• Moderators, please send me a PM if you are unable to access mod permissions. Thanks, Habsy.

2017-18 Miscellaneous Canes News Thread

Interesting that Burstyn has worked scouting the OHL and chief scout for McKeen's for years, but we've hired him as a pro scout.

That's a really natural progression IMO. Anybody who's any good as a junior level scout for long enough has a really good baseline for scouting the NHL.
 
Great....


Looking to the 2018-19 season, Forman said the team may again offer a “Canes Pass,” although no firm decision has been made. After Dundon became majority owner in January, the “Canes Pass” was introduced, allowing fans to pay $97 to attend as many as nine home games in February. The team then extended the promotion into March and April.
 
Great....


Looking to the 2018-19 season, Forman said the team may again offer a “Canes Pass,” although no firm decision has been made. After Dundon became majority owner in January, the “Canes Pass” was introduced, allowing fans to pay $97 to attend as many as nine home games in February. The team then extended the promotion into March and April.

Last time I talked to my ticket agent he wouldn't come straight out and say it, but he basically admitted that this was inevitable for the slower months of the season. I fully expect early attendance to be the same as we've seen the past 5 years ... big opening night, tapering down to small numbers in weekday nights in late October. Then they'll over-react and throw the whole month of November into one of those Canes Pass things and turn a deaf ear to any paying customer who might want to complain. I'm probably not even going to bother. I know it's coming and I've already complained. They don't care.

I fully expect to be back to the bad old days of HUGE discounts for group sales, Holiday Packages (remember those?) and "playoff push" packages in the late winter whether they're in the race or not. Heck, it wouldn't shock me to see them do one of those retail tie-ins with a car dealership again. You know ... real classy carny huckster crap.
 
Last edited:
Almost time to give CAM a workout (10AM today). Hopefully there will be no glitches, ticket exchanges will all be seamless and no one has grabbed the seats next to my season tix, which happened to us sometime after the first few weeks last season, although we could never quite figure out who or what held those seats as they went empty most of the season and the people who did sit it them were always different.
 
Now that would be interesting to see. Does a Canes beat writer for the Athletic raise the bar for the N&O? Do they travel to cover the team on roadies (I suspect not?)
 
there are now 4 PNC events during the state fair. The latest is WWE on Oct 13th, a Saturday. That should be a really big mess for traffic.

Setting up for another one of those Centennial Authority meetings like they had back in early 2001 after Gale Force booked the crap out of the arena during the 2000 Sate Fair. You know ... the kind of meeting where the Authority members who've been getting screamed at by the good folks in State and Local government about causing traffic jams and messing up the Fair tell Dundon's crew to calm it back down again. Should be fun. Makes me wish I still knew somebody on the Authority ... wait. I do, and he'll be overdue for a nice lunch that he doesn't have to pay for by then :0)
 
It is my understanding that The Athletic will be hiring a beat writer for the Canes very soon.

Thank goodness. Even if they hire an unapologetic hack, that will still put pressure on the NandO to get rid of Chip and replace him with someone will take the job even vaguely seriously.

Now that would be interesting to see. Does a Canes beat writer for the Athletic raise the bar for the N&O? Do they travel to cover the team on roadies (I suspect not?)


I doubt they'll go that far, but I would suspect that they won't be able to keep pretending that Chip Alexander is doing a sufficiently vigorous job as beat writer if there's ANY level of competition with which to compare.
 
there are only 2 NHL teams the Athletic does not cover, Canes and Coyotes , but surprisingly they cover fewer NFL teams than NHL teams. But maybe that is changing this year.
 
there are only 2 NHL teams the Athletic does not cover, Canes and Coyotes , but surprisingly they cover fewer NFL teams than NHL teams. But maybe that is changing this year.

It's a simple cost versus return issue, I'd think. Most major papers still provide multiple dedicated reporters to the beats of their local NFL teams, while local papers outside of the major markets spend next to nothing providing local beat coverage for NHL teams. I'd think it's fairly cheap to hire an NHL beat writer compared to an NFL writer who has other opportunities.
 
for media there is the NFL and all other leagues are the 7 dwarves. NFL TV ratings are pretty flat now but the ad buyers need to reach people who buy trucks, beer, tires and viagra. :) That viewer group does not watch a lot of TV beyond the NFL and sports.

I remember last year the N&O had daily Panthers articles for weeks after their season ended.
 
Luke DeCock not quitting N&O for a job at the Athletic website, they are hiring to cover the Panthers and I guess they asked him to do it.

https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/luke-decock/article217025935.html

I hope it works out for Luke, but I think he just missed a big opportunity with The Athletic. I have been a subscriber for a year now and the sports coverage is top notch. This trend does not look promising for the N&O.

https://www.statista.com/statistics...e-raleigh-news-und-observer-rd-daily-edition/
 
I hope it works out for Luke, but I think he just missed a big opportunity with The Athletic. I have been a subscriber for a year now and the sports coverage is top notch. This trend does not look promising for the N&O.

https://www.statista.com/statistics...e-raleigh-news-und-observer-rd-daily-edition/

Well, it's early days with that endeavor. Probably too early to judge it simply on the quality of the output. Plenty of people have tried to do some version of the same thing on the internet before and the usual arc has been to go from a bright start through a slow decline when the pay model doesn't live up to revenue projections to a crash and burn ending. Paulie's right about the NFL too ... it DWARFS everything else in sports in America. If they can't figure out how to compete with the big boys for the dollars of football fans, they won't last but so long. Not having beat writers in every NFL market before camps opened was a problem, IMO.

Newspapers are definitely in the death throes. I don't think anybody is arguing that point. I'm just not sure a high quality national online newspaper sports section (which is basically what The Atlantic is) is the next big thing. I love it, but I've long given up on the notion that my tastes are anything like mainstream.
 
Last edited:
I don’t think Luke was saying that he turned down The Athletic, it was a parody of sorts of a whole host of writers who have announced that they’re leaving their current position for The Athletic.

I’m not ready to leap to that yet. I do miss some of the columnists who have gone over, but not enough to make me pay for another subscription.
 
Back
Top