Overall, I am a fan of Canes GM Jim Rutherford. I am not in the camp calling for his job after yet another playoff miss. I grumble about the lack of volume of playoff appearances as much as every other Canes fan. But sprinkled amongst the misses are 3 truly magical deep playoff runs including a Stanley Cup win. And if you understand the details of how those 3 teams were built, Rutherford deserves a huge amount of credit in each case for making some incredibly shrewd moves on the cheap to build great teams on “barely above the floor” budgets.
In evaluating Rutherford specifically for 2013, I come out very mixed but leaning more negative than positive. I give him a C specifically for the 2013 season.
I also think that the more important grade on this summer is still a couple years out when we see what happens with the core that he assembled and committed to long-term this summer. If the team is healthier next year and can fix the blue line and bottom 6 forwards, this season could prove to be a lockout-shortened blip on the way to another Rutherford summer of brilliance. Only time will tell.
Looking at the 2013 season by itself (and not considering the future), I think you can make a case that the Alexander Semin signing was amongst the best free agent signings last summer. Semin himself was solid, but more importantly he played a HUGE part in helping Eric Staal reach another level and to transforming Jiri Tlusty to a level that no one saw coming. Tlusty finished 5th in the league in goal-scoring ahead of guys like Vanek, Nash, Neal and even EStaal. The Tlusty/EStaal/Semin line was 1 of the best in the NHL and Semin played a huge role in that. And (in the initial contract) Rutherford got him for very low risk with a 1-year trial run deal. I also like the JStaal trade. I am on record as thinking he overpaid by 1 player (should have been either a 1st round pick or a top prospect plus Sutter not both), but I give Rutherford credit for moving aggressively to add top-end players to the mix. I also think the Dan Ellis signing was signature “under the radar” Jim Rutherford getting a goalie with a bunch of NHL experience, some of it as a starter on a no-risk 2-way contract. I will save the “tale of 2 goalies” discussion for Ellis’ own evaluation, but I think it was a good signing on a no-risk 2-way contract.
To build teams that have a chance to win it all, you sometimes have to go for it. I give Rutherford credit for doing exactly that this past summer.
But then, maybe short on budget after the Semin signing and JStaal and Skinner future contracts, he built an “if everything works out perfectly” blue line that just failed miserably. To some degree I think he was bitten by his own previous genius. The 2002 Stanley Cup run was accomplished via an on-the-cheap, piece-by-piece blue line assembly project by Rutherford. He got Aaron Ward for about nothing over the summer, reacquired Sean Hill for a mere draft pick in December when he did not work out in St. Louis and somehow managed to get Bret Hedican later in the season in a package mostly designed to unload the failed Sandis Ozolinsh project. (The rest of the crew was Wesley, Wallin and Malik.) Notice the volume of high-end, true top 2 defensemen in the bunch? Exactly 0. Then he did it again in 2006 picking up Frantisek Kaberle as a underwhelming free agent addition for less than $1.5M and Mike Commodore for even less adding them to the carryovers (Wesley, Hedican, Ward, Wallin). Again, none of those players would garner even an honorable mention for 1st, 2nd or 3rd team all-NHL team. But in both cases, Rutherford built a very ho-hum on paper defense for cheap that was good enough to win bunches of playoff games. So he tried to do it again this season after spending most of his budget on forward additions. I think there are 2 important things to notice about his past successes with this project. First, it did not work every year. Sprinkled amongst the couple deep playoff runs were transition years where the defense was some combination of not good enough and not deep enough. So while Rutherford has proven he is capable of some shrewd blue line building on the cheap, it is clearly a risky proposition that is probably not a recipe for year in year out consistency. I think the second observation is even more telling. Past successes of this project leaned heavy on defense-first, fairly safe kind of players who (except Wallin the 1st time around and Commodore the 2nd) were experienced NHLers and proven commodities. Somewhat related, I think it is interesting to note that Rutherford’s couple forays into the high end of offense-oriented defenseman were both huge failures – those being Sandis Ozolinsh and Tomas Kaberle.
I think that is where Rutherford’s 2013 blue line plan was doomed immediately from the start. Put simply, the group just had too many offense-yes, defense-maybe/sometimes type of players in the group. With the departure of Allen and replacement by Corvo, the defense corps suddenly leaned very heavy toward offense and had too many players who had a good chance of being overslotted in the top 4 defense-wise, especially if you did not have a stay-home/clean up type partner to pair them with. Of the defense-first variety, you had Gleason, Faulk and Harrison with nothing else behind them. Pitkanen is decent defensively because of his size and skating ability but is also a freelancer to the extreme at times making him challenging to partner (see my “Who is Dennis Seidenberg?” blog). And though it worked out fine, I would argue that Justin Faulk was either overslotted or at least risky as a top 4 at his age and experience level. Can you even imagine how bad this group would have been defensively if Faulk proved not quite ready for this role and took even a small step backward in 2013? So past the 3 defense-first guys, you get Pitkanen, McBain, Corvo, Sanguinetti and about 0 games of NHL experience for anyone past that. Going into the season, McBain, Corvo and Sanguinetti look about like 3 of the same player – a good 3rd pairing right shot defenseman who is good enough defensively for the role, can take power play minutes and might be able to fill in in the top 4 for a short period of time when the injury bug hits. The problem is that the Canes had to slot 1 of these guys into the top 4 immediately, and they were also represented the backup when 1 of the defense-oriented blue liners missed a game or 2. Injuries played a part obviously, but I think the type/mix of players was just doomed to fail from the outset unless the team proved capable of winning a bunch of games 5-4 (which they did for awhile).
Put more directly in terms of Rutherford’s thought process:
--I just don’t see how you think you can take Bryan Allen out of a defense that was below average the previous year, replace him with Joe Corvo and think it is going to be okay.
--I don’t see how when you are light on NHL-experienced depth of any kind how you can think that a combination of offense-leaning defenseman will be enough defensively.
So with the blue line problems that I pin mostly on Rutherford, the other 2 issues were scoring/3rd line depth and backup goaltending. I pin the 3rd line issues mostly Kirk Muller (next blog) and of course the individual players while also noting that Ruutu's long-term injury did not help. And while Dan Ellis did not work out (he was fine until the injury), I don't fault Rutherford here either. Playing minus your starter for half of a shortened season in the NHL is just tough unless you have a solid system that leans defense (reference Ottawa) or the luxury of 2 NHL starter caliber goalies.
I wrote a separate blog about it awhile back, but I also think that Rutherford played the Jussi Jokinen situation as bad as anything I can remember. I get that Jokinen was not playing well or living up to his $3M contract. And I am 50/50 on whether trading him was the right option. But the way Rutherford worked through this process was horrible. For me, it went like this:
--A few weeks before the trade deadline, Rutherford flies him across waivers. First, it seems like best would be to spend a day on the phone doing 1-on-1 conversations to see if anyone wants him, ideally for trade but at least a guaranteed “Yes. We will take him for nothing off waivers.” But the timing is not great. All of the soon-to-be-big-spenders have their eyes fixed on much bigger prizes than Jussi Jokinen. Iginla is still out there as are 3-4 other better options. So the timing is not great to burn $3M of salary cap including a commitment for next year when there are better options to be chased.
--So Jokinen clears waivers which basically makes it known to every GM across the league that no one is willing to take him for free right now therefore posting a huge billboard across the NHL that sets his trade value at something less than 0.
--So then the big names come off the board trade rental wise. When only 1 of the 5-6 teams interested in Jarome Iginla, etc. got him, it would have been a perfect time to shop Jokinen to the bigger sweepstakes losers offering them a n experienced, versatile, very recently offensively capable forward for next to nothing. But again, Rutherford had already established Jokinen’s value as less than nothing, so that is exactly what he had to take. He got nothing in return (6th round picks are not worth a whole lot) and had to eat part of the salary. I have not seen anything official on that, but supposedly the Canes are paying $900k of Jokinen’s contract meaning that they are only saving $2.1M
--And along the way, the Canes helped next year division rival solve some budget problems. With impending salary cap issues on the way, the Pens desperately need to fill in a few veteran scoring-capable forwards on the cheap to make the math work for the next few years. Jokinen is no less than perfect if he returns to even 2/3 of his previous form. He could play wing on a scoring line or could slide into the center slot if 1 of the big 2 gets hurt or the coach wants to skate them on the same line for awhile.
--Meanwhile the Canes are tasked this summer with finding some quality forward depth themselves without much budget to do so. They also need to find some semblance of a 3rd line with some scoring ability with little money to do it. Are the Canes really going to find a lot better options on the open market for less than the $2.1M of Jokinen money they saved (assuming that the $900k that they are still paying is right)? I am skeptical.
Shorter version: I could go either way on whether to keep or trade Jokinen, but Rutherford’s process of marketing him at the worst possible time, driving and publicly posting his value as nothing or less and then more or less paying a division rival to accept the help you are giving them hardly seems like the best alternative.
So again, I give Rutherford a C for 2013 driven primarily by what seemed like pre-season naivety on the defensive corps, partly based on the ultimate non-playoff results with another minor deduction for how he handled the Jussi Jokinen thing.
Again though, while missing the 2013 playoffs hurts, it is only chapter 1 of a longer story to play out with the new core of higher-end/higher salary players acquired and locked in long-term this summer.
Next up I will put forward my 2 cents on Kirk Muller.
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