Hurricanes Name Don Waddell as GM and Rod Brind’Amour as Head Coach

[Melrose Munch]

hurricanes are looking wobbly

 

[HisIceness]

Lol Don Waddell. What has this idiot been doing since the Pens gave him a scouting job after he was fired for donating us Hossa and Dupuis?

Canes will continue to suck - horrible pick

Brind’Amour will be gone within a year or two. Nepotism at its finest.

These decisions exemplify why the Canes will remain a joke.

Maybe next year when the team is in the dumpster and the rest of the fans leave Dundon will realize what a big ass mistake he made on this day.

Too bad for him no one in North or South Carolina will any longer give a damn, and he will have to sell the team to the Houston Rockets owner. By that point I will have checked out and will be a Nashville fan so it's okay

 

[Pens x]

Maybe next year when the team is in the dumpster and the rest of the fans leave Dundon will realize what a big ass mistake he made on this day.

Too bad for him no one in North or South Carolina will any longer give a damn, and he will have to sell the team to the Houston Rockets owner.

Yea if his goal is to alienate fans then he’s brilliant. You might actually be right, how else do you justify these two decisions?

 

[HisIceness]

Yea if his goal is to alienate fans then he’s brilliant. You might actually be right, how else do you justify these two decisions?

You can't, especially Waddell.

Unfortunately Dundon f***ed up here, and it's too bad because back when he bought the team I thought they would turn it around, but now it's looking like a bottomless pit.

Oh well, always have 2006 I guess.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Maybe next year when the team is in the dumpster and the rest of the fans leave Dundon will realize what a big ass mistake he made on this day.

Too bad for him no one in North or South Carolina will any longer give a damn, and he will have to sell the team to the Houston Rockets owner. By that point I will have checked out and will be a Nashville fan so it's okay

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

Carolina is screwed Don Waddell is awful

 

[Pens x]

Well Canes fans did complain Francis didn’t do enough as GM. Donny Waddell won’t make you guys bored.

 

[Big Daddy Cane]

Lol Don Waddell. What has this idiot been doing since the Pens gave him a scouting job after he was fired for donating us Hossa and Dupuis?

Canes will continue to suck - horrible pick

Brind’Amour will be gone within a year or two. Nepotism at its finest.

These decisions exemplify why the Canes will remain a joke.

Of the things to rightfully criticize Waddell for, this one perplexes me. What is the expectation in that type of situation? Impending UFAs don’t have a ton of value; ~20 games + playoffs is not worth core players or prospects, regardless of how good the rental is. If what the Penguins gave up was what the market dictated, what was the alternative? Let Hossa walk, like Savard did, out of principal?

 

[jetsforever]

Interesting that Rod gets a HC job
I wonder how the team'll do

 

[blueandgoldguy]

You get what you pay for Canes fans.

 

[Big Daddy Cane]

I don’t mean to come across as a homer that is a Waddell apologist all of a sudden just because he is now the GM of my favorite team, but I think he gets deserved criticism for the wrong reason.

Waddell’s Thrashers came into the league with virtually nothing in the way of long-term assets and were behind the proverbial 8-ball because of it. That’s not an excuse ultimately. Nashville came into the league in a similar manner and eventually became a consistently competitive organization. Why? Smart drafting. Atlanta was just horrendous outside of the obvious picks. Look at the roster for the Thrashers’ lone playoff team: it’s Kovalchuk, Hossa, Lehtonen and a bunch of guys in their mid-30s. Waddell is responsible for the inability to build depth. That lack of supporting pieces surrounding the franchise talent led to mediocrity and put the Thrashers in an uncompetitive position with regards to retaining said franchise talent.

Carolina is not in Atlanta’s position, fortunately. Francis did much of the hardwork in cleaning up after Rutherford’s mess. You can see a young core on both sides of the puck being developed that includes Slavin, Pesce, Hanifin, Aho, Necas, Svechnikov (presumably) and perhaps Teravainen. Surrounding that group are quality vets in Staal, Lindholm, Faulk and perhaps Skinner, and a prospect pool that has good depth outside of the two big guys mentioned (notably Bean and Fleury.)

More importantly as it relates to Waddell is that Carolina has a scouting staff with a proven track record of finding talent outside of the obvious picks. Over the previous 9 drafts, the scouting group found Dumoulin, Faulk, Andersen, Rask, Slavin, Pesce and Aho in rounds 2-9.

I’m approaching this with an open mind. I’m not yet ready to buy into these excessively pessimistic proclamations about what’s in store for Carolina. Jim Rutherford is ultimately responsible for Carolina’s stretch of mediocrity. Yet, his reputation may never be better than it is right now. Perhaps GMs are better in one stage of the franchise cycle than they are another. Rutherford is a guy that has done a great job of adding the salt and pepper to the metaphorical dish, but struggled buying the groceries that comprised it. Perhaps Waddell can be better suited for a team an external piece or two away from being a consistently competitive team as opposed to 5-7.

 

[Legionnaire]

I wish him well, but I'm afraid that this has " bring in a former fan favorite player to coach" written all over it. His role with the hurricanes for a while ( like 5 or six years) has been assistant coach, correct ? Has he ever had a head coaching gig ?

My guess is that the compete level goes up for physical fear of the head coach.

Yeah. Those situations don't often work out well.

 

[Gnashville]

Carolina is screwed Don Waddell is awful

He does good with lotteries though.


I am glad Waddell is back another guy David Poile can fleece on a regular basis.

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

He does good with lotteries though.


I am glad Waddell is back another guy David Poile can fleece on a regular basis.

he's fodder for evey GM, including Benning and Chyka and they are AWFUL especially Chyka

 

[HanSolo]

Feels like an ol boys club hire. Good luck to him though. Who knows? Maybe he can do a good job.

 

[tarheelhockey]

You get what you pay for Canes fans.

If that were true, the Sabres would have won Multiple Stanley Cups.

 

[varano]

Well what do you expect? I think these are two terrible hires and they have way more potential to blow up and set the franchise back even more than it already is than anything else.

On top of that, we have the longest playoff drought and a dwlinding fanbase to boot. Now we have a rookie coach and former legend which never works who couldn't get anything out of the power play and a general manager who was beyond awful at his last job and shouldn't be anywhere near a gm position. And I no clue what to make of our owner who I thought would be Mark Cuban but is looking more like Vivek Ranadive.

Not sure if you were being sarcastic but I think my concerns are legit. My patience is running low and my fanhood is in question.

Tldr I hate both of these hires.

It was sarcasm

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

I have no clue if Waddell will be good or if he will suck, but I do know that the main reason Dundon repeatedly gave for firing Francis was that he wanted a more collaborative approach. It's probably a big reason (on top of Salary) why other candidates weren't interested. It may work and it may fail miserably, but that's the model he's after. In that light, I'm not overly concerned with drafting as of now, the same scouts, same AGMs, same data guy (Tlusky), same player development, etc.. are all still in place.

The only concern I have, and I'm not terribly concerned, is that the new owner pushes to short-cut the process and does a JR type trade (ie...good young prospect for an older player with less term). Without making any moves, the Canes lineup could look like:

Aho-Lindholm-TT
McGinn-Staal-J. Williams
Skinner-Necas-Svechnikov
Martinook-Rask-Foegele
Zykov,Wallmark

Slavin-Pesce
Hanifin-Faulk
Fleury-TVR
McKeown-Bean

Fix the goaltending and that is a team that could be vastly improved over last year and could have a NJ Devils type season. For the first time in ages, I could see the Canes moving a guy like Rask, Lindholm or even Skinner and think it would be OK, because there is finally some depth.

 

[Look Up]

Waddell now GM? You heard it here first -Evander Kane incoming.

 

[Rants Mulliniks]

On HF Boards, fans frequently like to appeal to authority and play the "yeah well he works for the NHL so you can't possibly question his knowledge". Hirings like these always make me smirk. They are proof positive that results mean absolutely nothing to getting hired. Fail as much as you want and you'll still be handed top positions. Yet people here will still use those same old tired arguments while the NHL just keeps recycling same old, same old. Cripes look at the past couple of decades of Oilers management.

 

[sandysan]

On HF Boards, fans frequently like to appeal to authority and play the "yeah well he works for the NHL so you can't possibly question his knowledge". Hirings like these always make me smirk. They are proof positive that results mean absolutely nothing to getting hired. Fail as much as you want and you'll still be handed top positions. Yet people here will still use those same old tired arguments while the NHL just keeps recycling same old, same old. Cripes look at the past couple of decades of Oilers management.

That's not as true as much as it once was. I think that a team that would bring in a numbers guy with no history with the game would likely have a very hard time because a lot of these trades are still based on personal experiences, so a GM postition has a pretty limited pool to draw from. But that pool IS getting bigger, a lot of guys now have positions like assistant GM's where they are being groomed for a spot, guys like mark Bergevin in Chicago, Marty in St. Louis and Dubas and hunter in Toronto. In the " old school days" these positions, if they existed at all were not very successful as a way to a GM position.

Its going to take time, the last thing you want to do it take a guy with no GM experience and throw him to the wolves. The " recycling of old guys" still exists but now I think that there are a lot more avenues for future GM's to get what is considered the requiste experience before assuming responsibility of a NHL teams roster. Hell the canes just proved that by hiring a coach with exactly zero games of head coaching experience.

you might want to lament the rate at which things are changing, but I think changing they are.

 

[Cardiac Jerks]

You get what you pay for Canes fans.

Thanks for the advice, I guess.

You know we, the fans, have no say in this, right?

 

[GoldiFox]

Waddell now GM? You heard it here first -Evander Kane incoming.

Any solid reasoning other than Waddell drafting him?

 

[Rebels57]

Of the things to rightfully criticize Waddell for, this one perplexes me. What is the expectation in that type of situation? Impending UFAs don’t have a ton of value; ~20 games + playoffs is not worth core players or prospects, regardless of how good the rental is. If what the Penguins gave up was what the market dictated, what was the alternative? Let Hossa walk, like Savard did, out of principal?

Re-sign him before he became a UFA? He was reallly good.

 

[blueandgoldguy]

If that were true, the Sabres would have won Multiple Stanley Cups.

Paying a pittance for a GM/Coach is more likely to lead to less than optimal results, than paying market value for a quality candidate.

In baseball, teams with total salaries within the top-5 or top-10 are not guaranteed to make the playoffs and win the World Series. Plenty of examples of that. However, the teams with the top payrolls (and usually the highest paid management teams) are much more likely to make the playoffs on a consistent basis and have sustained success than those outside the top-10.

With these (cheap) hires, I think Carolina is limiting their chances at long-term success. Brind'amour has very limited coaching experience and was never considered a top head coach candidate prior to the hire. Waldell has a mediocre trade record and a terrible drafting history with many first round disappointments/busts and few regular NHL players in rounds 2-9.

I'm not saying the Canes will end up missing the playoffs every single season, but hiring these two may limit the potential of Carolina...bubble team that only qualifies for the playoffs every other year on average over the next several seasons with first round exits....as opposed to a team that consistently qualifies for the playoffs, finishes higher in the standings and has some deep runs with more qualified coaching and management.

Then again, as other poster said, maybe Waddell will be like Rutherford in Pittsburgh - a GM hired when most of the pieces are in place and puts the finishing touches on a Stanley Cup contender. I am not counting on it though as the Pens have, by far, higher end talent in their forward lines.