ACC Basketball and Canes hockey vs the Panthers tonight

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Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Grainger. For the ones who get it done. We got a big hockey game tonight at BNC Arena as the Florida Panthers are in town. I think they're the best team in the East right now. They have won 11 in a row on the road, six in a row overall. We will talk about that with Luke Tkach in just a minute, but I want to start with basketball for the columnist, for the news and observer at Luke Tkach on Twitter.

I know I'm going to see you tonight. Let's get to a little basketball. Is Duke better significantly better than they were in Chapel Hill or are we just watching them play? Well, I'll just say it inferior competition.

No, I think they're the same team. I think some of their, you know, obviously people get all bent out of shape with the word toughness. I think some of their intangibles have locked back into place. I mean, you know, when you look at the pit game or you look at the Carolina game in Chapel Hill, the things that they were most frustrated about were things that were within their control, you know, getting after loose balls or boxing out or, you know, basic stuff that, you know, you can call it toughness. I think it is in some ways, it's also effort, it's commitment, it's mental toughness, it's physical toughness, it's all of those things. And I think what you're seeing is that, you know, manifesting itself.

And I think John Shire in his own way has as sort of, you know, now defending them feeling that they've turned a corner in that regard. But also, as the former coach down the road used to say, everything looks better when the ball goes in the basket. And that matters too. And, you know, we get caught up in trying to apply these judgments to individual college games. Every game is not a referendum. This is a 30 plus game season. And you have to let things ebb and flow. I mean, look at Syracuse. They've had games where they can't miss and they've had games where they can't buy a bucket. It's the same team, but they're not an NCAA tournament team one night and they're not the worst team in the ACC the next night.

But that's the way that this stuff gets talked about and applied. So, you know, I feel like Duke is a team that's had some injury issues. Obviously, there's been a bit of a progression. I think there's a question of, of sort of, you know, this, I hate using this term, but, you know, who is the alpha dog on that roster? Is it Kyle Filipowski? Is it Tyrese Proctor?

Is it Jared McCain? And, and what we've seen lately is, is McCain sort of emerge and take a larger role. I think that's taken a little bit of the pressure off Filipowski. And then, you know, Tyrese Proctor being in and out of the lineup doesn't help, but when you get him back, you have some continuity.

So I think it's the same team. I think Duke could go out and lose again. It's just, you know, you defeated one game does not lead to 10 more wins. One loss does not need the 10 more losses. We just sort of get caught up in talking about it that way. It's that stupid football mentality where every game decides the national championship. It's not, it's a long season. There, there are wild swings in performance in college basketball. We need to learn to appreciate those for what they are and not get caught up in, you know, is this a quad one win or whatever? Because that changes too.

Everything changes. So I feel like Duke's the same team. They've just done a better job of being Duke lately. They screwed up last night. They shouldn't have won by 29. If you win by one, then Miami doesn't drop all the way to 91 in the net. And maybe they stay around 80 and a couple of wins.

They could be in the top 75 and it'd be a quad one win. I hate this conversation so much. And the flip side of that is because net rewards blowouts, Duke can't do that because it needs the blowout points to help its net. It's a terrible system. The way we do it is terrible.

Quadrants are awful. You and I are on the same page on this stuff. But Adam, since we've at least can claim, if not victory in the war, at least a battle won on the block charge call and the way it's been changed for the better this season that you and I have been talking about for years, maybe we can work on selection too. Honestly, I think we're I think we're already I think people are recognizing that they're using it because that's what they're going to be.

That's what's going to be used. But I will be surprised if we don't see drastic changes in the way they rank teams. It is silly to me that you could just pile up wins against trash and you start from a higher spot.

Not to mention part of the I think part of it is also because they they take into account, like the Ken Palms and the Bart Torvicks of the world, that part of it is that those also start at the beginning of the season with some preconceived notions, which I don't understand how you do. Let me ask you about NC State. Luke Tkachov, the NNO is here because I was asked this.

I was I went on with our our friends in Charlotte. They asked me about Kevin Keats. I don't believe that Kevin Keats has done a bad job of coaching.

I really don't. I think he's done a good job of coaching. I don't think he's done a great job of building and maintaining a roster, which is a huge part of what you're supposed to do as a college coach. That's been the biggest to me, the biggest failure of the Kevin Keats era is, you know, maintaining and building out a roster that just has not been a lot of continuity. But I don't I can't explain why they were so bad in the first half against Syracuse and then so much better, although they still ended up losing the game.

I mean, I think I hit seven shots and yes, he was open for some of them. It's kind of like when Carolina was up in Syracuse. Yes, Carolina could have done a better job on ball screen D and there are things they tried to fix in the second half that didn't work.

And Armando Baker was was limping and not great. But the reality is, when a team shoots 63 percent, that's not all just you playing bad defense. Sometimes the other guys make shots, too.

And I think that's a little bit of what happened. Obviously, states defense help defense was terrible in the first half and you're giving Chris Bell open shots, but you can give Chris Bell nine open shots and there's no guarantee he's going to make eight of them. In fact, he's more likely to make two or three of them. So, you know, I think this stuff gets blown out of proportion when guys start making shots. You know, Sidney Lowe would say got to make shots.

Yes. In the big picture, I think a lot of what's happened with NC State is the product of a coach who's building every year to save his job that year and can't take a step back and take a long term view. You know, you sort of had veering from player to player transfer to transfer. You had changes on the coaching staff. There's a lot of holistic issues with why NC State kind of hasn't been able to get over the hump under Kevin Keats. I do think this year he's done a great job with the roster that he has, especially with D.J. Burns, really regressing from last year. I'm trying to, you know, you look at the growth of that team over the course of the season.

I think it's it's a it's actually, you know, in the micro, a really good coaching job. The other thing people forget about with Kevin Keats is that twenty nineteen team absolutely should have made the tournament. I think the committee deciding to randomly pick their non-conference strength of schedule out of a hat to keep them out of the tournament.

Right. And then completely ignore the fact they went down to one at Auburn is one of the great selection travesties of our generation. Twenty twenty, I believe they would have made the tournament that year.

Twenty twenty one. Obviously there were some issues. But if you go eighteen, nineteen, twenty in the tournament, you're operating from a recruiting, from a retention, from a marketing, from an apathy standpoint. You're it's a completely different conversation. That's not what happened.

Right. They didn't make it. Nineteen twenty didn't happen.

Twenty one was a disaster. Now you've rebuilt a little bit, but you're doing it every year, year to year. And you just can't build a program that way. You can keep your job that way.

You just can't build a program that way. So, I mean, I think when you look at the bigger picture with NC State, it's just that lack of continuity makes it hard. I think Kevin Keats has done a really good job building year to year. I mean, the fact that you lose Jarkel Joiner and Turquavian Smith and you're in a position to win games again the year later with a completely different backboard. That's college basketball in twenty twenty four.

That's what everybody's doing everywhere. But in the bigger scheme of things over the five or six year arc of the program, there just hasn't been that year to year continuity. And part of that is circumstances and part of that is building year to year to try to save your job. There's no question now that people have are starting to tune out and that's always sort of cancerous for a coach. Yeah, I mean, to two trips to the NCAA tournament in seven years. Yeah.

You can't just look at that in a vacuum. And I agree. I think he's done a good job coaching the team this year. And I hope that Kevin Keats is allowed another year.

And would it be a do or die year? Probably. But I hope he's allowed that because I think Kevin Keats is a good coach. They just they they need some continuity.

All right. Tonight at PNC Arena, hurricanes and the Florida Panthers first time since we have seen them here since May, Caroline has played them once already. Did not go well much earlier in the season. Where do you think Carolina is in terms of what their capabilities are right now? Without the ones like you who work tirelessly to keep things running, everything would suddenly stop. Hospitals, factories, schools and power plants.

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Sign up for a one dollar per month trial period at Shopify dot com slash listen Shopify dot com slash listen. Well, first of all, I have to correct you. You forgot about Skylar Brindamore Knight back in the preseason when Florida was here. And Paul Maurice, for all of our criticisms, and they are valid, of Paul Maurice being completely full of it sometimes, like when he came back from Russia and announced that he'd figured out how to coach European players now, or any other Paul Maurice-ism, did the Hurricanes a solid by playing broads some that night.

I thought that was a terrific gesture, especially given how he did that playoff series last spring. All that being said, you know, there's definitely another level for this team. You know, the special teams obviously have been closer to what you would expect them to be. Certainly the penalty kill has been. You know, if Jesperi Kokiemi's goal the other night is the beginning of something and not just a one-off, that changes the equation. Andrei Svetsekov needs to score more. That's been true for two years. He's an elite goal scorer.

He should be scoring 40 to 50 goals a year and he's not. So yeah, I think there is a much higher ceiling for this team, especially if Frederick Anderson does come back, which it looks like he will apparently, and plays well, which he certainly can. And who knows with Freddie, taking two and a half months off may be the best possible thing for him, given his inability to go through April and May unhindered.

Maybe starting over in March is the best possible thing for him. So yeah, I think there's a lot more with this team. And I think it's a team that obviously they're not going to have a goalie.

I don't think they're going to be able to make the kind of big move for a forward that they'd like to make. Whatever happened with the guy you like, that Lindholm kid? I can't remember. I don't know. I don't know.

I saw him score two goals at PNC arena just to rub lemon juice in my paper cut. Yeah, but I don't think a move like that's going to happen. It's just the market's too tight right now.

I wouldn't be surprised. They added like a max dome-y type depth forward, maybe a defense. And although give Tony D'Angelo credit, he's come in after sitting for a long time and played pretty well. So, you know, I don't, I think by what you really want to do is, is hope that people like Kokiyemi can play better, hope that someone like Svetanov can play at elite level, which he certainly is capable of doing. And then add a couple insurance pieces, because as we saw in 2021, they ran out of defenseman against Nashville and prolonged that series, which then hurt them against the lightning. That should have been a sweep or a five game win over Nashville. Instead, they dragged it out for 19 overtimes before they finally put away the clearly inferior predators.

And then obviously, you know, last year when Svetanov and Pacharetti both go down and they ran out of firepower and Teva Taravani gets hurt in the first round and you run out of firepower against the Panthers, which is sort of what happened. So one of these years, their goalie has to get hot. We've never really seen a Hurricanes goalie get Sergei Bobrovsky hot. Well, no, not that hot, but their goaltending has not been the reason that they've been bad. My point is, my point, yes, their goaltending for the most part has been fine. I would think the Rangers series is the one you would toss out there. But what you haven't seen is a Hurricanes goalie go out and win games when the team has played poorly.

They haven't cost them games largely. I think maybe you could say that, you know, there have been some games against the Bruins, but overall, they've never had a guy play like Bobrovsky or for that matter, like Cam Ward did at times in 2006, or Marty Gerber did in one game in Buffalo in 2006. Where's your love for Spencer Martin? Maybe it's Spencer Martin, maybe it's Auntie Ronta in the final analysis.

Gets hot and plays well for a week and wins a series. So my point is, yes, there is a much higher ceiling for this team. But I don't, you know, it's not, the marginal return on some of this is limited. This group is who it is.

There haven't been a lot of changes the last couple of years. They've got to figure out a way to get it done and get the goaltending to let them do it. Thirty seconds on this before I have to say goodbye to Luke DeCock. Frederick Anderson practicing now two, three, whatever, however many practices. He's going to come back, let's just say he comes back March 5th. Auntie Ronta is still on the roster. They haven't placed him on IR yet.

He started to skate too. Unless somebody else is going on IR. There's not enough spots on the roster. No team has ever carried four goalies. What do they do if they put Spencer Martin on waivers, they're going to lose him. Because he's played too well to not be picked up by somebody.

So what happens when all four goalies are healthy? You tell me. I don't know. I really don't. I was thinking about that the other day too. Because I don't think you want to lose any of these guys. Auntie Ronta is obviously an important figure in the dressing room. Spencer Martin.

Look, Spencer Martin may be their best goalie right now. You know, it's a crazy thing to say, but that sometimes that's the way the game works. So, yeah, I think there's going to have to be some maybe some sleight of hand there.

And I don't know, you know, do you do you do you work that sort of IR move with one of those guys? Well, you know what you can do? You could send Auntie Ronta. He's already cleared waivers. You could send Auntie Ronta to the minor leagues, but he could go to the minor leagues and stick around here and practice. That's the thing.

That's against the rules. No, that's true. And I also think, you know, Auntie Ronta handled his trip to the AHL. Well, he took it in the right spirit.

He knew he wasn't playing well. I think that's a harder sell to do for sort of roster or salary cap reasons than it was when he went down in December, January, whenever that was. So it's an interesting question. The other, you know, as you get closer to the trade deadline, you know, is a trade a possibility? Could you perhaps get something for one of these guys?

And if you can, you know, how does that change the equation right now? I think you can get a first and a third for Spencer Martin, the best goalie for the Hurricanes. Luke, the cock of the News and Observer. I'll see you on the seventh floor. Pay homage to not. I'm going to be at the state Carolina women's game tonight.

So you can't pay up to nothing. All right, good. Good on you for for the for the ladies.

I'll talk to you soon. Without the ones like you who work tirelessly to keep things running, everything would suddenly stop. Hospitals, factories, schools and power plants. They all depend on you.

No matter the weather, emergency or time of day. You're the ones who get it done at Grainger. We're here for you with professional grade industrial supplies. Count on real time product availability and fast delivery call click Grainger dot com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.