Canes update

The Canes had a few news worthy items yesterday to break up the largely dull offseason.

They signed defenseman Bryan Rodney to a two-way one year contract and goalie Justin Pogge to a two-way one year contract as well. Both signings obviously solidify the depth of the organization.


The big news, however, was the announcement that the Canes would retire Rod Brind'Amour's jersey on February 18th against Philadelphia. A very nice honor for a guy who was a core part of our team for so many years. As with Glen Wesley, it is against a team that he also played with in his career.


Although, let me just say, that if the Canes continue on this current jersey retiring clip, they won't have many numbers left in the rotation. Not knocking Brind'Amour, just sayin'.


That's been pretty much it for this offseason so far. If you take a look at the sidebar, I switched some things up. Nothing big, just mild changes and rearranging of information. Will eventually get around to adding blogs to the blogroll, but, like Ilya Kovalchuk, I'm taking things slow this offseason.

Giant Week Recap

Sorry, guys. I've been a bad blogger of late. Unfortunately I have been positively swamped and I haven't been able to keep up with a rapid rate of games this past week.

So, let's kick it back 8 days to the Canes OT W over Pittsburgh 3-2. They won the game on a wicked shot from Jamie McBain with about a second left in overtime. Considering the fact that McBain has 6 points in 7 games with the team, I'd say he's looking to be an asset on defense.

Then the Canes lost to Buffalo at home the next day 5-3. Buffalo scored three goals in 7 minutes in the second to turn the tide their way. I wasn't able to catch any of this game, but any loss to the Banana Slugs Sabres leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The Canes also lost to the Lightning 3-2 in overtime. I wasn't happy with the outcome (St. Louis only 29 seconds into OT), but I was extremely pleased when both Erik Cole and Chad LaRose scored within 20 seconds during the second period.

Tuomo Ruutu's season ended on Thursday with shoulder surgery. He had apparently been playing through the pain for a while, and he's expected to be out 4-5 months. I guess it's a good thing that we're not in the playoffs - his loss would be devastating.

Then came the Canes victory over the C[r]apitals in a shootout - a game I got to watch! And let me just say that I find it amazing that we can play Washington like this and then lose immediately afterwards.

An interesting theme of the game was rookie defensemen scoring. The Canes came out fast in the first period with a nice shot by Jamie McBain, and then followed it up with Bryan Rodney's first NHL goal about seven minutes later. Getting a 2-0 lead in the first is always a good thing when you're going up against the best team in the East. For the C[r]apitals, John Carlson also scored his first goal, although unfortunately it had to be the tying goal in the third.

Then came the hero of the night - Chad LaRose won the game by scoring on his first ever shootout attempt. After much jubilation my reaction was: Seriously? This guy has never had a shootout attempt in his career? I mean, a few seasons ago you would have thought that the Canes would've tried anything to get a shootout goal.

Maybe this means LaRose will be a regular in the shootout rotation? Doubtful - but wouldn't that be awesome?

And then, after that great win against Washington, the Canes lose 4-0 to the menial Thrashers. I guess they felt they should keep someone's playoff dreams alive, since their poor play crushed ours in November.

So what did we learn after this week? The Canes like to either win in a tight OT/SO game, preferably beating a giant, or they like to be blown out by teams.

Oh, and, despite my fervent adoration for Chuck Kaiton (he's the man!), watching games on TV is still superior (for both attention span and remembering what happened). Even if I do have to put up with the Washington announcers.

Erik Cole stats (Tuesday): 1 goal
On the season: 9 goals, 3 assists

Chad LaRose stats (Last Saturday): 1 assist
(Tuesday): 1 goal
On the season: 7 goals, 10 assists

Preseason update

Well, we're right in the swing of the preseason now. On Monday the Canes dropped a game to Atlanta 4-2, with Brandon Sutter and Bryan Rodney notching scores. Considering I wasn't able to listen to the game and the recap is all of four paragraphs, I'm going to assume nothing exciting happened.

The goal by Rodney couldn't keep him in the big leagues, as he along with four others got sent to Albany on Tuesday.

Not reporting to Albany this year will be Anton Babchuk, who has supposedly signed in Russia for this season. Essentially the news of this was greeted by a *shrug* and a whatever from Jim Rutherford because that means Babchuk still doesn't have arbitration rights. So I'm thinking the Canes sit on his rights until a trade comes along or Babchuk wants to play under the contract the Canes give him. Either way the Canes have the upper hand and seem content to wait it out (especially because it looks like we might have a defense this year!).

Aaannndddd... that's all for now, folks! Canes play Atlanta again tomorrow at the RBC Center!

Canes earn first preseason win

Canes went 1-1 against the Flyers this weekend.

They lost the first game 4-2, the Flyers being all emotional and whatnot because this was their last game at the Spectrum before its demolition, and they had all kinds of ceremonies and stuff.

Then there was today's game, which the Canes won 1-0. It was a lot more exciting than the score makes it seem - the Canes missing on tons of chances with an open or semi-open net. The Canes played a heckuva lot better than they did in the only other time I've seen them play this preseason (that being Wednesday). Staal, Cullen and Walker were some of the regulars in this game - Cullen didn't play the last two periods because he was hit hard and they were holding him out for "precautionary reasons". Samsonov was the one who scored the goal for the Canes.

I took my new digital camera to the game, and came back with 31 pictures. Most of them were blurry or pictures of the jumbotron so I could judge when in the game I took the pictures.

Anyways, this is the best picture of a string showing Scott Walker's fight with Nate Guenin.

And this is a random picture of Brandon Sutter. I have no idea when or why I took this (I think I was aiming at something else), but it's the best one of the bunch.
I debated taking a picture of the blood across the ice when Josef Melichar was struck by a high stick, but I didn't want to seem overly morbid.

And, the Canes have sent some people back down to juniors/Albany after this game. I'm bummed that Casey Borer didn't make it, and also Jakub Petruzalek, just because I think his name is completely awesome to say out loud a few times (try it!).

Making it through this round of cuts is Bryan Rodney, a defensemen who played really really well in today's game.

Next preseason game is Thursday at Nashville.