We’ve been starving for news since the Canes basically finished of Free Agency with the extension of Jackson Blake a month ago. Since then there’s been little dribs and drabs of info from coaching news and rumors, but for the most part it has been a really quiet summer as Lenovo Center undergoes its renovation and Training Camp inches closer.
All of a sudden on Wednesday, though, several news stories related to the Hurricanes and from the Canes came out and they are actually worth talking about. Here’s what we found out:
The list of games that will be on the national television partners started off the day. Much like in years past, the Canes will have zero presence on ESPN but most of the NHL has zero presence on ESPN until football and college basketball is fully done. It’s the problem with being in business with the folks in Bristol, but it’s also a necessary evil in a lot of ways to make sure the league has visibility as there’s little doubt ESPN actually acts as if the league exists now.
One thing that is different is that the Canes—at least for now—don’t even have a game on ABC in the later part of the year. The last two seasons the Canes saw games agains the Rangers, Flyers, and Devils end up on ABC, and considering they are likely to contend again in the playoffs you would think they would have wanted to show them one more time. This season, though, it appears they’ll have to just settle for being on the ESPN app.
All in all three games for the Canes—and only one home game—will be on TNT in the traditional cable sense. Seven games will be on the ESPN app. What is noteworthy here is that with ESPN adding a direct-to-consumer offering, ESPN+ basically doesn’t exist anymore. The games are still listed as ESPN+, but if you subscribe to the ESPN app or your television provider has a deal with ESPN to where you have full access to the app—like Spectrum customers do—then you’ll have access to the game without having to pay for a separate subscription. For cable subscribers at least it means you won’t have to pay for another service to watch the Canes.
Of note—the Tuesday, January 6th game in Raleigh against Dallas wasn’t picked up for national broadcast—again for now—which is intriguing considering the drama that will come with the return of a certain player traded to Raleigh a year prior then traded out a couple months later. Seems like a miss on the part of the partners not to cash in on some drama.
A little later in the day the Canes announced that the prospect showcase they’ll send their young players to will be played in Tampa, and released the roster of the players going. They’ll participate again with Nashville, Tampa, and Florida in a battle of prospects. The release notes that the teams rotate around as hosts, so they should be back up in Wake County within the next couple of seasons.
A few intriguing names are on the roster, and the lead among them would be Bradley Nadeau. All of the players will be using the showcase to get some reps in before training camp begins, and we’ll see if the showcase is enough for some of them to earn invites to the big camp.
This also tied into the signing of Ivan Ryabkin to an entry-level deal the Canes announced during the day. Ryabkin was drafted this year out of the USHL and hails from Russia, and it appears instead of heading back to Russia Ryabkin will get a chance to play in North American this year. At only 18 he’ll have some time to improve before even sniffing the NHL, but the team is likely happy they have him in North America.
Finally, the team made an announcement about…an announcement
Some sleuthing had hinted at this for a couple of months. Word on social media had gotten out that none of the jerseys were available at the Carolina Pro Shop, and once they did become available only the red and the black were able to be purchased. At the end of last month, those rumors were further fueled by another post:
The feed of the poster is mostly of other news releases, so there is reason to think this could be accurate. Either way we’ll know for sure next week, and that should start a steadier stream of news from the team as the calendar flips to September and players start to come back into town for Training Camp.
The change is also going to end the jokes of how the Canes stole the diagonal letters from the Rangers—despite other teams using them. There’s been rumblings that the NHL will shift their jersey policy back to white at home and colors on the road, and some are musing that the league will even adopt an NBA-like policy of allowing color-on-color as long as the colors don’t clash. This move could be part of that shift—or it could simply be that as sharp as the sweater looked up close, it was the least popular one of the bunch and it was time for yet another change.