I feel there's a lot of underselling of Petr Mrazek. He was a total **** show for Philly post-trade but prior to that he was mostly average to above average. You cannot overlook the total train wreck defense that Detroit has iced over the last 2 seasons.
I'll take the team w/Mrazek on it as I'm fairly certain he'll easily outplay Darling to get the starter's spot.
Team Francis would be a perimeter based team. Lots of weak shots that make the possession numbers look good without actually accomplishing anything. Same old, same old, another year out of the playoffs, another year older.
Waddell is at least trying to change a vision for the team that has miserably failed over and over and over again. I think he'll get results. Just, you know, goaltending.
There's literally *no* conversation we can have in August about the Hurricanes that doesn't come down to goaltending. Frame it any which way you want, but it all comes down to goaltending -- and I suspect we all know that. To me, that makes all these exercises kind of a waste of time. I get we all want to have a normal off-season like fans of other teams, but we're Canes fans. We should know better. For better or worse, between the sunk-cost of Darling and the lack of options that would move the needle much, we have what we have in goal.
But there are two reasons that I feel better about the team now than I did under Francis/Peters.
No. 1, is the new emphasis on playing the game hard. I honestly think we've gotten used to pointing at the shot clock and saying that our guys are playing well, but there's a lot more to hockey than mere possession, and this regime seems to get it. I think this alone is going to make us more dangerous.
And reason No. 2 is that the hive-mind has shown that it can be bold. This is big because I don't think the new group is going to let a season get away from us like the previous one did. One of the reasons we're in the Darling jam is that Francis/Peters sat on their a$$es and just kept dressing him. If they had done something -- anything -- to intervene, we'd at least have a better understanding of Darling's ability to put last season behind him. Instead, we learned nothing. If it's November and neither Darling/Mrazek have shown anything, I believe this group will act.
I like the Hamilton trade. Not just because we got an ultra-talented player, and getting ultra-talented players is a good thing, but because we actually *acted* on information that previous leadership ignored, evidently thinking it would change. Noah Hanifin showed us he was unlikely to hit the ceiling some projected of him in his draft year. Elias Lindholm showed us that he could be terrific when engaged and properly motivated, but that he was rarely engaged and properly motivated, preferring to blend in instead of make any real difference.
I'm not crazy about the return, but I also like moving Skinner. He has shown us over *eight* seasons that he's just not willing to pay the price to win hockey games. He'd rather try to skate through an entire team, take a dive, and bark at the refs than backcheck. He has *shown* us that we can't use him in situations he's otherwise seemingly built for -- like the power play, overtime, etc. -- because we can't count on him to keep the puck out of his own net.
Past seasons have to count for something, otherwise, why did we both to play them? That's accountability. These guys showed us who they are. This group is holding them accountable. I'm good with that.
Plus, it shows the intestinal fortitude that this organization has been missing forever and a day. They've made some decisions that weren't popular -- to put it mildly -- but it hasn't stopped them from doing what they felt was the right thing. I know we've railed against the "country club atmosphere" or the "organizational nepotism" that former regimes employed, but this one comes in and burns it all to the ground, installs a new culture of accountability, and for some reason, we don't like it.
Change is hard. I get it. But this was utterly necessary. (Maybe not Chuck Kaiton, but the rest of it, for sure.) We're going to be so much better off, and I think it starts right away.
