With two days remaining in my Canes and Coffee Kickstarter, I am making last calls for any and all die-hard Canes or even just hockey fans with $5 burning a hole in their pocket to consider contributing. We are 89% funded which is great but still need little push at the end to successfully fund what I hope will be a great hockey site.
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I will post a few more detailed point-by-point type blogs here and possibly on the new site over the next days covering Noah Hanifin, James Wisniewsky, Eddie Lack and the rest of the draft overall. But I wanted to take a minute to highlight the sneaky good moves made by Ron Francis this past weekend.
This time last summer, Ron Francis was just taking the reins as Carolina Hurricanes GM and had a fairly quiet draft weekend while he settled in. The broader hockey world might have missed it amidst the parades and fan fair from McDavid and Eichel finally joining the ranks of the NHL and the crazy stuff coming out of Boston, but when you look at what Ron Francis did this weekend, it was sneaky good.
1-He seemed to sneak in during the Cam Talbot distraction that had the attention of all of the NHL goalie shoppers Friday and early Saturday and snapped up Eddie Lack for a much lower price. Talbot garnered a 2nd and a 3rd round pick, whereas Eddie Lack cost only a 3rd and a 6th. The two are the same age and pretty similar in volume of NHL experience. Talbot has better numbers, but is that performance or just the Rangers defense and style of play? Now that the Rangers marketing game is over, I think you can make a pretty good argument that Lack is roughly in the same category as lack as older youngsters with promise but not a ton of experience and proven run time as a #1.
2-At the same time, Francis seemed to maybe leverage the high tide for goalie prices to trade Khudobin for a top 4 defenseman. (Yes. I realize that the fact that Anaheim probably HAD to unload Wisniewski was part of it, but still.) Let me say that again. Francis traded a backup goalie for a top 4 defenseman. In a world where Orpik and Niskanen pushed close to $6M/year in last summer's free agent frenzy, that is pretty good work.
3-Francis preempted a potentially real bad situation by landing at least one defenseman before things likely get crazy in July. He will not be forced to buy at whatever the crazy prevailing market price in July if it just does not make sense.
4-He shopped (per multiple media reports) Jeff Skinner but did not force the issue when a fair deal did not materialize. I was on the first bus about two years ago that said the Canes could improve by trading Skinner for a good similar age, similar quality defenseman. But to be clear, I want nothing to do with a "trade him at all costs" fire sale. Jeff Skinner is still a talented, dynamic, young, proven scorer at the NHL level. If no team will offer assets accordingly, there is still a place for him in the Canes lineup.
5-Same on Alexander Semin. At a basic level, his contract is just incredibly risky at $7M/year coming off last season, and I think Francis is smart to unload it if he can. The financial flexibility would help and it just is too much of an unknown if he will or will not rebound in 2015-16. And I am sure that Ron Francis fielded a good number of calls this weekend mostly, if not all, in the buy low category of "If you retain $3.5M of salary and take about nothing in return, we will gladly take Alexander Semin off your hands." But at only $3.5M savings, the Canes are much better off taking the rebound chance themselves. The Canes must improve significantly to be a playoff contender in 2015-16, and Alexander Semin represents one area of significant potential improvement.
More briefly, in addition to the Hanifin pick which was a no-brainer, I think Ron Francis had a phenomenal draft weekend both building the 2015-16 and dodging deals that could hurt it more than it helps it.
What say you Canes fans? Are we funding a Kickstarter and launching a new source of Canes coverage in July? Do you agree that Francis was incredibly good this past weekend? What is his next move once free agency opens up on Wednesday?
Twitter=@CarolinaMatt soon moving to @CanesandCoffee
Go Canes!