Happy Martin Luther King Day! I hope everyone enjoys the day and takes a minute to reflect upon MLK's example of the good that can be accomplished in so many facets of life by people who look at things that are wrong and work to pull people together to fix them, not rip people apart.
If you are catching up with the Canes after spending your Sunday on football, you can find my recap and notes on Sunday's Canes loss to the Lightning HERE.
I have a draft of a longer blog that I might finish tonight that looks at what it would take (I do not think it is impossible) for the Canes to make a playoff push. Here are a few probing questions sort of in the same direction:
1-Could Riley Nash be an effective right wing? Anyone who reads my blogs is probably sick of me harping on the need to replace Nash with a higher-end (mostly offensively) 3rd-line center to complement Jeff Skinner and make a dangerous 3rd line. It is not at all that I do not like Nash's play this year. I just have his skill set and offensive upside pegged as more that of a 4th-line center or maybe a 3rd-line center if you have a top-loaded offense and need only defense from the 3rd line. But limitations aside, I think Nash has played well. He skates well, is a decent forechecker and does a solid job defensively especially in closing down angles and using his wheels to take things away in the neutral zone. But with Malhotra and his unique skill set anchoring a good 4th line and more offense needed with Skinner on the 3rd line, I continue to think that the C3 slot that he has most occupied continues to be the slot with the greatest potential for an upgrade via trade. In his interview Friday, Canes GM Jim Rutherford suggested that he had it about like I did back in late November and early December with the top 2 priorities being a puck-moving defenseman and a top 9 forward, ideally a centerman. So he did the best he could with the defenseman. Next up would seem to be adding a center.
If Nash is not required to as an asset to make that deal happen, could he prove to be an upgrade at right wing on another line. Though he maybe lacks the ideal skill as a finisher and skill player, if you paired Skinner with a playmaking offensive center, Nash might be an okay complement as a guy who can skate well enough to be in the play on that line and as a guy who is tasked with getting up the ice and going to the front of the net. The big, lumbering physical type who usually gets this job would likely be left too far behind the play off the rush to be much help. Lindholm seems to be the incumbent for the RW3 slot if the Canes add a center, but I am not so sure I would not give Nash a look too. He looked reasonably comfortable in that role on Malhotra's line and while not the pure version of big/physical, he has shown a willingness to go to the front of the net and has scored some goals that way. Alternatively, could he be an upgrade to Patrick Dwyer on JStaal's right side. Dwyer has become the new Chad LaRose as a good 3rd/4th-line hockey player who is overslotted because of the Canes lack of forward depth and inability to feed enough players into the lineup from the minor league system. Dwyer fits the primary role of defense-first for that line, so for now he stays. But could Riley Nash be pretty effective doing the same thing defensively while also using his speed (fits with Gerbe's rushes) to bring just a little more offensively? At the point when Nash is not needed at center (seems like right now while Lindholm is being tried here again), I would consider getting Nash some shifts on JStaal's wing.
I have also suggested previously that the Canes try Tuomo Ruutu in the C3 slot. It is not like he has found a permanent home anywhere. Maybe it fits with a possibly decreased mobility version of #15 following a couple hip surgeries. And the cost/risk of briefly trying it is low.
2-What will happen with the Hainsey/Liles pairing? Per the original trade priorities that I mentioned above, adding a top 4 defenseman with more puck-moving/offense/power play abilities to pair with Hainsey would have been ideal. It would also have been either very expensive or possibly just impossible, as these players are rare, coveted and incredibly expensive in the rare event that they are even available on the trade market. So Rutherford di the best he could trading Gleason who was really #7 on the depth chart at the time anyway to at least add the skill set that the team needed even if it was in the form a 3rd pairing type player who was a bit of a reclamation project after a rough ride in Toronto. So far the trade has paid off. Liles has not been perfect, but the Canes are a better team with him. The power play has yet to start scoring goals in bunches, but the new set with Lindholm-Semin-Liles up the left side from end line to half boards to point has become an offensive zone possession time monster. Now it is just a matter of turning that into to chances and goals. But while far from guaranteed, I think the real upside potential from Liles' skill set can only be realized if he can hold his own defensively and be playable in all situations from a defensive standpoint. Here is why. For better or for worse, the Canes are built to be more of a skill, skating and scoring team at forward. In terms of physical warrior style of play, I think the Canes list could stop short at Ruutu (who is struggling) and maybe Malhotra (who is in a limited non-scoring focused role). The Staals are bigger bodies, but I would argue that the strength of each is more that they skate well for their size than that they are just a problem to handle physically around the crease. And past that there are players who spend time near the net, but at the end of the day the team's skill set is more than of skating and pretty offense. Out of all of the slumps, frustrations, injuries, lack of finishing and whatever else you could add to the list for explaining Tlusty/EStaal/Semin's failure to find anything close to their 2012-13 scoring level, for me the thing that was most strikingly obvious was how little they were getting off the rush early in the season. Last year, they very regularly entered the zone with speed 3v2 or even 3v3 with enough speed to back up the defense. That has been hard to find this year. I think it makes sense. The Canes defense went from having a bunch of puck-moving types who played too little defense maybe too far the other direction to sound defense but much less ability to transition from defense to offense. Most striking were games in which Muller tried to use Faulk/Sekera with Gerbe/JStaal/Dwyer as a 5-man defensive unit to shut down the other team's best. That left Tlusty/EStaal/Semin with either Hainsey/Bellemore who were sound defensively but not so much a unit that pushed the puck forward in a hurry to create offense off the rush or sometimes Ryan Murphy who could sometimes carry the puck himself from end to end but still lacked the ability to get the puck started and then advance it via pass so that a group of forwards could enter the zone together with numbers.
So I digressed a bit obviously, but getting back to where I started with Hainsey/Liles. It will be interesting to see if Liles can both hold up his end of the deal defensively in that bigger role against higher-end matchups and also bring some transition offense to that pairing. I have said a couple times that if he sticks in that role that he could become a catalyst for the Tlusty/EStaal/Semin playing a game that looks more like 2012-13.
3-How aggressive will Jim Rutherford be across time frame and volume of assets spent to improve the team? Per his interview Friday, he seems to have the same C3 priority that I do. But with the team flailing a bit, I will be curious to see how aggressive he is spending (possibly futures) to chase the 2013-14 playoffs. The number of options will likely expand closer to the trade deadline, but I am not sure the Canes can afford to wait that long. Also there could be a range of options price-wise to upgrade that slot depending on how much he is willing to spend. My preference would be to move sooner rather than later even if it means settling for a less than perfect option and spending a bit more futures. Despite the recent struggles, the playoffs are still within reach. With 4 consecutive playoff misses, I think you have to chase that while you can.
If I can find the time tonight, I will post a blog with a similar "What does it take for the Canes to make the playoffs?" theme tonight.
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