With 6 consecutive playoff misses and a nice size checklist of underperformers with big contracts, Canes fans are watching GM Ron Francis for big moves and the formation of the next plan. Does he trade or re-sign captain Eric Staal? Will he somehow lure a top 4 defenseman to replace Andrej Sekera? Is it possible to trade Alexander Semin? If not, is it inconceivable that Francis would use a buyout to expensively cut ties and move forward? Could fan favorite Jeff Skinner be traded? And so on...

But it is not only the headline-grabbing moves that carve out direction but rather the smaller, meaningful ones. Today, the Hurricanes made the decision not to re-sign Jeff Daniels to coach the AHL Charlotte Checkers. Instead, the team will go another direction to be determined over the course of the summer. On the surface, this might seem like a ho-hum move at a level below where we care. But if you dig a couple layers deeper, I think this move is significant.

Jeff Daniels is a company man in the sense that he played for the Canes, had ties to the front office and was even part of Laviolette's staff at the NHL level. He is also a classy guy and not at all a fire brand or controversial character. He even has deeper ties to Francis having played with him with both the Canes and the Penguins. So by no means was he in the category of outsider to be callously evaluated solely on performance.

But still the Canes let him walk today. Why? Put very simply, I think Ron Francis rated his performance as average at best and sub-par at worst. In 7 seasons, his team had made only 3 playoff appearances and only once made any kind of noise. While sadly better than the parent club over a similar timeframe, this is not great.

I think more significantly, he did not seem to have a knack for readying players for the NHL. Teams like Detroit seem to be able to drop AHLers at will into the NHL and know about what they are going to get from them. For the Canes, calling up AHL players seemed to often to yield players who were not ready and had to go back (sometimes multiple times) to figure it out. I think the most glaring examples are the recent batch of forwards that included players like Dalpe, Boychuk, Terry, etc. In this group, there seemed to be at least fringe NHL talent possibly even with a bit of scoring upside. Time after time when called up, these players looked like deer in headlights unable to transition strong play at the AHL level to even serviceable NHL play. Only recently has Chris Terry finally, maybe, we'll see what the other options are...staked a claim to at least a depth roster spot. The fact that Boychuk seemed to finally get what was expected of him at the NHL level might have only made Daniels look worse in that it took too long to get there. I recognize that there are player circumstances that play into this situation too, so for any individual player, I do not think you can hang it 100% on the AHL coach. But over 7 years and many players, I just think the system yielded too few at least serviceable NHL players from a talent pool that while not spectacular seemed better.

When I net out Francis' move today, I think it quietly makes 3 very strong statements:

1) Everyone in the organization will be evaluated based on performance and results. The fact that Jeff Daniels is a good guy and has relationships across the team's management ranks did not trump actual performance.

2) Francis understands the importance of player development. At the end of the day, that is the most significant role of the AHL coach, and I would rate Daniels below average in that respect.

3) Francis knows that there is room for significant improvement in player development relative to what the franchise has seen over the past 7 years.

What say you Canes fans? Am I reading too much into a level 2 move for a contract that was up anyway making for a natural transition point? Or do you see it like I do that this move while not headline-worthy is a pretty strong statement by Canes GM Ron Francis?

Twitter=@CarolinaMatt63

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