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GDT: Canes v. Blackhawks 5/3 7:00

andyt

Canes Moderator
Staff member
The Canes kick off a baseball-style 3-game series against the Blackhawks.

Coming down the stretch, the Canes‘ magic number to clinch the division is 5 against Florida and 7 against Tampa. The Panthers host Dallas tonight, the Lightning are off until Wednesday when they kick off a series against...Dallas. The Stars are fighting for their playoff lives and Nashville’s magic number to eliminate them is 8. I don’t expect any of the walking wounded back and they’ve never disclosed Paquette’s injury. We need Mrazek back for a few games before the playoffs but who know when that will be?

Chicago sits 6th in the division with 50 points in 51 games. They’re 4-5-1 in their last 10 and have lost 4 in a row. Patrick Kane is 2nd in the league in assists and tied for 5th in points. Alex DeBrincat is tied for 5th in goals. Both are averaging better than 1 point per game. Dominik Kubalik and Prius Suter are the only other players with at least 10 goals. They’re 16th in goals per game at 2.82. But defensively, they’re not good, 24th in goals against per game at 3.24. After a hot start, rookie goalie Kevin Lankinen has crashed back to reality, at 3.04/.908 in 36 games. With 3 games in 4 days, we should see Malcolm Subban for the first time this season. His numbers are essentially the same as Lankinen’s, 3.03/.905 in 15 games
 
Carolina's season series with the Hawks sits at 3-2-0 for the good guys, but the goals scored in live play over the series are locked at 17 apiece. So, for whatever reason this series has been much tighter than you would expect looking at the teams' records. And Carolina's struggles have come in a variety of forms ... hot goaltender, failing to shut down Chicago's top line, and one at least one occasion letting Chicago shut them down with a freaking left wing lock. Hopefully Chicago shows up ready to run and gun and exchange chances because ... A. that's more fun to watch, and B. It's probably to Carolina's advantage given the fact that their goaltending has reverted to form.
 
Ned plays and assuming he lasts 30 mins he will stay a RFA
With 3 games in 4 days, it‘s a safe assumption that he’s going to get at least 1 of them. If Mrazek still can’t go, I’d assume Ned goes tonight and Thursday.
 
Abby Labar tweeted that they’re holding a limited morning skate and RBA is looking to get Fast back in the lineup and he’d be the only injured player returning. If that’s the case, they probably won’t get anyone else back until the Nashville series. I can’t see them having a morning skate tomorrow or practice on Wednesday. Maybe practice on Friday before they get on the plan to Nashville.

Ned goes in goal tonight.
 
Would Ned otherwise become an UFA if he didn't get those minutes?
Yes, he’d be a group VI UFA. The below was copied from CapFriendly. Note that the 28 game criteria was adjusted to 27 due to the shortened season.

What is a Group 6 UFA?​

A player whose contract is expiring and meets all of the following conditions will become an unrestricted free agent (UFA):
  1. The player is 25 years or older (as of June 30th of the calendar year the contract is expiring).
  2. The player has completed 3 or more professional seasons - qualified by 11 or more professional games (for an 18/19 year old player), or 1 or more professional games (for a player aged 20 or older). This can include NHL, minor league, and European professional league seasons played while under an SPC.
  3. The player has played less than 80 NHL games, or 28 NHL games of 30 minutes or greater for a goaltender.
 
The Hawks are on the brink of elimination. If I have this right (and I usually don't), a Nashville win in regulation tonight eliminates the Hawks. Considering that the Preds are playing the Jackets, that's a pretty good bet. Besides that, they're elimination number is 3, so they're a number of ways they could get bounced tonight.
 
The Hawks are on the brink of elimination. If I have this right (and I usually don't), a Nashville win in regulation tonight eliminates the Hawks. Considering that the Preds are playing the Jackets, that's a pretty good bet. Besides that, they're elimination number is 3, so they're a number of ways they could get bounced tonight.
you really have to wonder, in this weird pandemic season, how much these borderline teams have in the tank. Tough slog
 
Lineup per Michael Smith, assuming Fast plays. It also looks like the Bean/Pesce pairing that Chynoweth had been playing around with is a thing. They’ve been rolling out both of them on PP2, so it minimizes the pairing changes after the PP.

Svechnikov-Aho-Teravainen
Niederreiter-Trocheck-Necas
Foegele-Staal-Fast
McCormick-Lorentz-Geekie

Slavin-Hamilton
Bean-Pesce
Skjei-Hakanpaa
 
Lineup per Michael Smith, assuming Fast plays. It also looks like the Bean/Pesce pairing that Chynoweth had been playing around with is a thing. They’ve been rolling out both of them on PP2, so it minimizes the pairing changes after the PP.

Svechnikov-Aho-Teravainen
Niederreiter-Trocheck-Necas
Foegele-Staal-Fast
McCormick-Lorentz-Geekie

Slavin-Hamilton
Bean-Pesce
Skjei-Hakanpaa
It appears that Chynoweth is trying to completely level out the burden across the three pairings with that shift ... even if it's just something to try out in the last stretch of the season. Like you said, he's toyed around with it in some situational stretches and it seems do-able to me. Hakanpaa being so much more mobile than he looked in Anaheim is a bit of a revelation, and I'm guessing he gets a contract offer this summer regardless of what else happens. I'm guessing McKeown is finally gone after this year, which leaves Keane as the only other RD actually in the system
 
It appears that Chynoweth is trying to completely level out the burden across the three pairings with that shift ... even if it's just something to try out in the last stretch of the season. Like you said, he's toyed around with it in some situational stretches and it seems do-able to me. Hakanpaa being so much more mobile than he looked in Anaheim is a bit of a revelation, and I'm guessing he gets a contract offer this summer regardless of what else happens. I'm guessing McKeown is finally gone after this year, which leaves Keane as the only other RD actually in the system
Yeah, I’m pleasantly surprised by not just his mobility but also his willingness to jump into the play in the offensive zone. For a guy who wasn’t even much of a scorer in Finland, he hasn’t looked out of place.
 
Yeah, I’m pleasantly surprised by not just his mobility but also his willingness to jump into the play in the offensive zone. For a guy who wasn’t even much of a scorer in Finland, he hasn’t look out of place.
It's weird. I talked to some Ducks folks who liked the guy, but they all said he had nothing to offer in the offensive zone. And then I watched chunks of a couple of Ducks games (mostly to see how Fleury was fitting in ... pretty well, it turns out) and noticed that the second guy in their D pairings pretty much just stays tethered in the neutral zone while the first guy in the pairing gets freedom to operate almost like a power play point D. It's not what the Ducks were doing the season before, and I don't think it's a particularly good idea but I guess that's a Dallas Eakins problem.

For the record, unlike Blashill in Detroit, Eakins does not strike me as a coach who will survive the rebuild or even deserve to do so. That team is all over the place, and not in a good way.
 
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