For those looking for the meat/specific deals, check back later. I have mostly written and hope to clean up and post part 2 which names specific deals if I can find a few minutes at lunch time. This blog details the situation and needs that drive the top priorities for upgrades and the specific deals.
On November 22, I wrote a long blog that detailed my thoughts on the Canes situation at forward and on defense. If you have the free time and the desire, you can find that HERE. I think the Canes are just deeper into that story at this point.
At forward, it goes like this:
1st-line: When Semin returns, ___EStaal/Semin needs to be good enough and to score. Any improvements to depth scoring only become relevant if the Canes get enough from their top guns.
2nd-line: Right now Muller is borrowing from here there and everything trying to find ways to increase scoring, but surrounding JStaal with more defensively capable line mates has actually worked pretty well. He is playing breakeven hockey (which is way better than last season’s nearly league low +/-) and even starting to score more. Ultimately, if the team can fix the other stuff, I think Muller will work back toward Gerbe/JStaal/Dwyer or Ruutu. And I actually think this line is okay despite being a bit light on scoring.
Conspicuously absent from these 1st 2 lines is Tlusty. I would rank him 2nd only to Gleason in terms of players likely to be traded. He just is not playing well right now regardless of line mates but because of his age, reasonable contract, experience and high ceiling set by his breakout 2012-13 campaign, he should still have a reasonable trade market value.
4th-line: Bowman/Malhotra/Dvorak. This is a great prototypical 4th line. They are sound defensively. Because of Malhotra, Muller can feel comfortable starting them in the defensive zone and even against the other team’s better players. For a 4th line at least, they have produced enough timely scoring to contribute at least a 4th-line’s share offensively. But right now, Muller has no choice but to keep breaking this up to borrow options to try to fix other problems. Dvorak has seen time on the 3rd line and Bowman has been bumped up including Sunday.
3rd-line: That is where the gaping hole is right now. With the Canes desperately needing secondary scoring, the 3rd line has been invisible of late. Right now, I would call this line Skinner/____/_____. My blog from awhile back told the Nash story. The short version is that he has been a decent defensive center but just does not provide enough offensively to be a regular 3rd-line center. He has been some combination of healthy scratch and near the bottom in terms of forward ice time of late which suggests that I had this 1 right about a week and a half ago and that Muller sees it similarly. So enter Lindholm. Since his recall he has been real quiet, has shifted from center to right wing again and has seen his ice time falling. So Plan A to fill the C3 slot from within the organization is not working thus far. As I said on Twitter last night, if the Canes have any forwards in Charlotte that the organization thinks could be ready to help at the NHL level now, I think they get their chance real soon. Victor Rask is the obvious option to audition for the C3 slot, but I am not sure if the team thinks he is ready yet.
The other interesting option requires Muller to think outside the box of how he thinks it is supposed to work. Why not try Ruutu at center next to Skinner? He has been almost exclusively a wing for the Canes, but joined the organization as a natural center. And it is not like he is blowing the doors off it at wing right now. He does fine with the aggressive 1st forward in/banger role, but he has enough defensive awareness that it is not a completely unreasonable trial. And if my fear from the Vancouver blog is right (that he has lost just enough mobility to be a problem) then maybe transitioning him to a role that requires just bit less skating the entire rink every shift will fit Ruutu 2.0 well. Ruutu’s situation reminds me a bit of Jokinen’s last year in the sense that he was struggling a bit in the role that Muller envisioned for him (Jokinen’s was 3rd-line catalyst, Ruutu’s is RW banger). In Jokinen’s case, with such a versatile player, I think Muller failed to think outside the box and find a role that fit him instead of taking the round peg and just trying repeatedly to jam it into the square hole with the end result being Jokinen’s value falling to nothing before he was traded. Ruutu has been a bit better of late and has found the score sheet, but I would not say he is firing on all cylinders. Why not try him in a little bit different role especially since the list of players left to audition for this important role has dwindled anyway.
When you net it out at forward, I think the Canes have room to upgrade at least 3 spots, but I think will be fine just making a good upgrade to 1 of them. Prioritized:
1st: C3-Other than Skinner putting the line on his back in his 1st stint, the team has found nothing that works in terms of a 3rd line. It needs a complementary player for Skinner, ideally a center.
2nd: RW2 or RW3: I realize that Dwyer is light offensively for 2nd line or maybe even 3rd line. But in the salary cap NHL, it is incredibly difficult to stock all of the top 9 with scoring. You have to carry a role player or 2. Dwyer does that pretty well and Ruutu in theory is another right wing who can provide decent secondary scoring which is why I prioritize this slot below the center opening.
3rd: LW1: Personally, I think EStaal/Semin needs to be enough to get the top line going. If you tell me that we must add an elite LW to pick up EStaal and Semin, I am more inclined to throw in the towel for the season than brainstorm on who that might be. If a bigger deal or 2 happens, it is possible that the Canes could add a new option for this slot, but I refuse to call it a must fix/high priority add. Bowman is surging, looked decent with EStaal/Semin for a game or 2 in preseason and would enable Muller to put Gerbe/JStaal/Dwyer back together.
As far as available trade bait, I think Tlusty tops the list. Per my comments above, I think he has a decent combination of value and upside despite his current struggles especially if traded for a similarly struggling player. I know that Ruutu’s name is coming up more because of his struggles, but he is a bit more complicated with a bigger contract and some risk that his low production this season is the result of physical limitations driven by injury/recovery and not a matter of finding a new situation. I think Nash could also be packaged in a deal since he is 1 of the players to be replaced and might have some value to a team looking for 4th-line depth that can skate.
As an aside, can you imagine where the Canes would be forward-wise if not for Rutherford’s masterful job working the bargain bin this summer and fall amidst the failure of the team’s system youth to step up? The 4th line which has been a significant bright spot is made from not 1 but 2 tryout contracts in Dvorak and Malhotra. And in signing Palushaj and Gerbe to no-risk 2-way contracts Rutherford went a solid 1 for 2 and netted a top 9 forward in the process. Minus this work the Canes and combined with the slow start for many top forwards, the team could look Buffalo-ish right now if not for the contributions of these savvy additions.
On defense, I could literally feel Canes GM Jim Rutherford dialing his phone as the miserable 5 ½ minutes of consecutive power play time wore on in Sunday’s loss to Vancouver. I like Ryan Murphy. I am impressed with his rapid development as a 20-year-old jumping straight from juniors to the NHL. And I think he has the right tool set to grow to be a good power play quarterback. But he just is not that yet. The fact that it took the Canes so long to move him off the 1st unit clearly shows that the Canes are limited in terms of options. And as much as I like Brett Bellemore’s play defensively, I think his is the 1 slot where the team needs more in terms of creating more transition offense from that 20 minutes of ice time in the form of a defenseman who can also help the ailing power play.
I think Sekera/Faulk is fine as a 1st pair, and I also think Harrison/Murphy is okay as a bottom pair that gets shielded a bit. It is bit of an aside, but the more I watch Jay Harrison over the years, the more I am convinced that he is just Niclas Wallin in a different body. He is a solid 3rd pairing left shot, physical, stay-home defenseman, but anytime he gets escalated to 2nd pairing because of injuries or whatever else, it takes only about 4-5 games to see that he really belongs in the 3rd pairing. I also think Hainsey is fine in his role.
So Tlusty is to forward as Gleason is to defenseman. Gleason has been an effective #4 defenseman in the past, is priced for that role, and was supposed to slot there this season. The alternating injuries to Gleason and Bellemore have kept it from being too obvious, but Gleason is the #7 defenseman on this team right now. As such, I think he is the most likely to go via trade from the blue line with his no-trade clause and the fact that his $4M/year salary does not match is current role/level of play. But there are teams that could use a big, physical stay-home defenseman and his character and leadership are also of value. Komisarek could also be moved though with his incredibly limited role thus far coming off the troubles in Toronto, he would be an adder and not a primary part of a trade that garners a return.
Finally, I wrote about the goalie situation not too long ago. The short summary is:
1) Unless the Canes go the blockbuster route (see part 2 that I hope to post later today), I think Peters stays at #3 despite his decent run of play. That means he needs to go somewhere.
2) I think he could be a good fit for the Islanders goalie woes. Because of that, I would not risk him on waivers but rather would look to trade him out West or at least make sure that he would not fall to the Islanders on waivers before putting him out there.
So the short version is that I think the Canes needs in order of priority are a 3rd-line center who can complement Skinner and a #4 defenseman who has more of a skating, puck-moving, transition offense, power play skill set. And I think the 2 players most likely to get traded are Tlusty and Gleason though I think the list of possibilities is growing with each passing game that sees the Canes deep in the Metro Division standings.
In part 2, I put forward some specific trade possibilities that match these priorities and the situation.
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