Carolina Hurricanes: Tom Dundon’s 1-Year Owner Report Card, Part Three

On-Ice Results

Here is where the slope is slippery. We are grading a full year of Tom Dundon, but not an actual complete standalone season of Carolina Hockey. As such, there are some signs of Tom Dundon’s influence in both seasons but not enough to give a full and fair grade. This grade will be more about how his influence, or lack thereof, has affected the on-ice performance and results of the Carolina Hurricanes. Remember that the graded time ended on the 11th and more recent transactions and games are not included.

After coming into the organization, he gave time to Ron Francis to see if he would turn the ailing roster around enough to finally end the playoff drought. Francis committed to a single trade: Josh Jooris departing in exchange for Greg McKegg. At the time, the trade didn’t amount to anything. It certainly didn’t matter to the Carolina Hurricanes roster. Jooris was waived and sent to the Checkers, and McKegg was similarly playing AHL hockey for the Penguins. That was enough to give Francis the boot from the GM position a couple of weeks later.

Looking back at that trade now, it’s obvious that Francis was trading for the future, as he always did. McKegg has grown to be an important part of the Carolina Hurricanes’ center depth and has impressed in his recent stint. But Francis didn’t make any moves for the team for the here and now, a habit Tom Dundon has made clear he isn’t interested in continuing.

Don Waddell took over in the off-season and Dundon made it clear that he wanted young talented players with a more offensive mindset. In his latest interview with the Triangle Business Journal he made it amply clear that he wants the Carolina Hurricanes to be a high-scoring team with an emphasis on putting the puck in the net:

“I’ve got to have more offence, I want to lose 5-4, not 2-1, If we lose 5-4, I’ll at least have fun.” “We won’t be drafting defence in the first round as long as I’m here” -Tom Dundon

Don Waddell has followed the new owner’s lead and pushed to acquire more scoring players, trading for Micheal Ferland and Dougie Hamilton. The latter tied for the highest number of goals by a defender in the entire NHL last season, and is riding a ridiculous shots-on-goal streak. However, the loss of proven goalscorer Jeff Skinner, for practically nothing flies in the face of that. Will Cliff Pu as well as the draft picks acquired in that trade turn out to be the next Greg McKegg gem in the rough? Only time will tell, but for now that loss made this team worse, even if Skinner’s production was going to be similar to last year’s.

The problem with this push and why we are going to be giving this section a subpar grade is that it hasn’t panned out. Scoring in this league is based on many things and one of those is pure luck. As it stands, the Carolina Hurricanes are still 27th in the league in average goals per game. Which is pretty bad considering they are the top team in the league in shots. That might be on the coaching, but anyone who has been around this league and watched a lot of games will tell you that luck plays a part in it as well.

Where their actual strength is is their defense, ironically, thanks to the years of drafting and trading for good defenders by Ron Francis, and even the relatively-unheralded UFA signing of Calvin de Haan by Don Waddell. They lead the league in least shots allowed per game and are 13th in least goals allowed. Of course the latter is more on the two new netminders that were acquired this year. One was a good decision, and the other a stroke of well-timed bad luck. They are the only redeeming factors for Dundon’s offense-first mentality.

Of course the future of having such a mentality is still unknown. Will Waddell be forced to trade one of his defenders for more offense in efforts of turning around the bad offensive numbers? Will this team be more aggressive in the next off-season when it comes to pursuing talented offensive talent? These questions and more can only be answered by either waiting or inventing a time machine. Seeing how I do not carry the intellectual proficiency to invent such a machine, we will have to wait, see, and grade Dundon on this again next year.

At the end the real results that matter are wins and losses. The Carolina Hurricanes, as of the 11th of January, are only two wins over .500. They are well out of a playoff spot. While they are heading in the right direction, they are not where Tom Dundon wants them to be. A lot of that is on the on-ice performance. They have been shut out several times. Perhaps Tom Dundon hasn’t pushed his agenda of offense over defense hard enough, or perhaps the hockey gods are scoffing at his planning. For now, the Ws aren’t here.

GRADE: C+

Final Grades

We have dived into five different segments of Tom Dundon’s first year as the owner of the Carolina Hurricanes. For those of you who have ridden with us on this journey, Dundon’s overall grade is near. Many of you have noticed that a lot of what was graded kept repeating itself across the various sections. That is because the way Tom Dundon has operated since becoming the new owner, all of these things mesh and interact with each other, supporting and elevating each to be better. He is building a culture, and that takes time.

As such, a year may not be enough time to fully get a feel on how Tom Dundon has done as the new owner of the team. Like we said before, he has yet to see a full season from start to finish. Does he take what he has learned from this season into next? Will he continue to push for more improvements in each of these five aspects? Or will he eventually settle into a more hands-off approach a la Peter Karmanos?

Only time will tell for those questions. For now the general feeling and consensus is that he will continue to push to improve where needed, and expand upon areas that have already drastically improved. His business approach and his tactics have shocked the NHL world and put the Carolina Hurricanes back on the map for the first time since 2006. And he has not given anyone the sense that he is anywhere near done.

Before we calculate the final grade, let’s look back at the five sections we have already graded and review the grades that were given to Tom Dundon in his first year. As a reminder, the five sections are: Fan Interaction; promotions and marketing; in-game experience; hiring decisions and today’s section, on-ice results. Here are how he has grades in those sections:

So now that we have graded each individual section we can calculate Tom Dundon’s final grade with our very (not) secret formula. We take his progress in each of the five portions into consideration as well as the state of the team when he purchased it one year ago.

For the ability to turn around the franchise’s non-sports performance along with give the fanbase a different feeling of hope for the future of the franchise, a B is a very fair grade. It is obvious that his presence on the team has given it a lot of what it needed. The fans are flocking back to the arena in numbers that haven’t been seen for years. The team is being talked about nationally on every hockey station. They are trending in the most positive ways on social media. There is a lot of good that has happened since his arrival.

That said, there is still a lot of room for improvement. A grade of B shows exactly that. The good news is that Tom Dundon is on his way to improving that grade with everything that has already happened since the 11th of January. Especially the latest trade with the Wild for Nino Niederreiter. If this team manages to crawl back into the playoffs this year, and end the franchise’s awful post-season drought, it will end a lot of the concern that surrounds the first fan of the Carolina Hurricanes: our own Julius Caesar, Tom Dundon.

Question for CC Readers:

How would you grade Tom Dundon’s first year as the owner of the Carolina Hurricanes?