News Article: News & Notes XXXVI: We're not leaving

[MinJaBen]

Abby and Shane will be next, mark it.

I can definitely see Abby getting good offers from other options, but I think Shane will be here longer.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

This is a stepping stone gig for Abby and had been since day 1. If she’s here in 3 years, I’ll be shocked, but it has nothing to do with Dundon. She’s destined for much bigger and brighter things.

 

[AhosDatsyukian]

I miss the days where Canes fans here mocked the "Dundon so cheap" narrative instead of perpetuating it.

 

[ndp]

Canes Hire Matt Turney as Chief Strategy Officer 6-10-2021

Kinda fits in with the hire young and cheap philosophy that I've heard.

Must be nice to have the funds to "intern" in multinational banking industry for a few years fresh out of college and grab a job as CSO for a billionaire.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

I don’t think this has anything to do with TDA and more to do with how we do business in general under TD.

Well, I don't know about that. I'm sure there are many factors, but a bunch of angry fans definitely make the job less fun.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

what made you decide to leave the bulls? if you don't mind me asking, anyway.

i wouldn't just ignore the dude having a kid two weeks ago, though. i actually took a pay cut when my son was a baby to take a job closer to home. all it did was cut 1.5 hours of driving each day (from 2 hours to about 25 minutes) out of my schedule but it was totally worth it. (and, yeah, the gas savings took care of most of the cut.) i can see him wanting a 9 to 5 instead of the crazy (but absolutely fun) schedule with the canes.

I was 26, I ran all of their tech, and I was ready to move on to bigger things, including a move to a new city. I worked there a year, and it was an amazing year, but I was a kid who knew a lot about this whole new "internet" thing and the opportunities were too big to pass up.

And yes, the schedule was craaaaazy. On game days I'd get there at 9am and leave after 11pm, and I'd work the whole time. Part of that work was escorting Wool-E around the ballpark and picking kids for base races, and when it rained the entire front office pulled tarp. (I also took tickets at the gate with Ron the Ref!) It was an incredible experience, and I would have stayed if it had made any financial sense at all, but it just didn't. I had a unique skillset in that front office, though.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

I miss the days where Canes fans here mocked the "Dundon so cheap" narrative instead of perpetuating it.

I miss the days when we thought his cheapness wasn't relevant.

He is not cheap on the ice. He is damned cheap everywhere else, and we have mountains of evidence now.

 

[TheReelChuckFletcher]

I miss the days when we thought his cheapness wasn't relevant.

He is not cheap on the ice. He is damned cheap everywhere else, and we have mountains of evidence now.

Willing to spend on the ice is all that really matters in the NHL. The players and coaches are who truly determine the success of the franchise. Win and the fans will come no matter who the announcers are or any other thing.

 

[Daeavorn]

Willing to spend on the ice is all that really matters in the NHL. The players and coaches are who truly determine the success of the franchise. Win and the fans will come no matter who the announcers are or any other thing.

Disagree, you need to maintain a connection with your community. He is destroying everything we have a connection to in the organization. Including fan favorite players.

The second he stops winning it all comes tumbling down harder than ever before.

 

[A Star is Burns]

I don't know Michael Smith, but I'd imagine it doesn't boil down to just one reason as to why he's leaving. I do imagine this last year and change has been difficult and that might have contributed. When he's done pieces on covering hockey in a bubble or this past weird season, it sounds exhausting and probably has taken away some of the fun elements of the gig, like some of the travel-related perks. I would think the stress of that and not knowing what the future is going to be like from that perspective, steadier hours with the expanded family, possibly more pay, and sure, maybe not dealing with some of the headaches of a TDA situation are probably all factors in some way, shape, or form.

 

[Svechhammer]

Yeah the 'at least Dundon is willing to spend for the team on the ice' rings a little hollow right now given that we are currently about $15m under the cap and have let multiple fan favorites go because of money.

Hard to thump your chests about being willing to "pay for good players" while at the same time kicking good players away because they're not willing to sign your lowball offers.

 

[AD Skinner]

I'll say again that there's still plenty of time between now and game 1. But if the lineup we have now is the one that takes the ice in that game I will be disappointed

 

[A Star is Burns]

Yeah the 'at least Dundon is willing to spend for the team on the ice' rings a little hollow right now given that we are currently about $15m under the cap and have let multiple fan favorites go because of money.

Hard to thump your chests about being willing to "pay for good players" while at the same time kicking good players away because they're not willing to sign your lowball offers.

That just might be a disconnect between "your" evaluation of what makes good players that are worth paying and what they think makes good players that are worth paying. I mean, sure thing on the cap number if they end up that far below when the season is done, but that's far from being known.

 

[Svechhammer]

That just might be a disconnect between "your" evaluation of what makes good players that are worth paying and what they think makes good players that are worth paying. I mean, sure thing on the cap number if they end up that far below when the season is done, but that's far from being known.

I'm absolutely willing to give it to the beginning of the season, but after the last week and a half, I'm not really in a spot to staunchly defend Dundon as not being a cheap-ass after the moves we have already made.

Even the analytics experts who cover hockey (like Dom L with The Athletic) who have praised us over the years for our moves are scratching their heads right now over what we're doing, themselves coming to the conclusion that our moves this year have been made to make the roster cheaper. If we're doing this to go big game hunting and actually get someone like Eichel, great. But the fact of the matter is, right now we have a cheaper roster who just lost the best free agent in the league because we weren't willing to pay him what another team did at a cost that we could literally fit under our cap right now even with a Svech extension. And the rumors from reputable sources are that our offers to both him and our Calder Finalist goalie, a position of historical weakness for us, were insultingly low.

Yeah, right now I'm not gonna die on the 'Dundon isn't actually cheap' hill when there is a growing mound of evidence contrary to it.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

Disagree, you need to maintain a connection with your community. He is destroying everything we have a connection to in the organization. Including fan favorite players.

The second he stops winning it all comes tumbling down harder than ever before.

Changing does not necessarily equal destroying. I never even heard of this Chase guy until he resigned the other day. I know of Mike Smith, but he’s web/media guy.

The canes will most likely backfill those positions and things probably won’t change much.

Fan favorite players move on all the time. E. Staal, LaRose, Commodore, Gleason, C. Ward all moved on at some point. Rutherford basically forced Brind’amour to retire.

 

[A Star is Burns]

I'm absolutely willing to give it to the beginning of the season, but after the last week and a half, I'm not really in a spot to staunchly defend Dundon as not being a cheap-ass after the moves we have already made.

Even the analytics experts who cover hockey (like Dom L with The Athletic) who have praised us over the years for our moves are scratching their heads right now over what we're doing, themselves coming to the conclusion that our moves this year have been made to make the roster cheaper. If we're doing this to go big game hunting and actually get someone like Eichel, great. But the fact of the matter is, right now we have a cheaper roster who just lost the best free agent in the league because we weren't willing to pay him what another team did at a cost that we could literally fit under our cap right now even with a Svech extension. And the rumors from reputable sources are that our offers to both him and our Calder Finalist goalie, a position of historical weakness for us, were insultingly low.

Yeah, right now I'm not gonna die on the 'Dundon isn't actually cheap' hill when there is a growing mound of evidence contrary to it.

I don't care if you or anyone dies on that hill. I honestly don't even care if we're cheap if it works. I do think in the long run, you have to spend to the cap more often than not, and we mostly have. That's the only extent I care about how cheap we are is you're likely not going to be able to moneyball it every season to great success.

Perhaps their offseason just didn't go as planned and we go into the season cheaper than expected. But I personally won't care about that as long as we are competing and make moves at the deadline or in season with that space. Just because we don't have all the pieces we want to start the season doesn't mean we can't add meaningful pieces in season as we did two seasons ago. Other people will feel differently and the only thing that matters is being close to the cap from the start of the season, and that's perfectly fine.

I'm don't feel the need to die on any hill for anything, but I'm pretty patient in the grand scheme and will let the results speak for themselves.

 

[spockBokk]

What the Canes had wasn’t working. Outside of shipping out Faulk, there really haven’t been any major changes to the group that has not been able to get past truly elite teams in the playoffs. You can only hope for growth from within for so long. Right or wrong, the team needed some changes.

Now, I don’t think they needed to shake up the team to the extent they have, but it’s clear RBA wanted more vets. They have much more NHL depth at forward and D now. What they still lack is improvement in the top 6. We’ll see if they address that.

I see no reason to think the team is worse, on paper, as long as they effectively address their scoring issues. In fact, I think arguments could be made they’re better in certain areas. I’m willing to give them the chance to prove the naysayers wrong, but really… bring in another top 6 LW already.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

Willing to spend on the ice is all that really matters in the NHL. The players and coaches are who truly determine the success of the franchise. Win and the fans will come no matter who the announcers are or any other thing.

That's the theory.

 

[Canes]

It's pretty simple to me. It's all about winning, Dundell think how they run things now will bring us a cup within our window. They win, they prove themselves right. They lose, then all the criticisms were mostly right.

The most scary thing to me is that they actually don't care about winning the Cup, and they just want to be a money printing machine where just being a playoff team is the goal and they never actually commit to going for it.

 

[tarheelhockey]

The second he stops winning it all comes tumbling down harder than ever before.

That’s the biggest concern I have in all of this. People become fans for a lot of different reasons. Winning tends to keep a big bandwagon rolling, but there are a lot of other ties that bind people to the org. Otherwise it would be really and truly empty when the team is losing. To be sustainable, the fanbase has to be resilient to ups and downs. That means being attached to things other than Ws.

I’m not hitting the panic button yet. Maybe they bring in some serious young talent to be the new community-facing voice of the organization. If so, awesome. We move on and have more fun. But unless/until that proves to be the case, I think it’s fair to be a bit unsettled by the events of the past month or two. It has been an ugly time for the franchise.

 

[Chrispy]

Lots of talk about TDA being the reason so many moves are occurring. For me, I first thought of the pay cuts tied to attendance last year. Lots of people did not another job to fall back on like Forslund, so they took the job and keep going through the pandemic.

Now, the economy is rebounding and other industries are hiring with some major raises. It doesn’t surprise me to see a lot of people who may have had to take a severe pay cut last year jump at a chance to start recouping those losses moving forward.

 

[CanesFanBudMan]

I think I’m signing off until the season (or roster move). Last week has been nothing but rehashing the exact same point on here

 

[Navin R Slavin]

I think I’m signing off until the season (or roster move). Last week has been nothing but rehashing the exact same point on here

Welcome to every offseason ever.

 

[geehaad]

Can we talk about food now?

 

[HisIceness]

I'll say again that there's still plenty of time between now and game 1. But if the lineup we have now is the one that takes the ice in that game I will be disappointed

I agree, because right now our roster may or may not be a playoff team unless everyone from top to bottom is firing on all cylinders. I really don't want to know what an off-season after a disappointing season might look like under this ownership because right now, we have no base to judge on (2018 doesn't count in my book since Dundon came in mid-season, and change was likely coming anyway)