GDT: 17 o'clock, Janauary 13th, Colorado @ Carolina: Natural Disasters Edition
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RodTheBawd
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- Oct 16, 2013
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Carolinas Identity*
I'm a bad troll...
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
So having players injured was just a temporary situation which was bound to reverse itself in due time, but having an almost fully healthy roster... isn't?
What would lead anyone to believe that THIS group of players should be expected to get through a normal season without major injuries?
2012: "If we hadn't been missing Skinner and Pitkanen for so much of the season..."
2013: "If we hadn't been missing Ward and Pitkanen and half our other defensemen..."
2014: "If we hadn't been missing Skinner and Semin and Ward..."
2015: "If we hadn't been missing Jordan and Semin..."
That stuff is part of life in the NHL, but most teams don't fall completely to pieces and end up in last place when it happens. This team falls to pieces because the roster is below average to begin with and only gets worse when you start removing key components.
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Boom Boom Apathy
I am the Professor. Deal with it!
- Sep 6, 2006
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Exactly. I'm not of, nor never was of the mindset that this team would end up with a top 2 pick (unless they luck out with the lottery) and have said so all along that I expected them to pick in the 5-8 range, just not deep or talented enough.
I do get the premise of where Kev, Hank and others are coming from. While not bottom 2, the fact is this team isn't very good, hasn't been very good for the better part of the last 6 seasons and what they've been doing isn't working. How many more years of it not working will be required before they try something different? That said, this is Francis and Peters first season. Even if other aren't, I'll give it a couple of years to see how they handle things before making a judgment because there are "some" promising signs that I'd like to see if they can build on.
cptjeff
Reprehensible User
It's a part of life, but we had several major players injured for a long period of time, far and above what's normal in this league. Injuries happen, but no team is going to be able to deal with major injuries to Skinner, Jordan, Semin, Tlusty and Eric (who hasn't really been actually healthy until these last few weeks, despite playing) at the same time. If you take 4 of any team's top 6 out, including the top couple of centers, they're gonna crash and burn.
Most of those seasons had rosters that were worse than this one, and with fewer key injuries than we've had this half season through the whole season. Yes, injuries to key players happened, but not major ones and not all at once. When one or two major guys are out at any given time, you should expect that and have the depth to fill in. When you have your entire defense out (as happened a couple seasons ago), or almost all of your top six, as we had this season, those are not normal things, and those are not things that any team has the depth to handle well. Remember the 2012 Kings? A team that wound up winning the cup with the most dominant playoff performance in recent memory had a losing record early in the year, because they had a lot of key injuries. They recovered from it, got the 8th spot in the playoffs, and went on a run. That's not gonna happen to us, but that's a cup caliber team, and they didn't have the depth to keep winning with injuries that were actually less significant than the ones we had to start the season. As a comparison to a team everyone acknowledges to be very good, do you think Pittsburgh could win with Crosby, Malkin, Perron, and Kunitz all out? I don't. That's pretty much what we were dealing with earlier. A nightmare scenario.
Serious injuries can cripple otherwise good teams. Sometimes, you just have a string of s***ty luck, and the worst thing you can do is to overreact.
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
We clearly have different definitions of "major injury" considering Eric and Skinner have missed 5 games apiece and Tlusty has missed 7. That's nothing compared to teams with actual major injury problems, like Columbus or last year's Wings.
So far this year Semin has been off the reservation with whatever injuries he's accumulated, and Jordan broke his own leg. The rest is ordinary for any team in any season.
You wanna see real adversity? Faulk, Sekera and Hainsey have missed a combined total of 3 games to date. Let's take a couple of those guys out of the lineup for a month and see how it goes.
The bottom line is that this team is BARELY good enough to make the playoffs IF things go well for them, while fully healthy. Which means they are in reality, a bad team that will collapse when things don't go well for them and when inevitable injuries do start to accumulate.
What the Faulk
You'll know when you go
Well, Staal basically played with a messed up foot for a month or so too, so he hasn't been completely healthy.
The thing about wanting to blow up this team has always been the logistics of it. You're not getting anywhere near full value (or even attractive value) for most of the high dollar players and simply getting rid of them just makes the team worse. And yet, Buffalo is historically bad, and Edmonton is just laughably mismanaged. You think missing for 6 years is bad? What happens if they trade Staal, Ward, Sekera, Tlusty, Semin, etc and still pick 4th? They'll still have to overpay a mediocre group of free agents to fill out the depth chart, and then you're just looking at the same team with worse names in the lineup.
This team probably won't be radically changed going forward. It just doesn't make much sense.
The thing about wanting to blow up this team has always been the logistics of it. You're not getting anywhere near full value (or even attractive value) for most of the high dollar players and simply getting rid of them just makes the team worse. And yet, Buffalo is historically bad, and Edmonton is just laughably mismanaged. You think missing for 6 years is bad? What happens if they trade Staal, Ward, Sekera, Tlusty, Semin, etc and still pick 4th? They'll still have to overpay a mediocre group of free agents to fill out the depth chart, and then you're just looking at the same team with worse names in the lineup.
This team probably won't be radically changed going forward. It just doesn't make much sense.
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
It's almost like we say that every single season. About almost every single player.
- Dec 6, 2011
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Didn't Pittsburgh lose Jordan for the first half of the year, then Crosby and Malkin for the second half of the year, make the playoffs and take Tampa to game 7? I recall Ottawa making it the other year losing several key players. Detroit last year. If you're a good team, you handle it. If not, you don't. Pittsburgh this year has been hit hard. Even Columbus sucked less with plenty bad injuries this year albeit not to a playoff level. But if we held together as well as they did we may have had a chance when Jordan came back.
Keeping the team together yet again just seems nuts. It isn't realistic to trade everyone, but they need to find a way to change things. I like the long term vision Francis has for drafting players, but by the time he can make up for the fact JR left us bare, several of these players won't be as good. These guys haven't worked for long enough. If we have the chance to try something different we should.
Keeping the team together yet again just seems nuts. It isn't realistic to trade everyone, but they need to find a way to change things. I like the long term vision Francis has for drafting players, but by the time he can make up for the fact JR left us bare, several of these players won't be as good. These guys haven't worked for long enough. If we have the chance to try something different we should.
- Oct 31, 2007
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Surviving a multitude of injuries has less to do with "being a good team" and more to do with "having a good prospect pool." Pittsburgh had it, Detroit had it, and Ottawa, I believe, survived only because Anderson went complete beast mode out of nowhere. Carolina has rarely had a good prospect pool, partly due to poor drafting and partly because JR traded away any promising prospect to fix his mistakes.
Rebuilding and restocking that pool isn't something that's going to happen overnight. It's going to take years and years to do. Even if they finished dead last in the league this year (and next), any lottery pick player they grab isn't going to help that depleted pool, because (in all likelihood) they'll be playing for the Canes rather than any place they could be called up from in case of injuries.
As long as Francis doesn't panic and sticks to his previously stated plan about restocking the prospect pool, that could change down the road.
Rebuilding and restocking that pool isn't something that's going to happen overnight. It's going to take years and years to do. Even if they finished dead last in the league this year (and next), any lottery pick player they grab isn't going to help that depleted pool, because (in all likelihood) they'll be playing for the Canes rather than any place they could be called up from in case of injuries.
As long as Francis doesn't panic and sticks to his previously stated plan about restocking the prospect pool, that could change down the road.
What the Faulk
You'll know when you go
- Dec 6, 2011
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That's pretty much what I just said. By the time he restocks, some of these guys may be diminishing and coming out of their prime, so cut ties now since they aren't even working. Getting more young assets should help create that depth in the future provided Francis proves good at the job.
What the Faulk
You'll know when you go
Do you think any team is trading anything of value for Staal or Semin or Ward? Probably not. So how does cutting ties for the sake of cutting ties help this team.
That's what no one seems to be able to explain.
- Dec 6, 2011
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Yep, they're the only team that ever performed well with injuries. Again, if we could have performed even mediocre like Columbus with lots of injuries this year, we may have had a chance when we got healthy.
- Oct 31, 2007
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And really, if you look at it, it may just be less about having a good prospect pool and more about having certain players step up when injuries hit.
- Jordan stepped up and played above his head when Crosby and Malkin went down. That, in addition to a change in the style of play, helped the Penguins stay afloat.
- When Detroit was hit, unless I'm mistaken, was the same time that Nyquist went on that ridiculous goal-scoring run. It seemed a game didn't pass that he didn't get a goal or two. That helped ease the loss of their offensive guns.
- Ottawa, as I said, got otherworldly goaltending from Anderson when the team was hit by injuries.
- Columbus, this year, has survived in part due to Foligno's high shooting percentage.
When the injuries hit Carolina, no one stepped up. Ward and Khudobin hadn't found their games. The Semin performance was covered extensively during that time. Nash played above his head, but "above his head" wasn't enough to win games. So they lost...a lot.
- Jordan stepped up and played above his head when Crosby and Malkin went down. That, in addition to a change in the style of play, helped the Penguins stay afloat.
- When Detroit was hit, unless I'm mistaken, was the same time that Nyquist went on that ridiculous goal-scoring run. It seemed a game didn't pass that he didn't get a goal or two. That helped ease the loss of their offensive guns.
- Ottawa, as I said, got otherworldly goaltending from Anderson when the team was hit by injuries.
- Columbus, this year, has survived in part due to Foligno's high shooting percentage.
When the injuries hit Carolina, no one stepped up. Ward and Khudobin hadn't found their games. The Semin performance was covered extensively during that time. Nash played above his head, but "above his head" wasn't enough to win games. So they lost...a lot.
What the Faulk
You'll know when you go
Columbus has six more points than Carolina this year. They're probably not making the playoffs either.
- Dec 6, 2011
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Around the time Jordan came back Columbus was about .500. We were like 10 games under. But no, that wouldn't have given us a better chance at all. If we had played as well for that time period with injuries as they did we'd certainly have a better chance.
What the Faulk
You'll know when you go
the halleJOKEL
strong as brickwall
because i am not jay Pejorative Slur (clever nickname for JR i made up)
so it has no merit
- Dec 6, 2011
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So if we had been good enough to tread water at .500 in similar fashion to Columbus with injuries in that time Jordan and others were injured we wouldn't be better off. Really? That's all I meant and if you don't get it or don't want to that's fine. I guess everyone really wants to defend this same crap that hasn't been working for years. Have at it. I think we need changes, and being a good team means having depth to get through injuries instead of using injuries as an excuse forever.
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