A few times every year there are games that are scheduled to be on tv that come game day don't show up.  For me Thursday's game was one of these.  Instead of the Canes vs the rangers Fox sports Carolinas had the Tennessee vs South Carolina Women's basketball game.  Maddeningly the very same game was also being shown on Fox sports south.  These are channels 1508 and 1510 in Columbia.

I contacted my local cable provider, and they came back with "it's an NHL blackout".   That seemed highly unlikely, so the next morning I contacted the hurricanes and asked what they thought the issue was.

Kyle Hanlin was very helpful, and let me know the real sccop.  Apparently there are two regions which get Canes games, the North Carolina only region, and the rest.  The good news is there are 50 games that are scheduled for everyone, the bad news is there are fifteen games which are not scheduled to be shown outside of North Carolina.  This is a Fox Sports decision, and I will try to follow up with them next week to see what can be done to tip the game count more in our direction.

The remaining NC only games are:

1/22
1/26
2/5
2/12
2/19
2/26
3/3
3/9
3/12
4/8

Unfortunately this is a lot more games that are NC only in the last half of the season than the first half.  I guess it is time to fire up the DVR's to watch the midnight replays!

I will finally make the trip to Raleigh for a home game this Saturday and I am psyched!

There are many questions to be answered this Saturday:  Will Sammy still be a Cane?  Does White indeed make the Defense better?  Will we continue to play with an edge?  Will the team be able to dictate play to the western Conference Preds?  Does Skinner look as amazing in person?  Dwyer as fast?  Will the real Eric Staal show up? 

In a new low for Fox sports programming on Time Warner Cable in South Carolina the opening home game of the Carolina Hurricanes will not be shown live, in its stead will be the highly popular Atlanta Thrashers.  The shortened version of the game will be available starting at midnight.  Despite having five different feeds (sports south, fox sports Carolinas on channel 31, two in the five hundreds, and the HD channel), only two things are being shown-the Atlanta basketball game, and the Atlanta hockey game.  Oh joy.  While I will admit that basketball likely outdraws hockey in this town, sport to sport wouldn't you believe that any team labeling itself from the "carolinas" would be a better draw for local sports fans than teams from Atlanta?  (I know, merely a marketing ploy as both teams are a three hour drive away.) 

Last year to ensure that I got to see the Hurricanes play live I had to get the center Ice package, despite the package specifically stating that it was not for fans who only wanted to watch the games their home team played.  As the wife stated, I was always more angry about not watching the game than watching the 'Canes lose.  As every Hurricanes game is in HD this year, but not on center ice in HD, that certainly makes switching to one of the other television providers who give multiple feeds of fox sports a much more attractive, and likely proposition.  

People living in NC, enjoy and appreciate this one more thing about not living in SC.

 So I come home from my twelve hour night shift job (last night weekend here before I start new job, woohoo!), turn on my tv, select the Canes Game from Saturday night, and see football.  Cal vs stanford or some such crap.  If the game had not just started on the free replay over at Center Ice literally as I was figuring out I didn't have the game recorded, I would have been really pissed off (until I saw the final score).  

But this is a real issue for the team in my opinion.  I know there aren't many hockey fans in SC, but that is at least partially because of the lack of coverage in the state.  I would think that a company that sponsors the hurricanes (timewarner is my cable outlet) would want to show the hockey game as widely as possible, especially on a night when all southern football fans were likely watching the Florica/lsu game.  Especially when the hockey game is listed on the tv Guide list for that region!

Last year I ended up getting the Center ice package so that I could watch all of the Hurricanes games that were on TV live.  This is not supposed to be necessary for fans of home town teams, and although the Canes are three hours away, I feel they are as close to a home town team as Columbia gets.  Also, I think Center Ice needs to show more games in High def, as it makes a huge difference in the watchability of the game.  Usually the game would eventually be on Cable down here at some point in the night, but those were condensed version s of the games that might well edit out a fight or a goal by a favorite player.  If there was a single reason I liked having Versus show the canes, it was that I knew that game would be shown, and in High def to boot.

Anyone else have this problem?  Any ideas as to solutions besides rewarding the cable company by paying them more money?

So everyone knows that JR does not want Babchuk to play next year with the Canes.  An offer was extended, and not accepted.  The Canes looking to trade for whatever, etc. etc.

But why has there been no movement?  I can find nothing from the Rangers, nothing from Vancouver, nothing from Russia that would suggest an imminent trade.  I would expect to see something concrete by now from somewhere. 

There is a lot of downside to babchuk-the whole contract fiascos of the past couple of years, the relative softness on defense.  Heck, even the KHL has to weary of a player they know wants to be in the NHL and will likely bolt at the first good chance he gets, contract or no contract.

But he has a lot of upside as well.  Especially for the canes.  Remember his goal that clinched a playoff berth? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98Wb87eYxGg    (yeah, I know, we would have gotten there anyway.)

But he also was scoring .8 goals per game over the final stretch of 11 regular season games.  And if you look at his game time, it increased under Maurice.  His shots/goal number is also way  high,  if he could be instructed to shoot more (perhaps by Samsonov) wouldn't he be likely to score more often?  And he is a young defenseman, in four years he coud be really good defensively and a scoring threat. 

What about his lack of production in the playoffs?  How many power plays did we have exactly?  I remember the number being exceedingly low, hence the ole conspiracy theories showing up again. And it being the first time in the playoffs, he might not have realized the difference of playoff hockey.  (The best way to get someone into the sport is to have them start watching the first year in the playoffs, the next towards the end of the regular season, and work backwards from there.)

I believe that he is being waited out by Hockey in general, NHL, KHL, whatever, and will not be signed until after the season starts when either the canes realize their new defense is not good enough (at least one Rat will have to step up, and aren't young defenseman always a little soft?) or he lowers his price to the point one of the cap beholden teams can pick him up.  If it is not with us I hope it is in the KHL so that I don't have to watch him beating up on us in the near future.

Two years left on Rod's contract, and many are wondering if he is worth it after last year's less than stellar effort.  To me all points on Rod are positive.

1.  Assuming he stays healthy, his knees are healed, he can still score goals.  He can often win face-offs.  A healthy Rod scores 25 goals this year with 25-30 assists.  Any line.

2.  How we treat our ageing stars is one of Carolina's strengths.  I watched Francis play with the Whale when I was a young kid.  I listened to him win withthe penguins.  I was ecstic when he got us to the cup finals.  I was happy when we gave him a chance to win one more cup at the end of his carreer.  Our treatment of him and other former canes makes us a good place to play out a retirement.  I expect that might give us a discount on future players when they are looking for their last contracts. 

3.  He is a leader.  We have many new young kids coming up through the ranks.  His experience will help them.

4.  If he does at some point become hurt again, I think we have enough talent in the pipeline to alow him to recover before coming out on the ice.

5.  The statements I read about who would be playing this year, and the way the depth chart looks makes me believe that Rod would have to play his way on to the team, the same as Micheal Ryan, or even Eric Staal.  (I know-no doubt there)

6.  His plus minus during the regular season improved drastically towards the end of the year.  I think this will continue this year.  Partially because of hopefully better health, partially because of the different coaching style, partially because of a hopefully stronger defensive corps.

7.  He is one of the few players older than me.  Has to count for something.

8.  Best for last:  He was fourth in points for the team last year.  His Salary is commensurate with that output.

I had some time on my hands so I put together this lineup with salaries.   Positions are from teams depth chart.  Salaries are from posts here, as well as n&o reporting of contracts.  If I have any mistakes please let me know.  In thousands of dollars.

Couple of points:

1.  The right side of the defense makes less than Staal.

2.  I hate to say it, but to me this gives Babchuk's desire for more money based on this year's performance credence.  I understand the Managements side that he basically has no rights, but the offer of 1.1 seems ridiculously low.  Can't fault someone for not being excited about working for less than thier market rate.  (Of course I am doing it too, but for personal reasons, at my choosing, and I escaped the auto industry before the meltdown.)

3.  To give props to my favorite player-the only cane forward with a positive +/- in the playoffs......Samsonov!

4.  The depth chart is a fairly cool page.  

5.  Is Conboy's deal for NHL only this year?  That may have been a mistake on his part.

If the big hang up with Ruutu and Carolina is his wanting a one year contract while carolina wants a multi year contract, is Ruutu wrong?

My thoughts are that there are several teams next year that are going to have salary cap issues.  The teams that don't have salary cap issues are likely to have worse revenues; as they are not in the big hockey towns, their attendance is lower, etc.  So either a team will have money but not cap space available, or they will be worried about their ability to make the rent and pay the electricity bill, and a new 4-5 million dollar forward may not be the in their budget.  So while Carolina has money available this year and are willing to pay for his services, I would think that a two or three year contract in which to ride out the downturn wouldbe a good thing.  As the economy is still shedding jobs in SC like a wet dog, even next year's cap space may be higher than the following years.  Granted, for many of the big free agents next year (Ward) there will be enough money, but for everyone who is not absolute top of the line, I am thinking there may be some drop off in revenues available. 

On the other hand, maybe Ruutu is looking to have another breakout season, knows that he can make more of a difference than last year, and is rolling the dice on being seen as a franchise player.  That would be great news for the canes next year.

And how does one fight team side for a multi year verse player side for a single year?  Canes- we really want him to stay. Ruutu-I am not able to commit to a long term relationship, I need to sow my oats.  Carolina But we really like you here.  Ruutu-I like you too, just not in that way.  ???

My take on Monday's game is that during the first period the refs made several early calls to make the game "exciting".  This was a very tightly called period, with both sides getting nitpicked.  And we did have a couple of nice shorthanded chances.

 

IT seemed to me that a completely different set of referees came out for the second period.  These could have been the ones from the Boston series.  Something happens, a call could be made, and you can almost hear them saying "play on boys".  This was pretty evenly not called on both sides.

 

Third period.  Maybe they got a phone call in the first intermission "hey boys, loosen up."  If so this period they got another call.  "Now we didn't mean that much."

 

Completely inconsistent.  Canes seemed slower to adapt.

 

But remember, the Canes always do better when it seems the world is against them. 

I've got the NHL package, and i noticed that no matter who you were watching play the announcers always found several calls that weren't made.   I think early in Sid's carreer, he did spend alot of time whining about calls.  I think he realized how much this hurt him.  I think this is something the Canes have known all along.