Panthers bid adieu to Skrastins, defense now at AHL standards; Links-of-Wonder
by Donny Rivette on Jul 2, 2009 2:52 PM EDT
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- Well, that's been settled: defenceman Karlis Skrastins has been signed by Dallas. That Koistinen deal's looking golden, eh? (sarcasm.)
- New Rochester vice president Ted Nolan wants to return passion and competitiveness to the Amerks. Rory Fitzpatrick wasn't enough?
- Dater has a nice piece on new Av Craig Anderson, who's certainly saying all the right things about his new team:
"It's a dream come true. It was the place I wanted to be, a city I've always loved. I think it's a great opportunity for me, and I want to be part of the solution bringing the team back."
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PuckStopsHere asks: Is this any way to run a franchise?
It is an unforgivable mistake that the Florida Panthers have entered the free agent signing period without a GM in place. That cannot help the team at all. It will probably prevent them from having a very productive off-season.
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From the Kurtenblog's UFA Day open thread:
1:07 p.m. - We interrupt this live blog to bring you coverage of Jay Bouwmeester's introductory press conference in Calgary. Bouwmeester poses with his new jersey. Bouwmeester puts on his new jersey. Bouwmeester answers questions in a remarkably monotone and uninterested voice. No wonder the Sutters love this guy.
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Not much love for the Cats - organizationally speaking - in an ESPN fan poll.
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A local quickie on the new Panthers goaltender:
(Scott) Clemmensen...has 68 NHL games to his credit for Jersey and Toronto, 40 of them coming last season when he filled in for injured Martin Brodeur and led the Devs to first place. His reward was being dumped to AHL Lowell by Hall of Fame inductee Lou Lamoriello.
Taking a break for a bit. Anything more pops up, behold the comments section.
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I’m a Devils fan first and foremost, so I’m pretty pleased about the opportunity to see more of Clemmer – I think he should fit into Andy’s role nicely.
But the rest of the team? Jesus tap-dancing Christ. If they even had a GM, I don’t know how he’d begin to try and spin this situation. You finish in 9th place, shed your top pair of defensemen and… sign a back-up goalie. Didn’t need Rosenhaus to negotiate ticket prices, thank you, nobody is going to be showing up anyway.
Well, part of the problem is that Jay and Skras were the top pair, what with Jay being the third best defenseman on the team and all.
skrastins was a great shot blocker but he had to be as slow as he was. glad he’s gone. should have been the heathly scratch anyway
Remember back when our defense was the strength of this team? Those were the days… like 2 months ago.
Pack it in. Call it a “re-building” year, give away whatever tickets you can, and start scouting the junior major leagues in Canada, we’re a top 3 pick next summer.
And I’m trying to be optimistic.
Not on that plane yet, Stan. You could very well be right, but I’m not convinced. A lot of kids (Ellerby, Repik, Matthias) have yet to make their mark.
Not EVERY Panthers pick can be a bust, right? And I am HOT on Repik’s future.
by Donny Rivette on Jul 3, 2009 12:43 AM EDT up reply actions
Unfortunately my optimism was overcome, been a season ticket holder since year 2, they’ve been rebuilding for so long I forgot what success is like.
Going to games is a 300 mile round-trip proposition for me that was always sustained by the hope they’d improve, make the right moves and go forward. I saw a fleeting glimmer of hope last season, and I hoped that they’d make the right moves and build a stronger and more viable team.
Instead they’ve weakened the team, used bad propaganda and marketing to try and cover the holes. Just got an email that tickets may be dropping in price and they’d be making certain changes to the season ticket holder benefits – sounds like they are now trying to combat their bad moves with gifts and rebates.
a lot of negativity flying around the Panthers right now, and although last night I would have felt differently, i don’t know that i can say the same today. thinking it over as i went to bad last night, we can’t fault Sexton for the moves he DID make (except signing Koistisnetananana, guess we wanted a Finland connection) but rather those that he didn’t. however, what a rapid turn around we’ve had this week. for a team that in June was CRYING AND SCREAMING for offense, we now have no defense to speak of. forget the offense, even with a tanguay or gaborik or hossa or cammalieri or ANYONE, the defense ain’t carrying the team like it did last year. so, today we stand as a team DESPERATELY needing defnseman and DESPERATELY needing offense. definitely a step backwards. this is upsetting because its apparently clear that our offensive firepower is good enough (we’re all missing that….) but we have no one to keep the puck off the opposing team’s sticks. what good is scoring 4 a game if you’re giving up 6? and let’s be honest, we ain’t scoring 4 a game.
so, Randy, good job on getting the players in that you did bring. but what about all of those that we are lacking? there’s plenty of fire power left out there for the taking. losing Skrastins will hurt a lot more than i think most people realize, he never hesitated throwing himself in front of a puck on its way to the net.
i just hope this Free Agency period isn’t over for our team. who knows…maybe they’ll throw us a curveball and sign a star that we can rally around. otherwise, it will be a loooooong season in Sunrise, and an even longer drought. if only there was a way for this ownership/management team to see what we see, or even care about how we feel about the product on ice.
Still a lot of guys out there waiting for phones to ring. And there’s no “deadline” to sign them. Remember, Sexton said signing Leopold was “remote” just yesterday. That sounded pretty definitive. Now he’s a Panther for next season.
May very well be that no further moves will be made, but I’m solidly convinced that this regime will not tip their hand as to what’s really going on behind the scenes simply to appease the masses (or, um, us).
Might be weeks.
it was painful to see all those big players sign with eastern teams yesterday and even worse when Sexton said he wasnt looking for any big names, but aside from bouwmeester leaving (which we all knew was gonna happen) save yourself the knee-jerk reaction of denouncing our team and think how is the team worse than last year?
goaltending – clemmensen is better than andy and signed for 3 years for cheap, that means that our goaltending improved AND we’ll have way more flexibility when vokouns contract ends and markstrom is ready. we could have markstrom and clemmensen for under 2 million, brilliant work by sexton.
forwards – little change although reinprecht is better than zednik and olesz is better than peltonen (assuming we dont sign ville, i love the guy but hes expendable and olesz is a very good player, i could go on about that for a while) and horton is now free to play his game, simply put: our forwards are better.
defence – mccabe, allen, leopold and ballard make up a damn good top 4, its time we gave up one d position to ellerby anyways and sexton isnt talking to emminger only because of his pending arbitration case, we lost skrastins (who i really wanted back) but leopold is better at everything but blocking shots and that isnt that important considering we were worst in the league at shots given up. so aside from bouwmeester leaving our d will probably be better than it was last year (when it was seriously overrated)
so is the team worse? (…excluding bouwmeesters departure)
any comments? ( i really over-generalized all of this so i hope you have some)
Nice going on Skras being Jay’s “boy”. They were an effective pairing but ultimately would Skrastins be the same without Bouw? On this team?
Clemmy was my target and I personally was thrilled they acquired him. Great stuff.
The “D”…Emmy is an underrated defenseman who entered a clearly solidified situation which left him out – and understandably so. If not for The Beach’s antics (whatever they may have been) Eminger wouldn’t have had a minute of ice time. Heck, he wouldn’t have been brought here.
Guessing – as I’ve said a number of times – that the time has arrived for the likes of Repik, Ellerby, Matthias to stake their collective claim on on the roster. I’m stoked to watch them evolve.
by Donny Rivette on Jul 3, 2009 12:40 AM EDT up reply actions
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