From Talking Points:
If there is anything Frantisek Kaberle and Tom Barrasso have in common, it was that they were both underestimated during their time with the Hurricanes.
Both were in the news Tuesday, Kaberle because the Hurricanes bought out his contract and Barrasso for his induction into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.
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From Talking Points:
Over the past 33 years, the ACC media has correctly predicted the football champion 21 times. That's not a bad record, even if you take into account that Florida State was an obvious pick 11 years in a row and won the title in 10 of those.
Still, the media isn't always right (Really! It's true!) and among the surprises have been some real shockers, Tuesday's Top Five.
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From Talking Points:
Miami coach Randy Shannon is feeling a little left out.
The Hurricanes found a ready-made rival in the ACC in the form of Florida State, but there's not a whole lot of excitement surrounding Miami's games with the rest of the ACC, particularly with the Canes yet to win the Coastal Division in four seasons in the league.
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From Talking Points:
Virginia returns a starting quarterback in Marc Verica, who threw for 2,037 yards last season, but the Cavaliers' secret weapon may be former starter Jameel Sewell, who sat out last season with academic issues.
Sewell is more mobile than Verica, which could make him the first option under new offensive coordinator Gregg Brandon, who was Urban Meyer's offensive coordinator at Bowling Green before taking over there for six year.
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From Talking Points:
As far as the Hurricanes are concerned, it's funny how much can change overnight. When we went to bed Tuesday, general manager Jim Rutherford's last public statement indicated that Erik Cole was ticketed elsewhere and there was a chance Chad LaRose might return to the nest quickly after testing the market.
By the time the biscuits came out of the oven Wednesday, the door was open for Cole to return and LaRose had been bid farewell. So far, that's what has happened -- Cole signed for two years at an average of $2.9 million a year and LaRose remains a free agent, with Rutherford now dangling an impending signing in front of the fan base.
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From Talking Points:
Either way, this isn't what the Hurricanes expected to happen today. Perhaps Rutherford overestimated the desire of Cole and LaRose to remain in Carolina. Perhaps he assigned a greater financial value to that desire than they did. And perhaps they intended to test the open market all along (for a player, the chase for that one big free-agent payday can be a strong lure).
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From Talking Points:
It will be four or five years before we know how the Carolina Hurricanes did in the draft last weekend, although they deserve credit for breaking new ground, by their standards, in terms of location (their first-round pick was from Quebec and three out of six picks were Europeans) and philosophy (all six were 6 feet or taller).
Whether first-round pick Philippe Paradis will be regarded as a steal or a bust is yet to be determined, but the record is already clear on many of the Hurricanes’ past drafts, at least those from 2005 and earlier.
We all know the misses — Igor Knyazev, Jeff Heerema, Nikos Tselios — but among the hits, here are the Canes’ five best draft picks since the team moved to North Carolina, not necessarily in overall talent, but in terms of how well they did with the pick.
Eric Staal, for example, was a relative no-brainer at No. 2 in 2003, but Cam Ward was not late in the first round a year earlier, which is why they bookend Tuesday’s Top Five.
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From Talking Points:
In addition to Scott Walker's message to the fans in today's paper, read more about the fans raising money for cancer research in honor of Scott and his wife as well as a postcript to The Punch here.
From Talking Points:
For Craig Adams, of all people, who never scored a playoff goal in 29 appearances with the Hurricanes, to put the final stamp on the sweep with his second of the series — that only made it sting all the more.
But the sting of this sweep will fade with time, and what the Hurricanes will remember is not the 4-1 loss that ended the series Tuesday but the remarkable run down the stretch that got them into the playoffs, and what they did once they got there.
“That’s going to take some time,” said Eric Staal, who answered the call Tuesday and played his best game of the series. “This hurts. It doesn’t feel good, especially being swept in the third round. That’s never nice. It just doesn’t feel nice right now.”
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From Talking Points:
This story from the Minneapolis Star Tribune is two years old, but nothing has changed. The 1975 Islanders are still the most recent team to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a playoff series, a team that included Hurricanes scout Bert Marshall.
"I know it's cliché, but you really do have to come together where everybody's on the same page, you believe and you take it shift to shift and do the little things to get through the first period, then the second," said (Denis) Potvin, a Hall of Fame defenseman. "If you win that fourth game, you've got something going, but it's tough because it's so much easier just to give up."
The Hurricanes face that deficit tonight, and here's guessing that they'll still be alive tomorrow. While it's extremely unlikely they'll even make it to a Game 7, this team has a history of fighting to the last.
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