It was only a month ago when the Hurricanes were in the driver's seat in the Southeast Division and basically all they needed to do was gain points in a little under 60% of their games to make it in. Since that point, the Canes have gone 3-11-1 and are now in the running for a top-five pick rather than a playoff spot. This free fall was something that even I didn't see coming because, as I have often reiterated here, the Hurricanes have been one of the better teams in the NHL at controlling puck-possession this season. This is usually what leads to success in the NHL, but not all the time. Goaltending, shooting luck and injuries are going to keep some good teams out of the playoffs this year because there are fewer games to make up for lost ground. The Hurricanes have been hit especially hard by the injury bug this year, but they've also seen a lot of other things go wrong for them as of late. This is evidenced by taking a look at their PDO over the season. 

For those who don't know what PDO is, it's the sum of a team's even strength shooting and save percentages and shows how lucky or unlucky a team has gotten. A PDO over 1.000 shows that a team has gotten very fortunate while a team with a PDO under 1.00 shows that they may have gotten a few bounces that have gone against them. Carolina's PDO has stayed stagnant for most of the year, but recently it has taken a nose dive. Looking at it over five-game segments shows this team's fall from grace pretty well.

15 goals. That is all the Hurricanes have gotten from players not in their top-six this season and it's probably even lower than that if you take away special teams goal. Scoring depth is something that I did not think would be a problem for the Canes this year, but it's a pretty big issue right now. Their top line has accounted for a little under 45% of the team's overall goals and 33 of the 55 non-empty net goals they've scored during five-on-five play. As nice as it is to have a potent first line, the other players really need to produce to help take some of the burden on them. 

The Hurricanes might possess one of the best first lines in the NHL right now, but they aren't going to score every night, so the other lines are going to need to pick up the slack and they haven't done that lately. Jordan Staal's line with Jeff Skinner are somewhat guilty of this, too but I'm more willing to give them a pass because they have been productive in terms of creating scoring chances. The third and fourth lines, however, have not been so innocent.

The last time a Hurricanes third liner produced a goal was on March 16th against the Washington Capitals when Patrick Dwyer deflected in a point shot from Jay Harrison and the ONLY time a Carolina fourth liner scored came all the way back in early February when Tim Wallace scored against the Islanders. The Canes bottom two lines have gone through a lot of changes this year, but when you have only one total goal all season from an entire line, then that's not good. Even if a lot of fourth lines aren't depended on for scoring. Compare the Hurricanes scoring numbers with the rest of the league and you can see that they lean on their top-six a lot more than the majority of the NHL.

Whether the Hurricanes were buyers or sellers at the deadline, the one thing I did not want to see Jim Rutehrford do was make trades purely for the sake of it. The Hurricanes weren't going to find an answer for their defensive problems this deadline, so there was no point in dealing for another third-pairing guy and they didn't have enough assets to acquire a better player. At the same time, if the Hurricanes chose to be sellers, they don't exactly have a lot of attractable players on the roster right now and the most they would get in a trade were fringe prospects or low/mid-round draft picks. Draft picks in general are never a sure thing and the probability of one turning into an NHL player gets lower as you get into the later rounds, which is why I did not want to see the Hurricanes give away players for that price. Unfortunately, the Canes ended up doing that by sending Jussi Jokinen to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a conditional 6th/7th round pick. 

Jokinen is currently on pace to have his worst season in the NHL in terms of goals and points but I still believe that he had trade value for other teams, all of which went down the toilet when Rutherford elected to place Jokinen on waivers last week. He ended up clearing without any team putting in a claim. Now Jokinen had absolutely no value and Rutherford would pretty much have to accept any return he could get. Supposedly the reason why no team ended up claiming Jokinen was because he still had a year left on his contract, which will pay him $3 mil. next season. Sure, that looks bad when you see that he has only 11 points in 33 games, but there was a time when Jokinen was worth that kind of money and it was only a year ago.

Stats courtesy of Behind the Net

Jokinen's goal-scoring pace in 2009-10 was clearly an aberration, but he has produced at a pretty solid rate for most of his career with his numbers taking a complete tailspin this year. Carolina's head coach, Kirk Muller tried just about everything to get Jussi going this year. He started the year centering the third line and that didn't work out, which promted Muller to move him back over to right wing on Riley Nash & Jordan Staal's line respectively. Jokinen ended up not producing much, which has made everyone believe that he is washed up, worthless and "not a fit" for Muller's system, but I think he was just having a bad year more than anything else.

While Jokinen's scoring was down, he was shooting the puck a lot more and doing a solid job at driving the play forward despite having weaker linemates for most of the season. Puck luck is something that a lot of hockey fans don't accept, but Jokinen clearly did not have any of it this season. He was shooting at only 9.8%, nearly 3% lower than his career average and the Hurricanes, as a team, were shooting at less than 5% at even strength with him on the ice. His scoring numbers will probably decline as his career goes on, but he is nowhere near as bad as his boxcar numbers suggest right now. 

That being said, it was going to be tough to find a suitor for Jokinen because of his contract and low-boxcar stats, which meant that the Canes would have to sell-low regardless. What I don't understand is why the Hurriacnes were so eager to rid themselves of Jokinen a week ago when they placed him on waivers. Players like Blake Comeau and Ryan Clowe (who had a combined total of 4 goals) were traded today for bigger returns, so would it have hurt Carolina to hang onto Jokinen for another week instead of offering him for free on the waiver wire?

By doing that, Rutherford basically sent a message to the entire NHL saying that he doesn't want this player on his team's roster and would accept any turn to get rid of him. No team is going to give up anything more than a conditional pick for a player who was available for free only a week ago, thus giving Rutherford zero leverage in a future deal. Penguins GM took full advantage of this situation by acquiring Jokinen for a conditional 6th/7th round pick AND making the Hurricanes pay the rest of Jokinen's salary next season. In orther words, they essentially got a top-nine player for almost nothing. 

Even if the Hurricanes were going to sell and tank the rest of the season, you want to manage your assets well as a GM, which I do not think Rutherford did with Jokinen by waiving him. Even if the Hurricanes wanted to free up space for Tuomo Ruutu, they had enough room on the roster to keep Jokinen on the team for the rest of the year and could have traded him in the summer while eating some of his salary. The return certainly couldn't have been any lower than what they actually got for him today.

I'm not sure if Jokinen will be a fit in Pittsburgh and see more bounces go his way, but I wish him the best. He was a class act during his time in Carolina and will be missed.

The Hurricanes trade for a "veteran defenseman" finally happened, only the player they acquired was someone nobody expected. Instead of getting a "gritty veteran defenseman" like many thought, Rutherford added some help to the powerplay by acquiring Marc-Andre Bergeron from the Tampa Bay Lightning. All the Canes gave up to acquire him was a 7th round pick and waiver acquisition Adam Hall (who was subsequently waived again after the trade), so this is a low-risk move for the Hurricanes, but it's also a very strange one at that.

Assuming no one else is traded, the Canes will have nine defensemen on the roster once Justin Faulk and Bobby Sanguinetti are healthy and Kirk Muller is going to have to do his best to shuffle players in and out of the lineup. Even if the Hurricanes trade one of their defensemen within the next 24 hours, that leaves eight on the roster and I'm having a very hard time figuring out how Bergeron fits into the lineup. There is no doubt that he can provide help to a powerplay that's currently ranked dead last in the NHL, but his usage at even strength has been pretty suspect over the years.

For those who know nothing about Bergeron's history, here's a quick bio. He is a very skilled powerplay quarterback and puck-mover. He has a very hard, accurate slapshot that makes him dangerous on the powerplay and he can also lead defensive zone breakouts very efficiently. He's basically your prototypical offensive defenseman,  something the Hurricanes have too many of as it is but Bergeron is a bit of a special case. While he has improved the powerplay of just about every team he has been on, he has yet to stay with any team for more than three years because he is a defensive liability at even strength. His underlying numbers speak for themselves here.

Bergeron plays third-pairing minutes and usually starts the majority of his shifts in the offensive zone. Guy Boucher protected the hell out of him when he was with the Lightning the last three seasons, starting him in the offensive zone over 70% (!) of the time. I wish I knew how the Hurricanes planned to fit Bergeron in their lineup but I honestly don't see how it can work right now with Faulk still injured. The entire point of making a trade for a defenseman was to get someone to take pressure off McBain & Pitkanen and it seems like Bergeron will do the opposite of that since he needs to be sheltered to be effective.

With that being said, Bergeron is very, very good at what he does. He has been a negative possession player in only one of the last six seasons and has produced at a pretty impressive rate at even strength on top of that. The nice thing about a player like Bergeron is that while he might be a defensive liability, he is good enough at keeping the play in front of him that he's only defending 20-30% of the time he's out there. Bergeron actually thrived quite a bit under Boucher in his first two years with Tampa Bay. He's been a healthy scratch for most of this year, though.

The main thing to take away about Bergeron is that he can do a lot of good things for you in the offensive zone and he's even better on the powerplay.

Bergeron has produced terrific results on the powerplay for every team he has been on and I think this is where he will help the Canes the most. I mentioned earlier that their powerplay is ranked last in the NHL, but they are in the top-half in producing shots, The problem is that none of them are going in.. Only the Buffalo Sabres have a worse shooting percentage during 5v4 play and I'm not sure if Bergeron can help that. His big shot from the point and puck-handling skills will definitely create more chances, but not many are going to care if the goals don't come. The encouraging news here is that Bergeron has been able to give his teams results on the powerplay in the past, so hopefully that continues.

We know that Bergeron can help the Canes produce more offense and possibly help on the powerplay, it's just that  finding a spot for him in the lineup is going to be tough. Can Muller protect Bergeron as much as Boucher did? He's been giving extra offensive zone starts to any defenseman not named Justin Faulk or Tim Gleason, so I guess it shouldn't be too hard to shelter him, but I still don't see how he fits in unless another defenseman is traded. The Hurricanes had an abundance of puck-moving defenseman heading into this season and just added another, so it's going to put a lot more pressure on their heavy-lifters (Gleason, Faulk, Pitkanen) to do a lot more. We could possibly see the Canes use seven defensemen with Bergeron taking Westgarth's spot and being used in strictly offensive situations.

In short, this is a low-risk move for the Canes and while Bergeron does fill a need, I'm not sure just how good of a fit he will be. He only makes Carolina only a marginally better team if he plays to his full potential, but that's usually what a 7th round pick will get you.

Stats courtesy of Behind the Net.

The Hurricanes were able to end a seven-game winless skid in Saturday's game against Winnipeg and that win had a ton of significance in the Hurricanes playoff aspirations. They got a road win (in regulation) against a divisional opponent, gained some ground on the Jets and were able to keep pace with the rest of the bubble teams in the Eastern Conference. The Hurricanes probably had no business staying in the race after losing seven games in a row, but they are still right in the thick of things and can still make the post-season and possibly win the division if they have a good run to close the season. It's bad that they let themselves get into this position after leading the Southeast for a fairly long time, but the fact that they are still in the race is still good.

Actually going on that run is going to be the difficult part because, you know, this is a team that went two weeks without winning a single game and only amassed one point in the standings during that time. Thankfully for the Canes, the Devils, Rangers, Flyers, Capitals and Islanders are all in a similar position right now and it's going to be a really tight race for the last two/three playoff spots. The Jets are also at a bit of a disadvantage due to games in hand, so their lead in the Southeast is far from safe. It may even take less than the 55 points I had set as the cutoff point earlier in the season since a lot of these teams are going to need to earn points in 70-80% of their games to reach that.

What will the Hurricanes need to do to make it in over these teams is the question. We'll explore that after the jump and look at their odds of winning the Southeast, as well.

Anyone who has been following the Hurricanes this season knows that Kirk Muller's forward line combinations are prone to change on almost a daily basis. Injuries have caused him to try a lot of different things with his lineup and we've seen just about every combination possible in only 33 games. It reached a new high during the recent losing streak when Muller changed the lines a couple times per game and even tweaked the team's first line of Eric Staal, Jiri Tlusty and Alexander Semin, which has been the only unit to remain untouched for most of the season. The line juggling is likely going to continue over the next few games since the Hurricanes have a few players whose injury status is currently unknown, namely Tuomo Ruutu and Chad LaRose.

For most of the year, Muller has kept his first line the same with Tlusty, E. Staal and Semin being utilized in a power-vs.-power type of role while his second line has been primarily focused around Jordan Staal & Jeff Skinner handling the tough minutes. This strategy has changed a bit as of late, though as Muller has moved Skinner to the third line with Riley Nash & Jussi Jokinen for two of their last three road games. My suspicions is that this is to free Skinner up to to some easier matchups on the road since the opposing team won't be able to load up their best shutdown players against Carolina's top-two lines. He also seems to trust Nash enough to assume that he can keep up with Skinner and do enough to drive the bus on this line.

Muller has done some pretty interesting things this year in regards to how he runs his forward lines and the decision to move Skinner to the third line for road games is an especially curious one. On one hand, Skinner has been the team's best territorial forward this season and could do some significant damage against a weak matchup. However, Skinner has also managed to post great underlying numbers while playing tough minutes, so is there any need to protect him and place him with weaker linemates on top of that? This move could be only temporary, but it's still worth discussing since it's a pretty important time of the season right now. 

Then there are the defense pairing, which have also been changed up a lot thanks to injuries but they've remained the same as of late. The team is in a bit of a bind right now with Justin Faulk and Bobby Sanguinetti out of the lineup and Muller has kept things relatively the same for the past week. Not having Faulk available obviously limits what Muller can do but it's a little interesting that he has been changing the forwards up constantly while leaving the defense the same after how bad some of them have played lately, especially Joni Pitkanen and Jamie McBain.

Things will probably improve there once Faulk or Sanguinetti returns but until then, Muller has to do what he can to make the most out of the hand that's been dealt to him and that includes finding suitable lines & defense pairings that can fit his system. For the most part, the Canes have been a good puck-possession team at even strength this year and they have enough healthy players to be one right now even though they've struggled in this department lately.

After the jump, we will look at some stats from Hockey Analysis' With or Without You tool to see which Hurricanes lines and defense pairings have been the best in terms of controlling possession this year and what Muller can possibly do now to dress the best lineup possible.

The last couple of weeks have been just brutal to watch from a fan's standpoint and I'm sure that the Hurricanes have been even more frustrated. The team's losing streak has now extended to seven games, they've compiled only one point in the standings over the last 16 days and everyone's confidence is at currently at an all-time low. It's tough to get a team motivated when they haven't tasted victory in weeks, but something that might spark the Hurricanes is the fact that they are not eliminated from playoff contention. Normally, a prolonged losing streak would knock out most teams in a shortened year, but the rest of the bubble teams in the Eastern Conference (namely the Devils and Rangers) have also fallen on hard times recently and the Hurricanes can get themselves back in the mix by winning the majority of their remaining games.

Of course, this is much easier said than done because this team has been horrible for the last two weeks and it's gotten to the point where some fans, myself included, wonder if they will even win one more game this season. That was mainly just frustration talking on my part, but I think most would agree that the Hurricanes need to pull a complete 180 if they even want to think about making the playoffs. We've said the same things for the last 16 games and yet, the result is always the same and the team seems to find a more painful way to lose every night. Thus, there will be no more mentions about things like "playoff chances," "must-win games" and "games in hand" until the Hurricanes finally break the losing streak because it's all pointless until then.

The level of how much this team has struggled recently is kind of a mystery because for the majority of the season, the Hurricanes have been a good team. Even after this rough stretch, the Canes are still a top-ten team in Fenwick Close, meaning that they have been controlling the majority of even strength shot attempts when the score is close. That alone is surprising to me because if you take a look at my scoring chance recaps, Carolina has been on the losing end of that battle in most of their recent games. Part of the reason for it is that they've been failing to hit the net and not getting to the scoring areas. Those are definitely parts of the problem but I feel like there's more to this.

My reason for this suspicion is because the team has looked just plain bad in most of their games. Their underlying numbers suggest that we should believe that this streak should end and that it's only a minor bump in the road, but this isn't just a spell of bad luck. There's losing by getting a few unlucky bounces, and then there's losing by three or more goals on a nightly basis and getting outshot heavily while playing from behind. This is what has been happening to the Canes for most of this losing streak. 

The Hurricanes biggest weakness all season long has been their inability to play for a full-sixty minutes and that's never been more obvious than right now. They've had segments where they've played well over the last two weeks but for the most part, they've been playing some of their worst hockey in awhile and letting their opponents dictate the flow of the game. What exactly is the problem with this team, though? Is it the injuries that are keeping them down, or is the coaching staff "not doing enough" to get the most out of this squad? We'll explore all of these issues after the jump.

After losing six games in a row, what looked like a promising season for the Hurricanes is slowly falling apart at the seams. For a good part of the season, this team looked good enough to make the playoffs but a myriad of injuries happened followed by a brutal losing streak and now they are hanging onto dear life just to stay in the race. If the Hurricanes were to miss the playoffs, it will be the sixth time in the last eight years that they've been on the outside looking in and that's pretty troubling. I don't think this team had cup aspirations for this season because they do have a few missing pieces, but the end result of missing the playoffs for the sixth time in eight years still looks pretty bad.

How bad is it to miss the post-season this year, though? It's been kind of a strange season with a shortened schedule, so injuries and bounces/puck luck are going to have a bigger impact than usual. The Hurricanes have been on the wrong end of that scale more times than not this year and it's clearly at a low point right now with Justin Faulk on the shelf and the team being unable to buy a goal for whatever reason. In a full 82-game season, there is a chance that things like this even out but with only 48 games (and 17 remaining) this year, puck luck and a good streak can be the difference in a team making or missing the playoffs. Just ask the Anaheim Ducks.

This is why I feel that this season shouldn't be judged on results, even if failing to make the playoffs is a failure. Jim Rutherford made some big acquisitions this summer with Alexander Semin & Jordan Staal and while I think most fans are satisfied with what they've done, they are still going to be criticized because they couldn't bring the Hurricanes to the playoffs even in the lowly Southeast Division. Then again, we will only see 48 games from them by the end of the year, so is it really fair to close the book on these players based on that? Rebuilding this team was going to be a long-term process, so 48 games is very small in the big picture.

With that being said, a good question to ask is how far away this team is from being competitive? How much progress have they made so far this season and what else do they need to do to improve? The door is still open for them to make the playoffs this year, but it's going to take a long winning streak and I'm not sure if the odds are in the Hurricanes favor right now. Anyone who has watched the last six games will tell you that the team needs to be blown up, but the big picture suggests otherwise. Watching this team for the last two weeks has been borderline infuriating but at the same time you have to tell yourself that it's only six games and that doesn't undo an entire season.

I figure that this as good of time as any to review the Hurricanes season, see where they stand now and what they can do to make themselves better. Is there any hope left for this season and if not, what needs to be done to put them over the edge? I'll explore all issues after the jump.

It's been a pretty tough week for the Hurricanes. They lost all three of their games, one of them coming to the bottom-feeding Florida Panthers, gained only one point in the standings and now sit four points behind the Winnipeg Jets in the Southeast Division. To make matters even worse, the Washington Capitals have undergone a bit of a resurgence winning all four of their games and are now only two points behind Carolina for the second place spot. The breathing room that Carolina once had at the top of the division is now all but gone and things are going to be ultra tight from here on out. One advantage the Canes have right now is that they still have three games in hand over Winnipeg and Washington but those will not mean much if they don't take advantage of them.

A month ago, the Canes were in the driver's seat in the Southeast and all they needed to do was not completely bottom-out for them to remain in that spot. Since then, they've won only four of their last ten games, are currently stuck in a five-game losing streak and have injuries at key positions. My hopes for the Canes playoff chances are still cautiously optimistic because of what the bottom of the Eastern Conference looks like, but the margin for error right now is very, very slim.

Southeast Division Standings

55 Points

GR = Games Remaining, Pts = Points, Avail. = Points available, Needed = Points needed to 55, Point% = Percentage of games they need to earn points to get to 55, Div. = Divisional games remaining 

52 Points

I added another scenario this week since it looks like 55 points will be what clinches a playoff spot in the East while 52 points will give a team a good enough chance. Either way, Carolina and Winnipeg need earn points in the same percentage of their remaining games and the Hurricanes have a slight advantage thanks to three games in hand. Again, they are going to need to take full advantage of those three extra games for them to mean anything, especially their two upcoming matches against the Jets. The Canes are going to need to win at least 10-11 of their remaining games if they want to be in the playoffs, which is doable but they can not afford to go winless in another week.

Washington's recent run might make things exciting towards the end, but they will need to sustain this hot streak if they want to make it to the playoffs. That's tough to do no matter who you are, but the returns of Brooks Laich and MIke Green could help give them a boost at the right time. Tampa Bay appears to be all but eliminated barring a miracle run and Florida is pretty much done, as well. 

The room for error is low for the Hurricanes right now, but the numbers are slightly in their favor over Winnipeg.

The difference between Carolina and Winnipeg's underlying numbers are slim. Carolina is slightly a better team at even strength but you have to ask yourself how much of a difference that will make with only 18 games remaining. The better team doesn't always come out on top in a small sample size and that's especially true if they aren't getting any bounces in their favor. The Canes have actually been receiving better puck-luck than the Jets since they have high on-ice shooting and save percentages at even strength for the entire season. It's been the other way around lately and it's also possible that Carolina's even strength play and goaltending can decline due to the injuries to Justin Faulk and Dan Ellis respectively. The Canes still have three games remaining against Winnipeg and they need to win those to get back in the driver's seat in the Southeast. I'm not convinced that Winnipeg is a better team than Carolina (one hot streak does equate to a full season) but they are in a good position now and could end up winning the division if they beat them in their three remaining head-to-head matchups.

I have been tracking scoring chances for the Hurricanes for almost two years now and the way I usually present them in on here is in the form of plus/minus, showing how many chances the team is recording and giving up while a certain player is on the ice. The reason why I do this is to show how good or bad a player is at territorial play when it concerns creating and preventing scoring chances. There is obviously more to creating scoring chances than just the player who is taking the shot, which is why I look at on-ice differentials to see everyone who was involved in the play instead of who finished it.

However, it's possible that there could be some value into looking at who is creating the most scoring chances for each time. I've mentioned a few times recently that the Hurricanes scoring chance numbers are somewhat different from their shot differential stats. Going by just their Fenwick or Corsi numbers (shot attempt differentials), the Hurricanes look like a very good possession team, but they are barely breaking even in scoring chances (50.5% during even strength play). So while the Hurricanes are possessing the puck in the offensive zone and getting a lot of shots off, not enough of them have been scoring chances. It's been shown that Fenwick (5v5 shots on goal & missed shot differential) has a strong correlation with scoring chances, so it's possible that the Hurricanes scoring chance differential will improve as long as they continue to drive possession. We haven't been seeing it lately, but the numbers remain on the Hurricanes side as of right now. 

The whole issue of "shot quality" has been beaten to death by the hockey statistics community because it's something that has yet to be proven by anyone, but it appears to be an issue with the Hurricanes right now. No one has ever denied that some players have the ability to get into scoring areas better than others, but their ability to repeat it over a long period of time hasn't been proven. With that in mind, we're going to take a look at which players have been creating the most scoring chances for the Hurricanes this season, where their shots are coming from and if there is a relation between this and Carolina's recent offensive struggles.