind of fire I'd like to see more in someone like Staal.

I think Skinner gets mesmerized by the puck on his stick.

When he has the puck he seems to have a single minded focus on getting the puck from his stick to the back of the net and loses awareness of things like the game situation, or where other people are on the ice.

By contrast, Aho even at his young age has a similar drive to score (as evidenced by his 1 on 4 goal the other night), but he doesn't lose his awareness of what else is happening on the ice while he has the puck. It allows him the ability to make insane plays. I realize that's a rare gift, but if Skinner could do that more, he could go from being a very good player in this league to being a great player.

I agree about Teravainen too - he does the same thing Skinner does, just also doesn't score, so...