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2019-20 Canes Miscellaneous News Thread

Hamilton skated after the Canes practice today. But I can’t imagine him coming back without a full practice and I doubt they practice on Sunday, with back to back games on Monday and Tuesday.
 
Elliotte Friedman has the final details of the Vatanen trade. The bottom line is that if Vatanen plays at least 2 games against the Rangers, the Canes owe the Devils a pick. Anything beyond that is head spinning, I won’t try to translate them, read on if you dare.

 
Basically we get screwed... :) Hockey gods could save us from paying the 4th but that's even worse...And it should have been 3 games not 2 based on "playoffs" = 2..
 
Meh ... Canes have a first, two seconds and either two thirds or one third and one fourth. I'm cool either way.
 
Canes are practicing today. Hamilton skated on his own before practice and Michael Smith says it’s unlikely he’ll play in the series unless it goes later in the week.
 
Vatanen looked really good out there on Saturday and if he helps us get into the playoffs, he's already made up the cost of a pick. I remember the days when Hurricanes were unwilling to trade any picks for an expiring contract (RF) and now with Waddell and Dundon, we've got a nice balance of not unnecessarily mortgaging the future (JR) and making solid tweaks for the present.
 
If Vatanen continues to play in these playoffs the way he did in the first game he is going to make finding a new contract somewhere for next season a lot easier for himself. He looked pretty darn dynamic running our 1st PP unit.

Jake Gardiner has some abilities in that regard as well, but Vatanen looked significantly more confident about what he was doing out there than I've seen out of Gardiner at any point in time this season.
 
If Vatanen continues to play in these playoffs the way he did in the first game he is going to make finding a new contract somewhere for next season a lot easier for himself. He looked pretty darn dynamic running our 1st PP unit.

Jake Gardiner has some abilities in that regard as well, but Vatanen looked significantly more confident about what he was doing out there than I've seen out of Gardiner at any point in time this season.
TBH, Gardiner looks more comfortable out there now as well.

Vatanen has always been a quality defenseman and didn't play as badly for the Devils as people make out like he did. He was over-slotted on a team that never really had a handle on a defensive system and had terrible goaltending for most of his time there. That's gonna have an impact on your game. He's not really a first pairing guy, but it's a heck of a lot easier to play next to Slavin than it is to pair up with Andy freaking Greene. He looks pretty much the same to me as he did when he was in Anaheim. Solid enough positionally, heavy shot, good passer ... but a guy who is prone to taking risks with the puck a little too often.
 
I think the guys who have more offense are the guys who take more time to adjust. Skjei is already in a pretty good place, Edmundson took a bit longer but I think that was mostly because of partner switching. I think Gardiner picked up his game after Dougie went out, by default he became the top offensive threat on the blue line. Only RBAs stubbornness kept him off PP1 where he belonged instead of Slavin.
 
I think the guys who have more offense are the guys who take more time to adjust. Skjei is already in a pretty good place, Edmundson took a bit longer but I think that was mostly because of partner switching. I think Gardiner picked up his game after Dougie went out, by default he became the top offensive threat on the blue line. Only RBAs stubbornness kept him off PP1 where he belonged instead of Slavin.
Yeah. Worth noting that Skjei has looked like a different guy from the one who limped his way into "the pause." Part of that is probably just down to him playing against his old team and bearing down more, but part of it is clearly an increased comfort level with what he's being asked to do. I think he'll eventually be better suited to how we play than he was to the Rangers' style under Quinn, but it was a bit of a rough transition for him.
 
I'm just happy to see that they invested in some new Zambonis. The old Olympias that Polar operates at the other rinks break down far too often!

 
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