Something New: Organizational Depth

While impatiently waiting for Cory to update his rankings of Canes' prospects at Hockey's Future, I've looked over the Canes' roster, the list of players in the system, the excellent Canes' Country Guide to the 2011 Hurricanes Conditioning Camp compiled by Carolyn Christians, and the outstanding pictures by Jamie Kellner. Several things struck me while I was going through this process, trying to get a sense of the Canes' future:

1. The Canes have added young veterans to the roster - players beyond the prospect stage but still relatively inexperienced, likely to improve and possibly to become significant long-term assets: Anthony Stewart, Tim Brent and earlier Derek Joslin (though it's debatable whether he's beyond the prospect stage, Joslin looked like an NHL defenseman to me).

2. The Canes' system is now so loaded with prospects that it's gotten much harder even to think about ranking them. I won't recite the list, but I counted 39 prospects at a first pass excluding those already listed on the Canes' roster.  Depth is the watchword, even at goalie--so much so that pretty soon it's going to be tough to decide who makes the Checkers' roster, let alone the Canes'.

3. The imbalance in the system between talent at forward and on defense is history.

4. It's still overwhelming but somewhat helpful to group the prospects by position, and, to my mind, still more helpful to include the youngest vets.  In looking to the future, it doesn't make sense to separate the Canes' prospects from some very young players already on the roster like Jeff Skinner, Brandon Sutter, Jamie McBain, Jiri Tlusty, Jerome Samson and Joslin. I made an arbitrary cut-off excluding prospects older than 24. Most are a good deal younger but I had to draw the line somewhere.

After the jump, a list of young Canes and prospects by position with age and round drafted. As usual with my posts, there's no new information or insight here. I'm sharing what I've compiled because I found organizing the information this way made it more enjoyable to speculate about the Canes' future and I thought seeing the information in this structure might bring some insightful comments from other posters on Canes Country. I've stopped well short of talking about future lines and pairings.

After the jump, three snapshots of the Canes' young talent: the forwards, defensemen and goalies.

Don't think of the order as a really informed ranking of the players like what Cory provides. It's more like a crazy guess that may provide a better basis of discussion than an alphabetical sort. You can't disagree with the alphabet; it should be easy to disagree with this list. In fact, looking at it now, I would move Tlusty up and Bowman and Nash down. Those players are of an age that should soon settle debates about how good they can be. I found myself pushing Hofmann up the rankings because of comments on his speed and skill and pushing Lindstrom up because of his size and down again because of his knee problems. It's harder to think of Terry and Shugg moving higher because they're good but don't seem to have one outstanding characteristic that might give them an edge in the NHL. I've been struck by how Samson's AHL scoring has failed to translate in the NHL thus far and wonder whether Terry and Shugg might have a similar experience someday. I concede that Bowman hasn't scored much in the NHL either. Dalpe, Boychuk and Tlusty are the three besides Skinner and Sutter who look to me as though they can score in the NHL--and I hope we all live to see it happen.

For me, the big question about the forwards is whether any of the prospects can eventually contribute enough to add a third true star to go with Staal and Skinner. There's a better chance that somebody like Dalpe or Boychuk will rise to the level of Jokinen, Ruutu or Brandon Sutter, but to my mind, even that is in doubt.

Defensemen

Whatever happened to the shortage of top-flight D prospects in the Canes' system? The Canes have both quality and quantity. Again, the rankings aren't very meaningful but probably beat the alphabet.

This list is so much longer and stronger than it was just a couple of years ago! How is it possible to consider a 1st round draft choice as possibly the 6th best D prospect in the Canes' system?

I know it's controversial to rank McBain 4th when he's the only player who's performing in the NHL other than Joslin. Last season left me uncertain how to assess McBain's future. What I have seen of Faulk, Dumoulin and Joslin has been very impressive, though it's been brief and almost all against low-level competition. I know even less about the other D prospects but am taking the word of Sittler and various draft experts that Murphy may become an extraordinary player so I put him at the top. The Canes have accumulated enough talent from the second and high third rounds to have a reasonable shot at having one player develop into a star. Isn't that the history with Duncan Keith and some other successful NHL defensemen?

Goalies

On to the goalies. Yes, there are enough of them to make a list useful, even with Pogge gone.

I find it interesting that Peters, Murphy and Andersen all seem so different - from a pretty big guy who's very sound, to a little guy who's athletically gifted and then with Andersen as a very big guy that Tony MacDonald says is very gifted athletically. Just based on MacDonald's comment and Andersen's being younger than Peters and Murphy, it's tempting to think of Andersen as the most promising in the bunch in the distant future when Boucher moves on and the Canes begin to think about a successor to Cam Ward. Peters deserves pride of place based both on draft position and experience to date.

Summing Up

The Canes' organization is deeper than it's ever been though I'm not informed enough to identify the cream that will rise to the top. I look forward to everybody's comments and Cory's prospect rankings