Change is something that a lot of sports fans are always uncomfortable with at first because no one really knows what will happen after the said change occurs. This is why the reactions to the Jordan Staal trade involving Brandon Sutter & Brian Dumoulin were very mixed among Carolina fans when it happened. Obviously getting J. Staal is a huge boost to Carolina's forward corps, but many Hurricanes fans were not sure of what kind of player he would be and whether or not he fit the team's system. He could end up being a perfect fit, develop chemistry with his linemates and be as good as advertised or he could not work out at all. He has still yet to play one game with the Hurricanes so we don't know how good he will be.

With Brandon Sutter, on the other hand, most Carolina fans knew what we had in him, which was a solid checking line center with decent two-way upside. He was a perfect fit for the team's third line and most fans were comfortable with him centering that unit. Now that he is in Pittsburgh, no one is really sure of who will center the third line now and take over Sutter's role. Not many are sure where J. Staal fits on the team now either and thus, there are a lot of unanswered questions with the Hurricanes this year. While some may be excited about the new-look Hurricanes, there just as many who are skeptical because there is a lot that is up in the air right now. 

The immediate future may look a bit dubious right now in terms of what the team's forward corps will look like, but one thing to remember about this trade is that Jordan Staal is a better overall player than Sutter. We may not know where Staal is going to play, but he makes this team's top-six stronger than it was over the last couple of years and that should immediately have fans excited. The Hurricanes can always find another checking center but they won't find another player like Jordan Staal for awhile, which is why the trade was made. There are still questions regarding who will take over the third line center role and even more uncertainty concerning who will take over Sutter's defensive responsibility but still, replacing him shouldn't be too hard if you look in the past and see who the Hurricanes used in these roles during prior seasons.

Sutter had only been with the team for four seasons and he spent three of them as the team's "shutdown center," so the team has been able to get by without him before. Looking into the past often provides answers for the future, so what we're going to do after the jump is look at Carolina's tough-minute forwards over the last five seasons, see how effective they were and discuss whether or not they can use a similar strategy this year.

Even with the Hurricanes currently locked out, there is a lot of excitement in the air for hockey in the Carolinas right now and most of it surrounding the club's AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers. Heading into this weekend, Charlotte was riding high with a 6-2-0-1 record before even playing a game at home and were getting some absurd production from a few players who many thought would have a shot at making the NHL this year. No club in the AHL had scored more goals than the Charlotte Checkres and only the Abbotsford Heat had a higher goal differential than them. Charlotte was pictured to have a strong team this year, but not many thought they would be this good so early in the year.

In my recap last week, I mentioned that while the Checkers appear to be legimiately a good team, they are getting very lucky in a few areas, namely shooting percentage and powerplay production. The Checkers have a couple players with absurdly high shooting percentage, the most notable player being Drayson Bowman, who was seeing over 30% of his shots turn into goals at one point this year, and those weren't a safe bet to continue in the long run. Just like the Checkers powerplay couldn't continue to click at over a 35% success rate over the course of a whole season. I'm pretty sure that everyone knows this, though and when those percentages eventually do come back down to earth, we will see what this Checkers team is fully made of. Any team can ride off high percentages, but depth and strong even strength production is what ultimately prospers in the long-run.

The Checkers don't have much of a problem as far as depth is concerned, but can they still win games if their powerplay goes through a dry spell? We will find out soon enough, and we got a brief taste of it over the last week when the Checkers endured what was, arguably, their toughest three-game stretch of the year. They ended up dropping two of three games and saw their powerplay go 1/11 over three games. This is only three games and the Checkers still scored nine goals, so there offense didn't completely fizzle out and there isn't much to be pessimistic about but it's always disappointing to end the week on a losing note.

After the jump, we'll go into the details of the week that was for the Checkers. 

When analyzing the performance of a group of players, there are usually at least one or two guys who have a big performance in a given week, which has been the case so far in the Hurricanes NCAA prospect pool. It’s been a nice start to a young NCAA hockey year, but it’s important to remember that there are going to be weeks where these players don’t do much of anything that is noteworthy. Some may think this is a discouraging sign but  keep in mind that most NCAA teams play, at most, two games per week and since we are only looking at five players, there are going to be times where they don’t make much of an impact. That’s just how things work in small sample sizes, and it was the case for all of the Hurricanes NCAA prospects this weekend.

There may not be much to talk about regarding the players themselves, but there is still plenty of news relating to their respective teams and their games this weekend. Unfortunately, it is of both the good and bad variety. After the jump, we’ll look at what went wrong and what went right for the NCAA schools currently housing Carolina prospects.

It was a good week for the Carolina Hurricanes 2012 draft class as their three picks playing in the OHL this season had a very solid set of games. Leading the way was defenseman Trevor Carrick with three points in two games as Carolina's 115th overall pick this year continues to improve on his rookie season in the OHL. Carick has been trusted with playing some important minutes on the Mississauga Steelheads this year and he has responded to the challenge well at both ends of the rink by being solid defensively and on-pace for his best offensive season in junior hockey. Carrick's three points over the weekend gives him 9 on the season, which is half of what he had last year with Mississauga and the previous year in the OHJL.

Coming out of the draft, Carrick was billed as a very safe pick for the Hurricanes in the fourth round and he seems to be developing nicely with the Steelheads this year. I still don't think we have a future star here, but I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that Carrick might be a player that get some NHL action in the not-so-distant future. I really like his game and think Carrick can turn into a useful NHL-er somewhere down the line, even if he has a ways to go before we can talk about this kind of thing. It's probably too early to proclaim anything because he is only 18 and in his second year of junior hockey and we'll probably find out more about Carrick as the year goes on, but it's worth noting that he has been good so far.

After the jump, we will talk more about Carrick's weekend and how the rest of Carolina's CHL prospect pool performed.

The Charlotte Checkers kick off their first home series of the year today when they take on the Chicago Wolves in the first of a two-game set. The Wolves (6-0-1-0)are currently ranked first in the Midwest Division with 13 points and are tied for 2nd in the Western Conference. While these two teams have similar records, the Checkers have a much larger goal differential with a +13 compared to the +2 the Wolves have right now. The Checkers goal differential is inflated thanks to their weekend sweep against the Peoria Rivermen a week ago when they outscored them 10-0. Charlotte has made a habit out of getting into a lot of high scoring games this year, so they have a few blowouts on their record right now that definitely help out their goal-differential. Regardless, the Wolves are going to be their toughest test of the season thus far.

Wolves Stats from the AHL's web site

Carolina fans may notice a familiar face on the Wolves roster in Derek Joslin but the Wolves sport a few other names you may recognize. The most notable one is Zack Kassian, who was formerly a first round pick of the Buffalo Sabres before being sent to the Vancouver Canucks in a trade involving Cody Hodgson last year. Kassian is off to a pretty good start for the Wolves with 7 points in 9 games, which is pretty good for a 21-year-old with essentially only one year of professional hockey experience under his belt. He is also scoring on over 20% of the shots he has taken so far, so luck has played a slight role in his year so far.

A few other former/future NHL-ers on the Wolves roster are Andrew Gordon, Chris Tanev, Andrew Ebbett and Brett Sterling. All of these players are fringe guys for the most part, aside from Tanev who has spent a decent amount of time with the Vancouver Canucks over the last couple of seasons. The Wolves don't appear to have anyone that is performing at a superb rate offensively like the Checkers do right now, but that hasn't been much of a problem for them as they have won six of their nine games this year. The Wolves also appear to have their scoring more balanced throughout the lineup, whereas Drayson Bowman and Zach Boychuk have accounted for over 36% of the Checkers goals. 

Other players worth keeping an eye on in Chicago's lineup are defenseman Kevin Cannauton, who has the highest shot rate on the team with 2.89 shots per game. He was Vancouver's third round pick in 2009 and while he hasn't produced many points, he has definitely been giving the Wolves a decent amount of offense with the number of shots he has created. Bill Sweatt, Nathan Longpre and Andrew Gordon are also players who are creating a decent amount of shots and are worth taking note of if you're a Checkers fan. However, it's worth mentioning that the 2.89 shots per game Cannauton is producing is the same rate Drayson Bowman has this year, and he is ranked only third on the Checkers.

As for the goaltending matchup, Eddie Lack has gotten most of the starts for the Wolves this season and he has a save percentage of .910. It's likely that we are going to see him in both games since there is a two-day break in the series but it's possible that former Bemidji State Beaver Matt Climie could get the start in one of these games, as well. The Checkers, meanwhile, usually rotate starting goalies but we could see Dan Ellis play on a more regular basis soon as he has outperformed Justin Peters this year.

The Checkers have scored more than the Wolves this year and have created more shots per game (32.2 vs. 27.4), so this looks like a series the Checkers should be favored in, but the Wolves have found ways to win this year despite not putting up flashy numbers. Like I said earlier, this is going to be the Checkers toughest test of the young season and it wouldn't surprise me if both games are very close.

Another Hurricanes player will be taking his talents to Europe as it was announced yesterday that defenseman Jamie McBain has signed with the Lahti Pelicans of Finland's SM-Liiga. McBain will not be in Finland for too long, though as he said that he only plays to stay there about a week to play in a few games in order to stay fresh for the upcoming season, whenever that happens. It seems that McBain is a bit more optimistic that the NHL season will begin relatively soon since he isn't planning to stay in Finland for an extended period of time, but that's probably more of a gut feeling than anything.

The Lahti Pelicans (or just Pelicans as they are referred to) are currently the third lowest ranked team in the SM-Liiga with a record of 7-9-0, and do not appear to have much NHL talent playing on their squad right now. The only regular NHL-er on their roster right now is San Jose Sharks goaltender Antti Niemi and the rest of their roster either consists of guys who were mostly known as fringe NHL-ers for the most part. Among them are Angelo Esposito, who was one of the players the Penguins sent to the Trashers in the Marian Hossa trade, Ilkka Pikkarainen, former New Jersey Devil and Carolina's second round pick from 2003, Danny Richmond.

The Pelicans appear to have some offensive problems right now because aside from their leading scorer, Radek Smolenak (10-8-10 in 19 GP), they don't have too many players that are producing at a high level. With SM-Liiga being stronger than usual this year, not having a lot of offense will lead to problems down the road and this appears to be the case for the Pelicans. We know that McBain can provide a decent amount of offense from the blue-line, so here's hoping that he can help out while he is there. Even if he isn't there for a long time, he should play significant minutes there given what the rest of their blue-line looks like.

McBain's stint with the Pelicans probably won't be long and it will mainly just serve as a way for him to stay in playing shape until the lockout is over, but keeping in touch with what Carolina players are up to during this down time is never a bad thing. We'll have more updates on McBain and the progress of his stint in Finland relatively soon.

Since most leagues have at least a month of regular season play done by now, I thought a good idea would be to look at how some of the Hurricanes players and prospects are performing in their respective leagues thus far. I've been posting weekly updates on the team's NCAA and junior prospects but some of the team's roster players such as Jiri Tlusty, Jussi Jokinen and Alexander Semin are playing hockey in professional leagues overseas and their performance is certainly worth tracking, as well. Since these players are all in different leagues for the most part, what I'm going to do is compare their performance using Gabe Desjardins' NHL equivalency translations to show what their performance would equate to if they were all playing in the NHL.

If you need a refresher, a translation factor is a number that shows the "difficulty" of each league in terms of how much easier or difficult it is to score at a certain level. Every player is expected to maintain a certain part of their scoring when they jump from one league to another, which is what the translation factor takes into account. For instance, a player jumping from the AHL would be expected to keep about 44% of their scoring if they played the entire year in the NHL instead. It may sound like a crude and simple method, but it really does a good job of showing the difficulty level of each league. This tool is even more helpful now because there are so many NHL-ers playing in different leagues during the lockout.

This is neccessary because league has a certain degree of difficulty and not all scoring lines are create equal across different leagues. It might be easy to get excited about a player from your favorite team dominating in a league overseas, but it may not be that impressive when you consider the talent level and difficulty of that league. Being a point-per-game player in the KHL is much more impressive than having the same scoring rate in the less-talented Swiss National League, for example. Therefore, it's important to take into account the difficulty of the league a certain player is in and how he would be performing if everyone was on the same playing field. Things could be a little different this season since the lockout has caused a massive talent increase in just about every league, but the talent level difference between each league is mostly the same when you look at which players are in each league. The KHL is still the best hockey league outside North America, followed by the Swedish Elite League, Czech Elite League and so on and so forth.

Without further ado, let's take a look at the performance of the Hurricanes players so far.

Over the last month or so, I have been posting my goal and point total projections for the Carolina Hurricanes players in the upcoming season and while these numbers may not mean much now with the lockout cutting into the year, I still believe that we will have a shortened NHL season and there is never any harm in making predictions. If you haven't been following the series, here is a refresher on how I have been making my projections;

A player's shot rate, shooting percentage and ice-time will have a direct impact on the number of goals he scores, while his teammate's shooting percentage, the number of shots they produce along with his ice-time will affect how many assists he has. Knowing that, I looked at each player's shot rate, shooting percentage, ice-time at even strength & special teams along with his teammate's shot rates and shooting percentage when "x player" was on the ice. I also looked at how many assists a player records at even strength & special teams relative to how many goals he was on-ice for at even strength & special teams to get an idea of how active offensively he typically is. I repeated this process for every player on the Hurricanes* and examined their numbers over the last five years to see if there were any patterns that I could point out concerning their shot rate, shooting percentage or anything else.

This process help me get an idea of what to expect from each player in a given year and make my projections as realistic as possible. There were some areas where I had to make an educated guess (the toughest was figuring out how many shots a player would be on-ice for and how well his teammates would shoot), but you have to do that in some areas since shooting percentage is unpredictable in general. Like I said earlier, the 82-game projections probably do not mean much at the moment, but you can always break it down by scoring rate to get a better idea of what to expect in a shortened season.

After the jump, I will give an overview of my projections along with an explanation for some of my predictions.

*Projections were not made for fringe layers such as Zac Dalpe, Zach Boychuk, Drayson Bowman, etc. due to lack of NHL experience.

How good were the Checkers this weekend? Let's see, they won all three of their games (on the road nonetheless), outscored their opponents 16-4, outshot them 101-70, went 8/16 on the powerplay and were perfect on the penalty kill. I should also mention that all but five players who suited up for the Checkers this weekend recorded at least one point and have four players who are scoring more than a point-per-game. Now if that isn't an impressive performance then I don't know what is and the funniest thing about this is that no one would have predicted this after watching the first half of their Friday night game against Grand Rapids.

The Checkers got into quite a hole early in that game, falling behind 4-1 in the second period and it looked like things were going to get ugly and they did...for Grand Rapids. The Griffins took five consecutive penalties and the Checkers eventually made them pay with powerplay goals from Jerome Samson, Justin Faulk and Zach Boychuk. The Checkers just seemed to build off that as Chris Terry would tack on a shorthanded goal in the third period to give Charlotte the lead and an empty netter to ice it.

This onslaught would continue the next two nights against the Peoria Rivermen as they shut them out 4-0 and 6-0 respectively and pretty much dominated the Rivermen in all phases of the game. The first game was very notable as Jeremy Welsh scored two goals that game, the first two of his professional career, and he definitely got a little bit lucky on the second one as the puck took a couple of odd bounces before getting into the net. This was a recurring theme for the Checkers this entire weekend as just about everything seemed to go there way in all three games. When you're converting on 50% of your powerplay opportunities then you know that the dice are rolling in your favor just a little bit.

I usually don't pay much attention to shooting percentages in an eight game sample size because randomness is usually at an all-time high, but I just can't help but point out the conversion rates for some of the Charlotte players. For instance, let's take a look at the hottest Charlotte forward right now, Drayson Bowman, who scored three goals this weekend (one in each game) and is now tied for the AHL lead in goals with seven. His shooting percentage right now is 31.7%. There is no way we can expect him to sustain that for the entire year because very few players possess that much shooting talent and I'm going to guess that Bowman isn't one of them. While there is no doubt he has played well, he has definitely got a bit lucky this year too. His first goal in the Peoria goal where he scored on a long-shot from the boards is a good example of that. This is pretty ironic when you consider that Bowman had little to no shooting luck in the NHL last year.

Chris Terry, Brett Sutter and Zach Boychuk are other players who have very high shooting percentages for the Checkers this year (Sutter's spiked to 27.8% thanks to his hatty on Sunday night) and while I doubt any of the will continue to shoot this will, it's hard to not love the way they have played to start the year, especially Boychuk. Next to Bowaman, Boychuk has been the Checkers most impressive forward and I would argue that he has been a little more impressive than Bowman when you look at how much offense he is generating.

Boychuk has generated at least 3.5 shots per game this year and had 12 shots on goal in last weekend alone. His shooting percentage is subject to decline, but I have a feeling that he will still manage to be a very effective offensive player even when that crashes back down to earth. I'm also noticing him playing much stronger in all three zones than he did last season. He's done a great job at forcing turnovers and being the one guy on his line that is keeping the wheels going. I considered him an outside shot at most to make the NHL out of camp this year, but he has been nothing but impressive so far this year.

Something else I want to point out is Jerome Samson and how he hasn't been receiving the good fortune that the majority of the Checkers forward corps has thus far. It was only this weekend when he scored his first non-empty net goal and he's seen less than 7% of his shots find the back of the net so far this year. The good news is that he has been the team's best forward at generating shots on goal and has been a key player in the Checkers offense even if the goals aren't coming to him, which they will eventually if he continues to shoot at this rate.

Other Notes

• Marc-Andre Gragnani had a four-point performance for the Checkers on Friday night, all four of which came on the powerplay
• Chris Terry has been suspended three games for elbowing a Grand Rapids player on Friday night. The suspension was effective starting Sunday. Tough loss for the Checkers but it opens up the possibility for Victor Rask to be in the lineup every night until then.
• Justin Faulk did not play in Sunday night's game. I'm not sure why other than to possibly give Justin Krueger some action. I'm not sure why Faulk was the one to sit since he has been terrific so far.
• While there is no denying how well the Checkers played this weekend, I think it's worth mentioning that Peoria has scored a total of 10 goals in 7 games this year. In other words, they haven't been playing good at all.
• Justin Peters gave up four goals on nine shots before being pulled in favor of Dan Ellis, who went on to stop all 15 shots he faced and earn a 27-save shutout the next night. I don't want to say that this is a goaltending controversy since the Checkers usually rotate goalies but Ellis appears to have the hot-hand as the starter for now.
• Michal Jordan, Rasmus Rissanen and Justin Krueger quietly picked up two assists each this weekend.
• The Checkers are second to only Rochester in the Western Conference in goals for and are tied for third with Hamilton and Milwaukee in goals allowed.

Charlotte has one more game on the road this week when they take on the Milwaukee Admirals on Halloween night, then they finally have their first home series on November 4th & 5th against the Chicago Wolves. The series against the Wolves should be a good test for the Checkers, as they currently lead the Midwest Division.

The NCAA men's hockey season is still only a couple weeks old but there were plenty of interesting match-ups going on over the weekend, the biggest of which regarding the Carolina Hurricanes being the #6 ranked Michigan Wolverines taking on the #3 ranked Miami Redhawks. The Wolverines had a convincing win over Bentley University last week, but this game was going to be much more of a test for them and the Hurricanes second round pick Phil Di Giuseppe. Aside from an opening-night loss against RIT, Michigan and PdG have been very impressive this year but this two-game series against the Redhawks was going to be one of their toughest tests of the season and I was a little curious about how they would respond to it.

The Wolverines definitely stepped up to the challenge on Friday night as they defeated Miami 4-2 in game 1 of the series. The win certainly wasn't pretty as Michigan looked very sloppy in their own zone and had some a few very ugly turnovers, two of which resulted in Miami goals. I don't know if this was Miami's forecheck overpowering them or if Michigan's defensive play is an issue this year but regardless, they managed to overcome it and get the win.

After falling down 1-0, Michigan got a powerplay late in the first period, and they took full advantage of it with captain AJ Treais scoring on a bomb from the point. Di Giuseppe picked up a primary assist on the goal as he made the initial set up pass to Treais. The play wasn't anything fancy but it definitely got the job done here. Treais would add another goal in the second period and Michigan would add on two more goals in the third to put the game away. Di Giuseppe's assist gives him five points in five games on the year.

There is no doubt that Di Giuseppe has been the most impressive player in the Canes' system among the college ranks but one player who may challenge him for that is Harvard's senior defenseman and team captain Danny Biega, who kicked off his season with a bang on Saturday night. Harvard made quick work of Bentley that night by defeating them 5-0 and Biega recorded two assists to boot, one of which coming on the powerplay. Biega is billed as more of a powerplay quarterback at the NHL level but he appears to be more of an all-around d-man on Harvard's blue-line, so I'm interested to see how he develops this year and what he can do in addition to putting up impressive boxcar stats. He is certainly off to a great start. They start ECAC play next week.

Moving onto teams who are currently in conference play, Brendan Woods and the Wisconsin Badgers picked their first win of the season against WCHA foe Minnesota-Duluth on Friday night. The unranked Badgers came into this game as pretty big underdogs as UMD is ranked #14 in the nation and has a pretty strong roster on top of that, but the Badgers managed to shut them out in their own barn. A lot of credit should go to defenseman Jake McCabe and goaltender Joel Rumpel as they were two of the biggest factors in the Badgers winning that game. As for Woods, he didn't make too much of an impact from the looks of things. He was held off the scoresheet and was 2/5 on faceoffs. He did have three shots on goal, though. Wisconsin would tie Minnesota-Duluth the next night 2-2.

In other inter-conference action, Collin Olson & the Ohio State Buckeyes took on the Bowling Green Falcons in a CCHA series this weekend. The Buckeyes would shutout the Falcons in the first game, but would lose in the shootout the next night when Olson got the start. Olson had a terrific performance in this game, stopping a career high 36 of 39 shots and definitely played well enough to win. Unfortunately, it's hard to win when your team gets outshot 24-39 like the Buckeyes did on Saturday night and Olson also let in two early goals before the Buckeyes went on to score three unanswered in the second period. It's hard to blame Olson too much for that, though since he was under fire for the first two periods and had to face 26 total shots in the first 40 minutes. Despite losing in the shootout, Olson took home second star honors.

Last but certainly not least, we have Mark Alt and the #2 ranked Minnesota Golden Gophers who defeated Canisus University 1-0 in an early Sunday afternoon matchup. Minnesota's Kyle Rau (Florida prospect) scored 12 seconds into the game and the Gophers pretty much took it from there. They outshot Canisus 42-20 and coasted their way to a 1-0 shutout. Alt had two shots on goal and also blocked a shot in this game, so it appeared to be an uneventful afternoon for him. The Gophers defense definitely did their job in limiting Canisus' chances, though as they couldn't produce much offense at all. Minnesota also had an exhibition match on Friday night against the USA U-18 Developmental Team which ended in a 1-1 tie. Alt sat the game out because of an injury.

Next week, we have a couple of in-state matchups as the Wolverines will take on Northern Michigan and the Gophers will play Minnesota State. Meanwhile, Harvard begins ECAC conference play against Brown and Yale, the Badgers return home for a series against Colorado College and Ohio State will take on the Nanooks of Alaska-Fairbanks.