It's getting close to the beginning of the season which means it's about time to start predicting what will happen next season. In case you didn't know, season projections is kind of like Christmas to bloggers so this time of year is really special to people like us. There's something about going through your team's roster thoroughly and trying to predict the future that gets bloggers like me excited. The in-depth projections will be coming over the next few weeks but first, we're going to look at who on the Hurricanes roster this coming season were relatively lucky or unlucky and if they can expect it to change at all.

To do this, we're going to look at a few specific stats. First, we'll take a look at their on-ice shooting percentage to see if the team was getting lucky in terms of scoring goals. Next is on-ice save percentage, which is the team's save percentage when a certain player was on the ice. Lastly, there's PDO which is the sum of the player's on-ice shooting and save percentage and it represents the overall luck a player had in a certain year. 1000 is generally considered the mean for this stat. In other words, if a player's PDO is way above 1000, then it means that he got lucky at least one end of the ice and there's a good chance that it will eventually regress to 1000 sooner or later while a PDo of less than 100 means that a player has been receiving some poor luck and that brighter days are ahead. At least that's what applies to most players. The elite ones will likely have their PDO's remain high for a long time while truly awful players will see their PDO stay below 1000 for awhile. Let's take a look at who got the best and worst fortune for the players on the upcoming Canes roster:

When considering who will be on the opening night roster for this upcoming season, I believe the consensus among most Canes fans is that we have our centers figured out. Staal centers the first line, obviously with Ruutu, Sutter and Tim Brent or Jiri Tlusty on the second, third and fourth lines respectively. The biggest issue is figuring out who will be playing the wings on these lines because things kind of look like a mess right now on the first line. Judging from what I've gathered from other Carolina fans, most would like to keep the second line of Jussi Jokinen, Tuomo Ruutu and Jeff Skinner together instead of bumping up Skinner to the first line with Staal and I can understand that because it gives the team more scoring depth. However, that leaves two holes on the first line and there isn't a lot to work with to fill those spots. Then you have to consider who will play the wings on the bottom-six too. Let's take a look at what our options are:

Note: There's a few players who I have ruled out already because, like Jokinen and Skinner, they seem to have found spots on other lines. Chad LaRose appears to be comfortable on the third line and Patrick Dwyer is set on the fourth-line so we don't have to worry about them.