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Quick assessment of Westgarth trade + 10 random Canes thoughts

December 30, 2013, 9:31 PM ET [10 Comments]
Matt Karash
Carolina Hurricanes Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Tonight the Canes announced that they traded Kevin Westgarth to Calgary for prospect Greg Nemisz. More than anything, this is a small cost-cutting move by the Canes. If you count the 3 goalies, the return of IR players (currently just Harrison) and Lindholm’s eventual return from the WJC tourney, the Canes roster was 25 players (even after returning Boychuk to the AHL) if everyone was ever healthy at the same time. That is obviously 2 over the NHL limit. Only a well-timed string of injuries has enabled the Canes to stay at 23. With his increasingly limited role, Westgarth was obviously an extra. The Canes could have sent him to the AHL to open up a spot, but since he has a 1-way contract, he would still be making his full NHL salary of $750,000. By trading for a player on a 2-way contract, the Canes will be able to place Nemisz in the AHL at an AHL salary of $85,000 and therefore save $665,000 (full season) so roughly $330,000 of real cash over the remainder of the season. In terms of what Nemisz brings, he is basically the Calgary equivalent of Zach Boychuk. He was drafted in the 1st round the same year as Boychuk but has never been able to crack the NHL roster and is an aging lower-tier prospect at this point and more a player that Calgary was just ready to be done with (reference Zac Dalpe) than a valuable trade return. I am surprised that there was a market for Westgarth in which someone else took his salary without giving 1 back, but I guess it makes sense. Calgary GM Brian Burke is dragging behind the rest of the non-fighting NHL and still wants to build a whole bunch of nasty into his team. Westgarth makes for a decent “king of the hill” for molding a young team to bring the nasty. With a heavyweight in the lineup, it frees the other players to do what they will without fear of having to fight the wrong guy – that is Westgarth’s role.

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I actually drafted a “State of the Canes” blog, but the original version is such commingled mess of venting, trying to play coach/GM to fix it, holding to some optimism and at the same time admitting that I feel like I am grasping for straws trying to find solid reasons for that optimism that I decided to scrap it for now.

Instead, I give you 10 random Canes thoughts:

1-The Canes season will be decided in January. With the 2012-13ish variety of losses that we saw in 3 consecutive games this week, I think the team is at the edge of the cliff right now. That is the negative. The positive is that the schedule between now and the start of the Olympic break is very favorable. The team plays 8 of 19 against teams that are in the bottom 2 in their respective division plus 2 more against Columbus (out of that position only because they crawled over the wounded Canes) and only sees elite (top 2 in division) 3 times.

2-For the team to have any shot at the playoffs, either Ward or Khudobin will need to seize the controls and rip off a stretch of nightly solid play in net. As much as I appreciate Justin Peters contribution in keeping the Canes in the playoff hunt and as much as I want to believe that he could be a late bloomer like Tim Thomas who is just getting started, I just think that any road to the playoffs goes through 1 of the other 2 goalies. I have been wrong on Justin Peters before. I will be happy to be proven wrong again. If I were coach, I would be looking to get Khudobin an NHL start real quickly after he proves ready at the AHL level.

3-The incredible scoring burst creating enough of a distraction to make me forget it, but I am back to thinking that the team is best served with Skinner preying on lesser matchups for opportunistic offense on the 3rd line. He did that incredibly well to start the season and was a plus player in doing so. Since the 2-goal and 3-goal outbursts in back-to-back games in early December in which he was plus 2 in each game, Skinner is a whopping minus 15 in the 10 games since. While I do give him credit for making strides defensively this season, Skinner still just is not there in terms of defensive zone stuff – clearing pucks, positioning, reading plays, etc. On the 3rd line, he will still get the majority of his offense (and of course he gets his 1st power play unit time). The key difference is who gets the chances when the occasional defensive ‘oops’ happens. Matched up against top or even 2nd lines the margin for error defensively is tiny. The ‘oopses’ find the stick of opposing players who are skilled scorers and more often than not in the back of the Canes net soon thereafter. Playing on the 3rd line primarily against other teams’ lesser players, the margin for error defensively is much greater.

4-This 1 got bandied around a bit on Twitter Monday night. I think the 3-game winning streak in the 1st week of December might have cost the team a month. Before those wins, the team was struggling a bit, and the Canes seemed to be at the forefront of the trade rumors. Since the quick 3-win burst the Canes mostly struggled but somehow clawed their way to an okay 1-1-2 western road trip and have gone 0-3-2 since then. Did the short winning streak decrease Jim Rutherford’s sense of urgency and shift him back into wait and see mode? Interestingly, it was these 3 games that saw Jeff Skinner’s scoring outburst on the 1st line that caused him to more permanently claim a spot with EStaal and Ruutu. That generated a huge burst of offense initially but more recently has been a negative line night in and night out.

5-I stand by my November opinion that the Canes 2 biggest areas for improvement (not counting goalie which must right itself from the current options) are the 3rd-line center slot and the 2nd pairning right defense slot next to Hainsey especially if you can get a power play-capable guy for that role who is not a liability defensively.

6-If we are going to get line tinkering as I expect anyway, I would try Ruutu in the open C3 slot next to Skinner. I am not convinced this will work, but it seems like a low-risk/low-cost attempt to fill this spot internally. Ruutu’s play has improved as the season has gone on, but it is not like he is completely tearing it up in the top 6 right now such that you cannot live without him there.

7-I continue to really like Drayson Bowman’s game. He is playing a much more assertive and aggressive game this season. He has not broken out yet, but I continue to think that he is right on the edge of doing so.

8-I think the next stretch is a test for Muller and his staff. Last season when things started heading downhill, he did not seem to have anything for an answer to stop the bleeding via line tinkering, system adjustments or anything. We just got post-game press conference after press conference that talked about staying the course. In the NHL, you need to scratch and claw for enough points to tread water even in down times and avoid the 10-game swoon that ends the season. With an 0-3-2 mark in the last 5, the Canes are not there yet but are dangerously close to the edge right now.

9-Where would this team be without Buffalo cast-offs? Andrej Sekera has been the best Canes defenseman so far this season with his generally sound defense and surprising offensive output, and Nathan Gerbe continues to bring consistent energetic hockey on a nightly basis with decent scoring to boot.

10-If I were doing lines from scratch, I would go with Bowman/EStaal/Semin, Gerbe/JStaal/Dwyer, Skinner/Nash/Ruutu, Boychuk/Malhotra/Dvorak.

--EStaal line: At the end of the day, if the Canes cannot get both Semin and EStaal going offensively, this season is just not going to happen. Semin seems to be reacclimated after the injury and is playing well. It is time to go all or nothing on those 2 figuring it out again. Per my comments above, Bowman continues to play well. Key for him is to just continuously put himself in places where he can get scoring chances like Tlusty did last season and hopefully finish some.

--JStaal line: As much as I hate to remove Semin from this line, the goal of getting Semin and EStaal going at the same time is priority 1.

--Nash line: Per my comments above, I do not think Skinner’s offensive production will dip much playing on a 3rd line with decent line mates. He tends to create a lot of his offense himself, and he will benefit from favorable matchups. Defensively the biggest thing here is that if/when he has a learning mistake, the player likely to get the scoring chance because of it is a 3rd/4th-liner not an elite NHL scorer.

--Malhotra line: If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. I also like the idea of having a 3rd with Malhotra/Dvorak who has finishing ability and can benefit from the puck possession game that this line plays pretty well.

So questions to other Canes fans:

1) Is the latest down swing just another part of the rollercoaster that is 2013-14? Or is it the beginning of the end? Is it possible that a reasonably (not completely) healthy lineup plus a favorable January schedule is just what the Canes need to rise up the standings?

2) Am I wrong to rework the lines this aggressively when some things (i.e Gerbe/JStaal/Semin and to some degree Bowman/Nash/Dwyer) have actually been working fairly well?

3) Is it time for a trade or 2 to try to improve the roster? If so, what would be your top priority?

Twitter=@CarolinaMatt63

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