Late Saturday night after the house quieted down, I started doing my regular Canes scribbling on the computer keyboard. I have a couple partially written blogs about various details of the team, a couple of which I will finish and post during the down time between Monday’s game against Pittsburgh and the next game that is not until Friday against Tampa.
But goalie situation, player-by-player evaluations, line combinations, injuries and everything else aside, I think it really comes down to how I finished my game recap on Saturday.
“At some point the Canes best players need to be better than the other team’s best players.”
At least early on, the Canes improved defense enabled the team to grind out points in the standings in less than perfect efforts and mostly minus much production from the top line. Over the course of a long 82-game season, being able to collect points during stretches where things are not clicking is important. In my preseason blogs, I called for the need for the team to be better defensively and do exactly this. But at some point it needs to be accompanied by stretches where your best players are great, and your team is just better than whoever is on the ice against it most nights. So far that has not happened. When I work through the Canes 1st 11 games, I count 4 games where the Canes top line was inferior than the other team’s best, 5 more where they ‘pushed’ mostly being a non-factor on nights where the other team’s top forwards were also quiet and a meager 2 games (@Toronto and @New York Islanders) in which the Canes top line led the team to victory. We can split hairs debating whether maybe it was actually 3 good games, whether 1 of the bad games was really more of a push, etc., but the point is still the same. The Canes top players just have not been great and good enough to drive wins in enough games.
Tagging names to it, the Eric Staal/Alexander Semin duo needs to be better. This is obviously not a startling revelation at this point.
Eric Staal’s season thus far has been a strange one. His scoring total at 3 goals and 5 assists is not abysmal (60-point full season pace is short but not crazy so) especially when you consider that he has traditionally (except last year’s exception) been a slow starter. But past a couple decent goals and the total, his game has been rough:
--He has to be amongst the league leaders in taking bad penalties if you broke penalties out into categories including offensive zone penalties, frustration penalties, etc. He has 14 penalty minutes through only 11 games which is a pace for 100-110 for the full season. (And none of these are fighting majors, extras for misconducts or offsetting roughing variety penalties that do not affect on-ice player count.)
--He has been marginal too often defensively especially in terms of getting back when the puck goes the other way. I know that plus/minus can be a misleading statistic, but from watching all 11 Canes games, I have to admit that his team-worst minus 7 is not wildly out of line with his play at even strength.
--He has yet to score a goal to boost the struggling power play.
As you would expect since the 2 have been more or less tethered together on the top line, Alexander Semin’s 2013-14 season has some similar characteristics:
--His bad penalty pace is slightly slower at 10 PIM through 11 games, but he too has picked up a few too many of the offensive zone, frustration, “not moving my feet” obstruction penalties too.
--His scoring is similarly a bit light, though he does have 2 power play goals in his total.
--And he too has been inconsistent in terms of taking care of the defensive side of the puck first.
I generally like the fact that Muller is not 1 of those knee-jerk reaction coaches, but I am surprised that in all of the tinkering Muller has done, he has not tried much of anything that separates Eric Staal and Alexander Semin. I think ultimately they belong together and will find their way back to a 1st line that includes both of them. But short-term, I do not see why you would not separate them to see if it sparks 1 or both of them.
But “how to get them going aside,” I think 2 things need to happen probably in this order:
1) Muller needs to get both to completely buy in on bettering their production the right way. The start to the Canes season featured a Canes team that was much tighter defensively than the bad part of 2012-13, and the result was points in the standings. Semin and Staal need to be part of this, and not cheat the system to try to gain offense the easy way.
2) The duo needs to start scoring with a significant portion of the production coming from raw work ethic, not just skill and pretty plays.
What say you Canes fans? Does it make sense to temporarily separate the EStaal/Semin duo to see if it helps get 1 or both started? Or do they just need a bit more time to work things out?
I will post a Canes/Pens game preview blog by lunchtime if not sooner on Monday.
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