In watching the Tampa/Detroit series finale tonight, it jumps out at me that Tampa might offer some ideas for the direction that Ron Francis might need to go on a couple different levels.
Strategically: The core of the Lightning for years was the duo of Lecavalier and St. Louis later with the addition of Stamkos. The duo did win a Stanley Cup, so I do not mean to suggest that their work was a failure. But more recently, Tampa moved aggressively forward buying out Lecavlier and trading St. Louis. Trading familiar stars can sometimes scream rebuilding but when you get good assets back, it can jump start things and see a team rise not fall in the process. The Lightning are suddenly a deeper and younger team, and it seems to be suiting them just fine. Another example of very similar is Columbus. After clinging to Rick Nash and an inability to crack the playoffs for years, management finally traded Nash seemingly in a bit of a restart. The Blue Jackets did restart, and it was almost immediately. They have a playoff berth to show for it (last year), and their run of hockey to finish 2014-15 when they finally became reasonably healthy suggests that 2014-15 was an injury-marred exception and that they could be a team to be reckoned with in 2015-16.
Tactically: If you look at Tampa's blue line, Yzerman really did a tremendous job building that out. Drafting Hedman obviously helped, but I think from there is where it gets interesting. Yzerman paid full price and full term to sign 2 free agents (Carle, Stralman). Neither are spectacular. I think you could make a decent argument that both are overpaid. But they are veterans with a ton of NHL minutes importantly in heavy-minute top 4 type roles. I think the last 2 additions are the most interesting. In Garrison and Coburn, Yzerman twice picked up down on their luck top 4 defensemen whose level of play had seemingly dropped off. While it is incredibly hard to pick up top 4 defensemen who are at the top of their game, there is always a collection of players who are in the midst of a down trend in their career. There are negatives with this type of acquisition. Their salary is usually on the high end of fair more matched to a good trend than the current down trend. And there is always the risk that they do not rebound. But I think this is the path that Ron Francis will need to navigate this summer and possibly next to upgrade his blue line to a level that has some chance to compete for the playoffs.
Potential lessons:
--While it is hard to part ways with a long-time core of a team, if you can get a return, it is actually possibly to get better not worse trading a key veteran player.
--There might be something to be said for spending a bigger % of budget on top 4 defenseman. These 4 players account for about 30% of total skater ice time (4 X 22.5 = 90 total minutes / 5 X 60 = 300 total minutes).
--One recipe for adding top 4 defenseman when you are not a likely bidding war winner or top choice destination is to look for past proven top 4s who are down on their luck right now but not too far up in age.
What say you Canes fans? This year we saw Coburn and Wisniewski moved for reasonable prices. Who else is on D is proven, down right now, therefore available and ready for a rebound? Could the Canes get better by trading a former core player for a collection of good players a la Rick Nash's departure from Columbus?
Twitter=@CarolinaMatt63
Go Canes!