New material in the form of real hockey games plus Canes success inspired a fit of writing Sunday night that I broke into 2 blogs today. You can find the first
HERE if you missed it earlier today.
Through 2 games both at home where Coach Kirk Muller has reasonable control over matchups, there is a lot to like about the Canes forward lines so far. It only gets better when you consider that at some point Tuomo Ruutu will be added to the mix and that Elias Lindholm is starting in a very limited role with potential upside as he gets acclimated to the NHL.
Going line by line:
Tlusty/EStaal/Semin. So putting it bluntly, this line has not been very good. Alexander Semin did muster 3 pretty good scoring chances on Friday (his shot clean off the post, his shot off the outside the net that missed by probably 8 inches and his pass to Nash that he just could not quite wrap around the post for a goal). So if 2 of those chances find the net, maybe there is a different tune. But even the goodness was sporadic and not the consistent overwhelming full game effort we saw regularly in 2012-13. And they were not great defensively. Sunday’s game was a better effort but still minus any scoring. As I said previously, I think scoreless can work for the 2nd line if it shuts down the other team’s best, but EStaal’s line needs to carry the mail offensively. Because of this, it is difficult to grade any game where they do not score as much better than okay.
But this line or something similar to it will be fine even if they press a bit to start the season. There is too much talent. Eric Staal has been in the 70-point range even during rough seasons and minus much help on his line. And Alexander is too talented to be held down indefinitely. Every game further that the Canes can push successfully into 2013-14 without this line clicking yet keeps pressure off them a bit and gets closer to their eventual surge that carries the team for a next stretch.
Short version: This line needs to get better and needs to score. I am not worried about it after a 2-game slow start.
Gerbe/JStaal/Dwyer. Through 2 games, this line has exactly 0 scoring points at even strength and only 1 total (Gerbe’s power play goal). Yet it is an important reason why the team has been successful thus far. It is early but so far the 2A (checking focused) and 2B (scoring/mismatch focused) approach separating Skinner and JStaal and playing each to their strengths has worked perfectly through 2 games. JStaal’s line has matched up against some very good offensive players, and its only blemish defensively is that JStaal and Dwyer were on the ice for the chaotic Detroit extra attacker goal that sent that game to overtime. Jordan Staal looks faster, more assertive and comfortable and has played 2 of his best games as a Hurricane to start the season despite not scoring. Dwyer is the kind of line mate that makes Jordan Staal’s job easier because he reads darn near every situation correctly and does the right thing to keep JStaal away from the defensive triage under duress that he saw too often last year. Nathan Gerbe has surprised me. I liked his prospects to stick with the Canes and thought he was the best experienced fit for JStaal’s line. But I pictured him as being a pure “go to the puck” forechecker and backchecker. He does that obviously, but his game is more complex than a simple on/off switch for chasing the puck. He does situationally know when he needs to play positionally versus just go chase the round black thing. One of my preseason predictions was that his jersey would be 1 of the biggest new additions in time for the holidays. Chad LaRose was with the franchise long enough that he is not the kind of player you replace like a short-timer. He has his own place. But if I was looking for a LaRose-like “fiery, determined, underdog, 100% effort” and wanted a "New Storm" jersey to go with my retro #59, #14 continues to look good.
Short version: This line has been incredibly good despite not showing up on the score sheet much. So far Jordan Staal looks like the elite checking line forward that the Canes traded for and not the role-confused struggling player he was last season.
--Skinner/Nash/Dvorak. This line was easily the team’s and the game’s best line on Sunday being responsible for 2 goals, a boat load offensive zone time, a decent number of scoring chances and owner of 2 great individual plays to make sure that Sunday’s late 2-1 lead ended much better than Friday’s. We have only seen 120ish minutes of hockey so far, but I really think that Skinner/Nash/Dvorak’s shift to more or less close out the Sunday win was HUGE when you consider context. Despite being an okay result, Friday’s OTL vs. Detroit left a bad taste when the team was unable to turn a 2-0 lead entering the 3rd period into a win and also came within the last shift of winning. At the 1:20 mark, the Flyers game very much felt like it was going the same direction. The Flyers had established control of the puck in the offensive zone with an extra attacker on the ice and had the Canes running around a bit and a bit tired. With about 1:20 left and the Flyers mounting pressure, Riley Nash won an individual battle to claim a puck on the end boards, and got it to Jeff Skinner still pretty deep in his defensive zone. Skinner managed to navigate the pressure despite weary legs to get the puck first out of the zone, then deep enough to fire it at the net without risk of icing and then finally eating up valuable time behind the Flyers net battling 3 Flyers by himself while the Canes got the line change they desperately needed. When the shift was over the win was nearly finalized.
Heroics and Radek Dvorak’s 82-goal pace aside, I really like the early play of this line. Dvorak has proven to be a very good complement to the 2 young players who can skate. In addition to the goal scoring which will inevitably slow, he just does all of the little stuff. He very much reminds me of Patrick Dwyer. The most noticeable thing about his game from the start was his consistent ability to provide short outlet passes (I started calling it “second stick” awhile back) to defensemen in need helping get the puck moving north-south and avoiding being hemmed in or coughing up bad turnovers. The other thing that is very noticeable is his ability to keep pace with Nash and Skinner and enable them to often carry the puck in as 3 or 2 with a trailer close enough to be part of the play and something the defense needs to sort out. I think the ideal description for a line like this (whether it was Lindholm or Nash at center) was a bigger forward with a physical edge and a solid 2-way game. But from what we have seen so far, I think the ability to skate is a must have. Longer term, I could really see Ruutu fitting in Dvorak’s spot. He brings the same ability to skate with them, probably a slightly larger offensive tool bag and the physical edge with the key point being “the same ability to skate with them.” But as long as the current combination is playing as well as it is now, I would not touch a thing.
I think I mentioned somewhere else that this line very much reminds me of the Whitney/Cullen/LaRose line from about the 1st 2/3 of 2005-06 (after LaRose was recalled from Charlotte and before Cole’s injury and the Weight and Recchi additions shuffled the lines). The lineup was structured similarly. The Stillman/EStaal/Cole line scored in bunches like the current EStaal line. The Nordgren/Brind’Amour/Williams line took all of the tough defensive assignments like JStaal’s line. And Laviolette cherry picked skating mismatches that Whitney/Cullen/LaRose preyed on to provide strong secondary scoring. The other uncanny resemblance to that line that I noticed in spades in Sunday’s game was their ability to “distance cycle” the puck in the offensive zone. The normal version cycling the puck is a size, strength and puck control game whereby players with size/strength skill sets cycle the puck in a pretty small area on the boards to play shifts in the offensive zone. The cycling version that Whitney/Cullen/LaRose used a lot more ice and not so much the boards and was based on quickness to the puck not strength, size and control. When pressured and minus any good passing or scoring opportunity, that line had had a knack for pitching the puck to an open piece of ice which created a short foot race to determine who next got possession of the puck. Playing largely against skating-challenged 3rd pairing defensemen and grinding checking line forwards, Whitney/Cullen/LaRose had a huge advantage and almost always reclaimed possession. Skinner/Nash/Dvorak was right on that game on Sunday. In the second period specifically, the line had a run where they played 80% or more of their shifts in the offensive zone playing keep away and waiting for scoring chances to emerge.
Short version: This line has been real good so far. A lot goes into that, but I think the key is playing Skinner with line mates that can skate with him. Though he looks it through 2 games, Dvorak is not a huge offensive talent at this stage of his career. Rather, he is fast enough to be in the play when Skinner starts doing what Skinner does.
--Bowman/Sutter/Lindholm. Brett Sutter is quickly becoming 1 of the better stories since the start of training camp. If not for how well Murphy and Bellemore have looked on defense and curiosity with elite prospect Lindholm and the general volume of positive stories through 2 games, there would be more talk about Sutter’s play. His line did make a mistake in giving up the Flyers lone goal when Lindholm (edited to correct original error that had Sutter losing this draw) lost a faceoff cleanly and Bowman took a bad defensive angle creating a clear path to the net. But that blemish aside, the line did exactly what you would hope for in 8 minutes of ice time from a 4th line. Once Ruutu is ready to go, Muller will have some tough decisions to make in terms of lineup and combinations but that is a good thing.
Short version: This line got a quick lesson in diligence each and every shift when they were victimized by the Flyers lone goal, but otherwise they were real good on Sunday.
I will write a game preview/”what I’m watching” for the Tue Pens matchup, so that I can put that up late morning tomorrow even if I am busy.
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