Caned out
For the first time since 1995-96, the reigning Stanley Cup champion won’t make the playoffs, as the Carolina Hurricanes officially sealed their fate Tuesday night by losing at Tampa Bay. Cason gave a good roundup of the regular Cane-bloggers’ reactions Wednesday; over on TSB, the Canes board mods are doing their best to hold the recriminations to a single furious thread. In the back of everyone’s mind is casual fan reaction; after the Canes’ last Finals appearance in 2002, attendance picked up, but in the wake of a dead-last finish in 2002-03, ticket sales fell off drastically for the following year. The Canes’ landing isn’t as low this year, but comes from a much greater height.
Particularly redlining the Outrage-O-Meter was Toronto columnist Damien Cox’s ESPN.com article calling the Canes’ Cup run a fluke. The Acid Queen tears it down in her usual style, and hits dead-on in speculating that the reason for the fluke tag is the usual cultural/geographic chauvinism.It’s tough to reasonably call a six-month season plus two-month playoff stretch a fluke in any context shorter than seven to ten years, and certainly not on less than a year’s perspective. The accusation does, though, merit discussion of how both this year and last came about.
A dominant theme of last year’s analysis was how well the Canes geared themselves for the “new NHL.” Jim Rutherford earned Executive of the Year honors in multiple polls for key acquisitions like Matt Cullen, Frantisek Kaberle and Ray Whitney that set the club on a more offensive path; Peter Laviolette’s emphasis on speed and firepower played perfectly into the new rules and enforcement regimen. In a change-filled season, the Canes got smarter faster than any other team in the league, then showed superior endurance and adaptability during their playoff run. Sports is a (mostly) open-source environment, though; successful methods become obvious quickly. Ineptitude doesn’t last unless ownership has no interest in winning, and Bill Wirtz aside, that’s mostly absent from the NHL. Even the Flyers canned Bobby Clarke earlier this year, despite that organization’s noted pride in and loyalty to its past (probably the greatest of any team outside the Original Six). The Canes had an advantage last year; once it was demonstrated, other teams cut the gap significantly during the 2006 off-season.
Jim Rutherford, for all his ability when dealing from behind, also shows a tendency to be too smart for his own good where the defense is concerned after a big season. Four years ago, it was Marek “Big Bird” Malik that got shown the door for spare parts and became a solid, physical second-pairing D, much to Caniacs’ shock, as the remaining defense crumbled. This year, the Canes wouldn’t match the Rangers’ offer to Aaron Ward, at least not with Oleg Tverdovsky’s $2.5M on the cap. As early as the beginning of September, both sides seemed to realize this had been a mistake, but by then Ward was a Blueshirt and the Canes were to come within three days of starting Jason Woolley in the home opener. It’s also tough to say whether all that would have happened if, as expected, Glen Wesley had retired after the Cup win.
The initial effort to salvage the defense was a trade that, after the Belanger/Vasicek tango, ended as Jack Johnson and the negative-value Tverdovsky for Tim Gleason and Scott Walker. Had Gleason stayed healthy, that would have been a mediocre-to-decent return for a top prospect that, I suspect, had made it widely known he wouldn’t play for Carolina any sooner than he had to. (Every question about Carolina got quotes out of the Crash Davis cliché book; meanwhile, he made no bones about the Habs remaining his favorite NHL team because of their great tradition, and when he got sent to L.A., he positively drooled over the Kings’ organization.) Gleason couldn’t stay on the ice, though, and the Cup run took its toll on the remainder of the defense. Despite a surprisingly solid season from homegrown returnee David Tanabe, the corps was patchwork overall for much of the year.
Consistent goaltending could have helped to cover that, and we didn’t get it from a player that, Conn Smythe aside, remained an NHL sophomore. A half-decent power play could have bailed the team out of tight spots, and it didn’t. Complete ineptitude in shootouts left points on the board. Any one of those turning once could have killed a three- or four-game skid and put this team in the playoffs.
But that’s that, and this year is twenty-four hours from done for the Carolina Hurricanes. They can’t take this away, though:
