By Brian LeBlanc
NCSportsTalk.com - Puck Drops
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(Note: this is part one of a two-part series, focusing on the forwards. The defensemen, goaltenders and coaches will get their chance with the red pen tomorrow.)
After Saturday's overtime win against the Rangers, the Canes have completed precisely half of their season. If you're thinking that this season has dragged on to the point that it seems like they've played 141 games rather than 41, well, you're not alone.
The numbers are stunning. Last in goals scored, the only team in the league that's scored under 100 goals. Second-to-last in goals against (and dead last in goals against per game). 26th in the NHL on both the power play and the penalty kill. No one even in sniffing distance of a point-per-game pace. A captain saddled with a MINUS FREAKING 23.
With that said, it's time to go grading! (You have to think that the GPA will be somewhere in the ballpark of their winning percentage when giving up the first goal, a sterling .158.)
Here we go. (For reference's sake, here are my preseason projections...feel free to see how far off base I was.
Eric Staal (8-19-27 in 31 GP): Let's start with the keystone. To say it hasn't been Staal's best season is an understatement. He's been a scapegoat for just about everything that's gone wrong with the Canes this year, but the funny thing is that he remains tied for the team lead in points despite playing eight fewer games than the man he's tied with, Ray Whitney. Still, Staal seems to have floated for long stretches this season, and while he might still be injured we have to go on what we can see. Staal's capable of doing much, much more than we've seen so far this season. Maybe the move to the wing will spark him, but we have yet to see Staal take over the game the way we have in season's past. Grade: C-
Ray Whitney (11-16-27 in 38 GP): The Wizard just keeps ticking along and defying time. At age 37, he's part of a three-way tie atop the goal standings, and he's one of the few guys on the roster who's done exactly what he's paid to do. However, he does get a few demerits for the sputtering power play, which looks like a world-beater some nights and like a midget squad on others. Eleven of his 27 points have come with the extra man, but the simple fact is that the Canes' talent should produce a power play that's ranked higher than 26th in the NHL. If Whitney would take a few more shots instead of making an extra pass, perhaps things would improve. That said, Whitney has done his job, which not many of his teammates can say. Grade: B
Jussi Jokinen (11-14-25 in 40 GP): Jokinen was a glaring omission off the Finnish Olympic team, especially given he's the best Finnish player the Canes have. Like Whitney, he's done what he's paid to do, and then some: no one pegged him to be tied for the goal-scoring lead halfway through the season, yet here he is, and his 4-for-7 performance in shootouts is by far the best on the team. Jokinen continues to be the chameleon that Paul Maurice marveled about in the second half of last year, being able to move all over the lineup without being out of place anywhere. He's one of the few guys that, barring injury, is a mortal lock to best my preseason prediction (22-15-37, if you're scoring at home), and he's even earned his way into the lyrics of the national anthem at the RBC. Oh, say, can Jussi, indeed. Grade: A
Matt Cullen (8-15-23 in 41 GP): Losing his two linemates from last year, Whitney (to elsewhere in the lineup) and LaRose (to injury), seems to have slowed Cullen down a bit. He's still a serviceable penalty killer, but Brandon Sutter has eclipsed both Cullen and Rod Brind'Amour as the Canes' go-to defensive center. Cullen's power play production, though, has completely dried up over the last two seasons. A year after scoring seven points with the man advantage, Cullen has but three halfway through this year. On the surface, his expiring contract makes him a hot commodity in the trade market, but it's fair to wonder what the Canes can expect to get in exchange. Grade: C
Tuomo Ruutu (11-14-25 in 37 GP): Still one of the most popular members of the roster, Ruutu has slowed down just a bit from his torrid second half of last season, but like Whitney he's done what the Canes pay him to do. In Ruutu's case, that means going to the dirty areas in front of the net, plastering opponents against the boards and getting under the opposition's skin. Check, check and check. Again, like Whitney, Ruutu gets a few knocks for the power play being inconsistent, but at even strength Ruutu and Jokinen have been far and away the Canes' best players. For the third-highest salary on the team you'd probably want to see a few more points, but Ruutu has been the least of the Canes' concerns. Grade: B
Brandon Sutter (10-6-16 in 32 GP): At the start of the season, it was assumed that Sutter would spend this year in Albany with his presumed linemates Drayson Bowman and Zach Boychuk. Then the Canes stumbled out of the gate, Sutter earned a callup, and the rest is history. Even this early in his career, it's obvious that Sutter is the Canes' future among defensive forwards, but what's surprised everyone is his scoring touch. Sutter has jumped all over the lineup, playing with such varied linemates as Tuomo Ruutu and Tom Kostopoulos, but his slumps have been short in duration and he's emerging on a short list along with the likes of Jokinen and Ruutu as dependable secondary scorers. Grade: A-
Erik Cole (6-2-8 in 20 GP): Half of his six goals came in one game, the hat trick against Vancouver. Take away that game and you're looking at 3-2-5 in 19 games, and it's a safe assumption that production like that is not exactly what Jim Rutherford was expecting when he reunited Cole with his longtime linemate Staal. Even taking into account the two injuries that have cost Cole half of the season thus far, he has been largely invisible, and Staal's production has come in spite of Cole's lack thereof. Even taking a significant pay cut, the Canes certainly expected more than eight points from a guy who obviously looks like his best days are behind him. Grade: D-
Sergei Samsonov (7-6-13 in 37 GP): Last year, Samsonov found an unlikely home on Rod Brind'Amour's wing late in the season. This year, he's yo-yoed all over the lineup, and his game has suffered. Samsonov is in a bit of a strange situation: he's very obviously not a defensive specialist (to prove it, check out his minus-12), but he doesn't score consistently enough to crack the top 6 on a regular basis. Paul Maurice has tried to put him on offensively-productive lines, but every time he does so Samsonov immediately becomes the weak link. It might be time to relegate Samsonov to power-play specialist status, because in any other hole on the roster he's pretty much set up to fail. He's the proverbial square peg, and until the Canes figure out where to effectively use him he will continue to flounder. Grade: C-
Tom Kostopoulos (3-4-7 in 41 GP): At the start of the season I said that Kostopoulos would fill the Craig Adams role, a grinder who can occasionally take top-nine minutes but whose bread and butter comes on the penalty kill. True to form, Kostopoulos has been a fixture on the Canes' penalty kill and currently makes up a third of the Canes' spare-parts third line with Samsonov and Sutter. Kostopoulos wasn't brought in to create offense, but to prevent the other team from accomplishing the same. Mission accomplished; Kostopoulos leads Canes regulars with a zero plus-minus rating, which on a team that took until Christmas to win its tenth game is saying something. Grade: A-
Rod Brind'Amour (2-6-8 in 40 GP): Oy vey. The decline of Brind'Amour is the top story of the first part of the season. As has been stated multiple times by multiple people, the captain's performance is the elephant in the room, culminating in a healthy scratch against Pittsburgh in early December. With the number of injuries the Canes have suffered, they couldn't afford to scratch Brind'Amour for more than one game, but if and when the roster returns to full health it's possible the Canes could make their captain a scratch again later in the year. He simply doesn't have the speed to compete in today's league, and even his vaunted defensive game seems to have abandoned him. It's a sad day when you have to pull out this grade, one of only two on the roster, but it's doubly sad when it's pegged to a franchise icon. Grade: F
Scott Walker (3-2-5 in 32 GP): Another member of the Canes' roster on his last legs, Walker is still serviceable at his age, but a decade of playing all-out has caught up to him in the form of nagging injuries and inconsistent play. Walker is too proud to give the Canes anything other than 100%, but he's another player for whom the speed of the game has passed him by. For that reason, he's also susceptible to healthy scratches, and the third line is a best-case scenario for him. Still, the expectations were ratcheted down accordingly in the last offseason, so his play isn't nearly the disappointment that Brind'Amour's is. Grade: C-
Stephane Yelle (2-1-3 in 39 GP): Yelle's performance is directly tied to the penalty kill, as no one expected him to play anything more than fourth-line minutes at even strength. Despite the kill's struggles, a lot of the underperformance can be pinned on the play of regular PKers Brind'Amour, Aaron Ward and Chad LaRose, while Yelle has largely performed to expectations. Brandon Sutter's emergence has given the Canes a solid one-two punch at defensive center, and Yelle has more than capably stepped into the secondary role that Kevyn Adams played for so many years. The grade may seem a bit high, but let's be honest: no one expected more than ten goals from Yelle, so grading him based on offensive production alone is worthless. Grade: B-
Chad LaRose (1-5-6 in 28 GP): Unfortunately for LaRose, the first year of his new contract has been one to forget. It's easy to blame the weighted expectations of the new deal for depressing LaRose's output, but honestly that's the truth. You could tell that LaRose was really pressuring himself and wasn't the happy-go-lucky type that just missed out on a 20-goal year last season, and it translated to horrendous defensive play and a lack of confidence in the offensive zone. Hopefully his injury will clear his head and allow him to get back to his prior season's production, but for right now LaRose is one of the more disappointing players this year. Grade: D
Patrick Dwyer (2-1-3 in 17 GP): Another player, like Sutter, who expected to see little more than garbage time in the NHL, Dwyer has carved out a niche as a reliable defensive player. According to Gabe Desjardins' statistics, Dwyer's presence on the ice has resulted in 1.66 fewer goals per 60 minutes, better than any other man on the roster. (In other words, if Dwyer were on the ice for every minute of a game, the Canes would surrender 1.32 goals on average; if he were off the ice for 60 minutes, the Canes would surrender 2.98.) It's likely that when the Canes return to full health Dwyer will be sent back to Albany, but he has earned a place in the conversation of what the Canes will look like in the future. Grade: B+
Incompletes: Jiri Tlusty and Zach Boychuk haven't played enough to earn a grade, but both need some more development in Albany so it would be unfair to assign a grade based on three games apiece. Tim Conboy has played eleven games, but he hasn't seen NHL ice since mid-November and he has been passed over for multiple callups since being sent down. It would be surprising to see him with the Canes again for the rest of the season.
Overall forward GPA: 2.286, or just under a C+. Does that seem about right? What are your thoughts?
Sunday, January 3, 2010
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