Well it happened again, the Canes draft someone out of the “Plymouth Pipeline” that has churned out “great” players for us such as Jonas Fiedler, Jared Newman, Damian Surma and Kevin Holdridge. In fact since the Canes have moved to NC they have made Plymouth Whalers 14 of their 114 selections. Combined all these picks have a grand total of 45 NHL games played, a rate of just over 3 games per player. Yet the Canes keep coming back to the organization in the draft despite this, and this is mostly the doing of Karmanos. Why am I getting at this? Because they just used their 4th round pick on yet another Whaler, Michal Jordan, this past weekend in Ottawa. Now the name itself is an epic win and maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on the Plymouth Pipeline since we had not even tapped it since a round that doesn’t even exist anymore in 2004 until last year, taking both Chris Terry and Bret Bellemore, who both look pretty good as prospects right now. But I really do have to wonder if there’s another organization in the league that has used more then 10% of their draft picks on one junior team with such an incredible record of failure.

Now don’t get me wrong, they found a gem that passed through the draft a few times in Chad LaRose, who signed with the Canes after finishing his junior career in Plymouth. LaRose has played over twice as many games as the Canes 14 Plymouth picks put together and it’s likely he would have gone unsigned had he played for any other team. LaRose has become one of a few notable Whalers in the NHL right now, which include David Legwand, Bryan Berard, Justin Williams, Stephen Weiss and Paul Mara. But all of those players have one thing in common; they weren’t drafted by the Canes.

But the biggest reason for this rant has nothing to do with Jordan, who may yet prove to be a decent pickup if his performance at last years World Juniors is any indication. No, it has to do with something far more underhanded: the way PK does his business, specifically as it relates to the relationship between the Hurricanes, the Plymouth Whalers and our recently drafted RW/C prospect Zac Dalpe. Now, Dalpe falling to the Hurricanes at #45 was possibly one of the biggest surprises of the entire draft, really he probably should have gone in the first round and there’s absolutely no way he should have fallen to the middle of the second. Every single publication had him as a late first and the Hurricanes had him at #16 on their list, that’s the type of thing, like Paul Stastny falling in 05, that has the potential to make at least 20 other teams look like total idiots somewhere down the line.

If you’re asking yourself why this is a bad thing, for the Canes it’s not, but for Zac Dalpe it might as well be the kiss of death. You see, he was drafted by the Plymouth Whalers in the 2nd round of the OHL Priority Draft. The big deal with that is the OHL Priority Draft was for ‘92 born players this year, Dalpe is an ‘89, so when a team uses a 2nd rounder on a guy like that who has already committed to college you know they’re going to do absolutely everything in their power to get the guy to change his mind and go the Major Junior route. Now that he’s Hurricanes property he’s going to be getting the full court press from every direction, Stefan in Plymouth, JR, PK, I wouldn’t be shocked if even Ronnie himself were pushing for him to forget OSU and go to Plymouth. Still, nothing has changed for Dalpe, and he has even stated as much. That won’t stop the Canes from putting the pressure on Dalpe though. Plymouth should have a good team next year and Dalpe could be a key player for them, likely being their top center if he signs.

You have to give Dalpe credit for being a man of his word, and just as much you have to wonder about the conflict of interests that exist between the Plymouth Whalers and Carolina Hurricanes. Karmanos remains the only owner of an NHL team that also owns a Major Junior one, and while the Plymouth Whalers aren’t a farm team for the Canes as that is prohibited, it sure seems that the organization acts like they are one. And while Plymouth is by no means an NHL prospect factory, Ohio State isn’t exactly lighting up the NHL ranks either with their most notable alumni in the league being a tossup between Ryan Kesler and R.J. Umberger, not exactly a ringing endorsement of the program. I mean we’re not exactly talking about trying to snag a kid from Minnesota, Denver or even St. Cloud State here. But the fact of the matter is that the pressure is on from both parts of the Karmanos camp, despite the fact that Dalpe has stated that he has no intentions of playing for someone other then OSU next season.

I will say that OSU’s coach, John Markell, is doing himself no favors with some of the comments he’s been making to the press over the issue. According to him: “They’re the only team in the league that does that. Most NHL teams wouldn’t do that, but they’ve chosen to do it.” Well, unless he’s talking running a junior team simultaneously, odds are he’s off base with that. I mean, I guess there was absolutely no pressure from the Isles to get Okposo to leave Minnesota in the middle of the season right after the WJC’s. And I’m sure that none of the other players that jumped from the NCAAs to Major Juniors had any pressure from the team that drafted them to do so. Not to mention that when Ronnie met with McBain this past year Francis was one of the people encouraging McBain to go back for his junior year. I can respect where Markell is coming from, but when he says stuff like that it seems disingenuous at best.

Obviously both sides are concerned about what they feel is best for their player, but frankly that is the kind of thing that is up for Zac and Zac alone to decide.