Our Future Roster and the Checkers This Season

[Bridgeburner96]

Because we need more offseason discussions I thought I'd see what you guys think about our forwards (roster and prospects) going forward. Feel free to discuss the defensemen too, I'm just trying to get a discussion going. I'm also interested to see what your expectations on the prospects and Checkers season is for this year.

1- I also put this on Canes and Coffee:
I think going forward one thing that will be interesting is balancing which forwards we want to keep from the current roster versus the upcoming prospects because we will have a lot of good players to choose from depending on how the players develop. Will we keep Staal, Rask, Teravainen or Roy, Gauthier, Necas, Foegele, Kuokkanen, Saarela, Zykov? It will obviously depend on performance. The point is we won’t have spots for everyone and we can’t keep the prospects in Charlotte forever so it will be interesting to see who stays and who gets traded or not re-signed. I know it's too far into the future for us to really project, but I'm interested in you all's thoughts and we just generally need more to discuss at this point in the offseason.

We’ll probably be moving on from Williams, Ryan, and Stempniak in the next year or two which would open up three spots. And I would assume Mcginn and PDG aren’t going to stick around long unless it’s on the fourth line so that could potentially open up another two spots. Anyways I think it’s something interesting to consider even if it’s a future issue.

2-Charlotte should be amazing this year barring significant struggles from our prospects this year. That team will be absolutely stacked (as many on here have mentioned). I mean we will be pushing some pretty good prospects down to the ECHL this season because we have so many good players coming in to play for the Checkers this year. So what are your thoughts on the Checkers season and your expectations for the prospects' season this year?

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[Anton Dubinchuk]

I want this thread to be a thing lol.

I think going forward one thing that will be interesting is balancing which forwards we want to keep from the current roster versus the upcoming prospects because we will have a lot of good players to choose from depending on how the players develop. Will we keep Staal, Rask, Teravainen or Roy, Gauthier, Necas, Foegele, Kuokkanen, Saarela, Zykov? It will obviously depend on performance. The point is we won’t have spots for everyone and we can’t keep the prospects in Charlotte forever so it will be interesting to see who stays and who gets traded or not re-signed. I know it's too far into the future for us to really project, but I'm interested in you all's thoughts and we just generally need more to discuss at this point in the offseason.

We’ll probably be moving on from Williams, Ryan, and Stempniak in the next year or two which would open up three spots. And I would assume Mcginn and PDG aren’t going to stick around long unless it’s on the fourth line so that could potentially open up another two spots. Anyways I think it’s something interesting to consider even if it’s a future issue.

1) Out of your list above (Roy, Gauthier, Necas, Foegele, Kuokkanen, Saarela, Zykov), probability suggests that at most 4-5 of the 7 are even future NHL regulars (probably 3-4). So we may just have a spot for everyone who earns one. Until these guys become NHLers, they're all just darts, when it comes to planning the forward corps of the future anyway.

2) Williams will be here next year, so those two spots are Ryan/Stempniak. I'd bet a lot that two of those seven darts mentioned above (make it eight, throw Wallmark in there too, because I tend to think of him in direct relation to Derek Ryan as his eventual replacement) will be ready for a 3C and 3RW spot come next season.

3) Projecting past that, at a slot-level, is nearly impossible. 2 years ago when we were drafting Hanifin and Pesce/Slavin had never played a game, we would've never guessed that Slavin/Pesce would be our top pair, and Justin Williams would be taking up a RW spot. So wondering who will be Williams's replacement 2 years from now is borderline impossible.

Not trying to end the convo with point 3, because I do think there's still a convo to be had. Darts darts darts. We don't have to know who Williams's replacement (or, whoever's replacement) will be, because we can be more confident than ever that it'll be one of those guys. It's like being told you need to find an ace of spades, and then going out and finding 70 playing cards. You have reason to be hopeful that at least one of them is the ace you're looking for.

4) Making a not-so-bold prediction right now that one of Staal or Rask will be gone in the next 3 years. Aho will be a center, Necas will be a center. One of Roy or Wallmark might pan out. Too many cooks at some point.



I'm going to leave the "will Charlotte be good" question alone because honestly I can't figure out what makes an AHL team good. It seems to be the presence of several veteran tweeners that put up crazy production in the AHL, but not always. There doesn't seem to be close to a perfect correlation between having good NHL prospects on your AHL team and being a winning AHL team. Seems like the Taylor Becks and Marty Frks of the world are what you need.

 

[HisIceness]

Hopefully we have found a coach that will stick around for a while. I get why Morris and Ulf left though.

 

[Stickpucker]

Any estimations of the lineup for Charlotte to start the season?

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

Any estimations of the lineup for Charlotte to start the season?

What if I told you I knew a guy who could get those projections straight from Mike Vellucci's personal notebook?

 

[DaveG]

I'd say you're crazy... but that doesn't mean that doesn't exist.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

Going to go way out on a limb and say that the Checker's forward line-up looks something like this.

Zykov Wallmark Miller
PhilD Saarela Poturalski
Tolchinski Roy Goat
Foegelle Kuokkanen Brown

 

[Bridgeburner96]

I guess maybe my question is when do you let go of the vets and let the prospects play, but I suppose the answer is basically it depends on performance. It depends on who wins the roster spots. And obviously I didn't list all of our prospects so there will be even more competition. Anyways it will be interesting to me to see how it all plays out. I'm really almost as excited to see how the Checkers do this year as I am to see how the Canes do. I think this season will be very interesting. I like that Vellucci will be the Checkers coach, but I also like what he brings to the big club and so I would rather not have him down there indefinitely. At the same time the Checkers really need a coach to stay for a little bit.

 

[Vagrant]

I guess maybe my question is when do you let go of the vets and let the prospects play, but I suppose the answer is basically it depends on performance. It depends on who wins the roster spots. And obviously I didn't list all of our prospects so there will be even more competition. Anyways it will be interesting to me to see how it all plays out. I'm really almost as excited to see how the Checkers do this year as I am to see how the Canes do. I think this season will be very interesting. I like that Vellucci will be the Checkers coach, but I also like what he brings to the big club and so I would rather not have him down there indefinitely. At the same time the Checkers really need a coach to stay for a little bit.

I think the decision about when to let the prospects take spots is when the cost effective ratio makes sense vs. expected contribution. When you feel fairly confident that a player is close enough to contribute you have to put him in position to have success. That was one of my major beefs under Rutherford was that he too often couldn't see veteran role players as part time labor. He would always give them one contract too many and not allow internal options to filter up from Charlotte. Not that there were superstars down there, but deciding to continually pay guys like Chad and Patrick Dwyer in excess of $1 million a season and tons of other notable examples really chipped away at the budget we had available and kept us pretty firmly entrenched in mediocrity. No specific contract was particularly debilitating but when you overpay your bottom six by chips and chunks it really adds up when you're on a shoestring budget.

A real test for Francis will be in seeing how he handles situations like Nordstrom, Stalberg, Hainsey, Nestrasil, McClement, Ryan, etc. going forward. I think it's a mixed bag on those guys to this point. Ryan's extension didn't feel right to me. Trading Hainsey and Stalberg were the right moves. McClement was done so his decision was basically a formality. But as the upper end of our roster starts to creep up in price, it will be good to see those well compensated bottom six guys start to filter out to be replaced by internal options. PDG and McGinn to supplant Nordstrom and a competition among our highly regarded offensive prospects to supplant Ryan would have been the ideal situation for me. I really like Kruger though many would say he fits exactly the descriptors of my point, but I think his skillset is so unique that it's not going to be incredibly easy to filter someone up to hold that spot. Chicago might find that out this season.

It can be scary to say goodbye to a player like Ryan and basically earmark that spot for a player like Kuokkanen, Saarela, Roy, or Gauthier... but sometimes the move needs to be made to allow those options to bloom into the players they're supposed to become. If they strike out, it's not incredibly difficult to find a Derek Ryan from another team early in the preseason looking for a PTO or a full time gig somewhere before trying options in Europe.

However, the counter for that position is pretty clear. A season in the AHL has never derailed a prospect that was destined for greatness. All of those guys would benefit from a year to get used to the pace of professional hockey in North America. But the key point is to make sure that you don't block them with guys you salary locked in to making your team.

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

Agree with those points, Vagrant. Luckily, Nordy, Ryan, Jooris, and Stempniak are all up after this year. Kruger, like you suggested, I put in a different category. But depending on how many guys kill it in Charlotte this year, Francis can renew x amount of the guys mentioned above and cut the rest. While I agree the Ryan signing was confusing, esp now that we've basically got our 14 forwards assuming PDG sticks, Francis does seem to understand the balance that you're talking about.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

I see it a bit differently. I think the bigger issue was the failure to draft and develop players so that we had guys that were capable of taking spots. Most, if not all, of the guys that were "blocked" by the likes of Dwyer and LaRose just weren't good enough to be NHL players. In fact, Dwyer, LaRose, and Nash (and maybe Willis pre-concussion) are about the only forwards during a long stretch that ever even came through our farm system and really stuck, and that was on some pretty bad teams. Gove, Aucoin, Bayda, Samson, Dalpe, Boychuk, Bowman, Terry, Sutter (not Brandon), Blanchard, MicFlicker, Welsh, Shugg,etc..are pretty much the best we had. Many of those guys were given ample chance to take a spot and failed and none of them were able to carve out an NHL career elsewhere once leaving Carolina.

I do think JR did hang on to some of the NHL guys too long, but some of it was because he/the org. was so bad at drafting/developing that there wasn't anyone banging at the door to take a spot.

What Francis has done well in this regard (so far) is avoiding any big dollar, long term contracts that might block a guy when he's ready. At forward, only 2 guys are signed beyond the 18/19 seasons - Staal, who is 28 and was signed by Rutherford and Rask, who is only 24 and has a reasonable $4M salary. RF has already cleared the decks on defense to allow the likes of Slavin, Pesce, Hanifin, and now Fleury (if he makes it) to ascend to the NHL. On offense, we are already very young with only three guys 30+ and 2 of them are UFAs next year and 1 of them the year after that.

I don't see an issue at all even if RF does re-sign one of the guys mentioned above for another year or two.

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

I don't think Vagrant was saying that it would be bad for any of those guys to be re-signed (nor was I). I think he was saying not all of them should be, to avoid blocking guys, and they shouldn't be signed for more than $1m, and they shouldn't be signed to more than 1 year.

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

I don't think Vagrant was saying that it would be bad for any of those guys to be re-signed (nor was I). I think he was saying not all of them should be, to avoid blocking guys, and they shouldn't be signed for more than $1m, and they shouldn't be signed to more than 1 year.

Yeah, I can see that, but I guess I just don't see a concern. Eric Staal, Kris Versteeg, Ron Hainsey, JM Liles, Gleason, Nathan Gerbe, Riley Nash, Patrick Dwyer, Chris Terry, Brett Bellemore, Jay Harrison...all guys that he could have signed again and held onto, yet moved on from to make way for others. We might see 1 or 2 guys re-signed for shorter term deals, but I think we'll continue to see that mode, particularly with the strength of our farm system now.

Anyhow, once we sign Tavares in the offseason, we won't have the money to sign guys like Nordstrom, Jooris, Ryan so we'll have no choice.

 

[RodTheBawd]

Anyhow, once we sign Tavares in the offseason, we won't have the money to sign guys like Nordstrom, Jooris, Ryan so we'll have no choice.

 

[Carolinas Identity*]

Yeah, I can see that, but I guess I just don't see a concern. Eric Staal, Kris Versteeg, Ron Hainsey, JM Liles, Gleason, Nathan Gerbe, Riley Nash, Patrick Dwyer, Chris Terry, Brett Bellemore, Jay Harrison...all guys that he could have signed again and held onto, yet moved on from to make way for others. We might see 1 or 2 guys re-signed for shorter term deals, but I think we'll continue to see that mode, particularly with the strength of our farm system now.

Anyhow, once we sign Tavares in the offseason, we won't have the money to sign guys like Nordstrom, Jooris, Ryan so we'll have no choice.

this guy gets it