A Look Back At Our Predictions

Photo Source: Sunbelt Hockey

Last summer Andrew and I made a couple predictions during the summer about how certain players would fare in the season.  The players we wrote about were Elias Lindholm, Anton Khudobin, Mike Komisarek, and Nathan Gerbe.  Being that summer has come back around it is time to see how we did with our picks.

Elias Lindholm
Article: The Versatile Swede

In our article about him I said that he is an assist man with a scoring touch as well as someone who the Canes will want on their squad.  Before the season began it was up-in-the-air whether or not Lindholm was going to sign with the team right away or play one more season with Brynas in the Swedish Hockey League.  He ended up signing a three-year entry level contract and spent the majority of his time with the Canes.  For the 2013-14 season he played 58 games in the NHL and 6 games for the Charlotte Checkers in the American Hockey League with stats of 9 goals, 12 assists for 21 points with the Hurricanes and 1 goal, 2 assists for 3 points with the Checkers.  Lindholm is definitely a setup man, but his stats were on the lacking side.  I do believe that is not entirely his fault because the team did under-perform as a whole.  I predict that after an okay rookie season that he will have a better sophomore year.

Anton Khudobin
Article: Trying to Solve the Backup Goalie Mystery

Last season Khudobin became the sixth goaltender to serve behind starter Cam Ward and so far is proving to be the missing piece that the Canes have long been looking for.  In the article about him I was cautious because of how much I did not know about him, but I was optimistic because his stats show only one losing season for him.  For the 2013-14 season he had more wins than losses with a record of 19-14-1.  While he and Ward were both injured during the year, he ended up playing 6 more games than Ward (36 for Khudobin, 30 for Ward) and had better numbers than Ward, too.  Khudobin was superior in all aspects as shown below:

Statistics (vs. Ward)
Wins: 19 (10)
Goals Against: 80 (84)
GAA: 2.30 (3.06)
Save Percentage: .926 (.898)

It shows that that Khudobin is not just a formidable, but a potential candidate to take over Ward's number one spot.  With Ward being injury prone, it may be the right time to give Khudobin the push he needs to stand out above Ward.  If above all else, he IS the competition that Wards needs to play better.

Mike Komisarek
Article: Ready For Action?

Of the four players that we focused on last summer, Mike Komisarek was definitely a swing-and-a-miss for the Canes.  We should have known better considering the numbers he had coming into last season.  Since turning professional he has only had a handful of seasons where he played more than 70 games.  His career stats aren't that great either: 551 regular season games played, 14 goals, 67 assists, and 81 points.  Then again, he was known more for his penalty minutes than anything else and I feel that the Canes brought him in and misused him more so than any other player on the team and it shows, too: 32 games, 0 goals, and 4 assists for 4 points this past season.  With his one-year contract expired he is now an unrestricted free agent (UFA).  I strongly believe it would be a waste of cap space to sign him for another year.  He is better off finding another team this season.

Nathan Gerbe
Article: Small Man, Big Suprises

If there was anybody on the Canes who fulfilled their contractual obligations and deserved a raise, it was definitely Nathan Gerbe.  This is a man that signed a one-year, two-way contract last season after being waived by the Buffalo Sabres.  The stipulations for the contract were this: $500k if he stayed all season with the Canes, $125k if he played with the Checkers, and $250k if he went back and forth between the two.  Well after 81 NHL games played last season for the Canes, Gerbe was able to lay claim to that $500,000.  In those 81 games he had 16 goals and 15 assists for 31 points which matches his career high numbers from the 2010-11 season with the Sabres, but done in 64 games (again, 16G, 15A for 31 pts).  Regardless, he has shone that he deserves a spot on the team and the Canes have realized that by signing him to a two-year contract which will pay Gerbe $1.5 million in the 2014-15 season and $2 million during the 2015-16 season; a well-deserved raise indeed.  With a raise like that there is sure to be higher expectations.  While he won't have the demands that the Staal brothers and Jeff Skinner will have, it will be safe to assume that the organization hopes that he will a potential 20 goal scorer and produce 40-50 points this upcoming season.