It's a little past the quarter pole of the NHL season and you'll see some interesting things in the standings. The Florida Panthers are leading the Southeast, the Washington Capitals are out of the playoff race, the Ottawa Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs would make the playoffs if the season ended today and the Islanders are the worst team in the East. Okay, maybe that last one isn't too far-fetched but there's definitely a lot of things going on that many didn't predict at the beginning of the year. To get a better idea of how these team's are really performing, we're going to look at their Pythagorean Expectations to see where they are projected to finish at the end of the year. 

More details after the jump

Tonight's game is why you hear so many coaches say that they are more concerned with generating scoring chances instead of shots on net. The Hurricanes were outplayed for most of this game by the eye-test but outshot the Rangers 31-27 according to the game report. How many of those 31 shots were scoring chances, though? Nine. Yep, that's it. The Canes did have the upper hand in shots but most of them came from the outside and Martin Biron didn't need to do much to stop them. That or the official scorer at RBC Center was trigger-happy with the "home team shot on goal" button.

I wouldn't say that the Canes played awful last night but this definitely wasn't one of their better performances. They were able to score early but failed to do anything with their leads and either took silly penalties or tried to make Cam Ward do most of the work. Neither a good recipe for success when you're a team in a rut like Carolina is right now. It wasn't a complete meltdown like the last time we played the Rangers and the Canes had a couple bounces that didn't go their way, but I was expecting a better showing than this.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

New York Rangers (13-5-3) at Carolina Hurricanes (8-14-4)
RBC Center 7 p.m.
TV: FS-Carolina, MSG

If there's one thing that annoys me more than having to watch my team play poorly, it's the media coming up with bogus narratives to explain why "x team/player is struggling." Before Maurice was fired, the narrative circulating around the Hurricanes was that Eric Staal's horrible start to the year was because he feels bad about concussing his brother, Marc, last season when the Canes played the Rangers. I felt that incident was way overblown by Rangers fans and has nothing to do with Staal's horrible point total this season.

Staal's start to the year was brutal in every category but lately, he has picked it up even if his point total does not indicate that. He is the Hurricanes best forward in terms of possession and has recently broke .500 in terms of scoring chances so I believe that he will turn the corner and have a scoring outburst very soon. What's holding him back now is a horrible on-ice shooting percentage of 6.28% and his low +/- is due to Ward/Boucher stopping only 87.4% of the opposing team's shots when he's on the ice. I truly believe that Staal will be fine from here on out so let's put this silly narrative to rest and focus on hockey starting with tonight's rematch against the Rangers. 

Lines, analysis & more after the jump

Now that I've got the retrospect out of the way, we can go forward and look at the team's scoring chance numbers through two months of play. This will be a little different from what I did last month as I'm going to be looking at a few different things, one of which being adjusted scoring chance information. One of the biggest issues with scoring chances is that there hasn't been a way to adjust the data for zone starts like there is with corsi, and this is a way of doing it. The method was drawn up by New Your Ranger blogger George Ays who determined that one offensive zone start is equal to .45 in scoring chances. Using the formula drawn up by JLikens for corsi, we can apply this to scoring chances to get a better idea of how the Canes players are performing relative to their zone starts.

A team like Carolina is in huge need of context with this data because of how buried players like Bryan Allen, Brandon Sutter, Patrick Dwyer and Tim Gleason have been all season when it comes to where they start most of their shifts. There's a good chance that their raw numbers are going to look ugly no matter what so adding some context will help judge their performance more evenly. It also has the opposite effect where we can see if a sheltered player (*cough*Kaberle*cough*) is taking advantage of his cushy zone starts or doing nothing with them.

We'll cut into the details after the jump.

Another month is in the books and this was a very, very forgetable one for the Carolina Hurricanes as they only won four games all November. They went 4-10-1(five of those losses coming by two goals if we exclude empty netters.), played one of their worst games in years and Paul Maurice ended up losing his job over it. I said that a coaching change was inevitable but what was wrong with this team wasn't his fault and the team was actually playing better hockey this month than they did in October.

Say what now? The Hurricanes won only 4 of 12 games and actually played better? It's true. In October, the Hurricanes were a horrible team when it came to creating and preventing shots and were dominated territorially for the most part. They ended the month with a terrible Corsi rate of 48.5% at even strength with the score tied, one of the worst in the Eastern Conference. They also owned only 46.1% of the scoring chances when playing 5-on-5. After November, their overall Fenwick rate has climbed up to 49.5% with the score tied and their overall scoring chance percentage is now at 49.3%. It's the "March Towards .500" and the Canes appear to be heading towards it in full force. In fact, if we separate their play for just the month of November alone, they had both corsi tied and scoring chance rates of above 50%. That shows some progress.

What you're probably wondering is if the Canes played so well in November then why the hell did they win only four games? For starters, the powerplay was awful, but I already covered that. They also fell on some bad luck when it came to the intangibles like goaltending and shooting percentages. Carolina was shooting the puck at only 6.7% at even strength in November, a number that's below the league average and is sure to improve down the line. Cam Ward and Brian Boucher (mostly the former) were also very poor this month as they had a combined EV save percentage of only .908, also below average and should improve as Ward is not this bad.

Some guys who were playing awful at the beginning of the year have begun to pick it up a bit (see Staal, Eric; Ruutu, Tuomo) and are only going to get better as the season goes on, so there is reason to believe that the Canes will eventually climb out of this hole and have a chance at climbing out of the Eastern Conference basement. The biggest issue right now is fixing the powerplay which has completely fallen apart since the Tampa Bay game on November first. That's the main thing I see holding the team back right now as they keep squandering away chances there.

The Hurricanes still aren't very good at all but they haven't been nearly as bad as their current point total indicates. Are we destined for a lottery pick? Maybe. A hole like this is hard to get out of but I do believe that we'll start winning more games on a consistent basis sometime this year. It's tough to accept, but there's a ton of luck involved with hockey and the ball hasn't been rolling in Carolina's favor in 2011.

This may have been Carolina's fourth straight loss but it was also a game where the Hurricanes were the better team. Florida was outchanced 17-13 for the entire game and virtually had no life in the first period but the Canes did not make them pay for it. Once again, some of the blame falls on the powerplay failing to create chances when they had plenty of opportunities (five this time) along with Jose Theodore playing a great game in net for the Cats. It's not the best way to bring in a new coach but I think Kirk Muller could go into the locker room and safely say that his team outplayed the opposition and the wins should come if they can keep outchancing their opponents. He's got a lot of work to do when it comes to fixing the powerplay, though.

Scoring chances & more after the jump.

Florida Panthers (12-7-4) at Carolina Hurricanes (8-13-4)
7:00 p.m
TV: FS-Carolinas, FS-Florida

Only one day into his new job and Kirk Muller will already be coaching his first game as the new bench boss of the Carolina Hurricanes. He had his first practice with the team this morning and there seemed to be good vibes all around. One of the highlights from the practice was the conversation he had with Eric Staal saying that he "doesn't have to be Super Man" and wants him to do more leading by example. I can't say that I disagree with him on both points but Staal has been on an upward trend since November so I'm hoping that continues, but it's clear that his play his been a disappointment so far this year. The general consensus among the players is that they let Paul Maurice down and their poor performance resulted in him losing his job. I can't disagree with that either but it was clear that a coaching change for this team was inevitable. The Canes are rebuilding and Maurice simply did not fit into the organization's future plans and it was time for him to go. Best of luck to him in his future endeavors.

The new era for Hurricanes hockey begins tonight with their game against the Florida Panthers and I, for one, can not be more excited about it. The rebuild process is now in full effect and it will probably take a long time but the results should be worth it.

Lines, defense pairings, analysis & more after the jump

Jim Rutherford has been a busy man the last couple of days as he has now claimed 24-year old winger Andreas Nodl off waivers from the Philadelphia Flyers. At first, I didn't think much of this move because Nodl appeared to be nothing more than a depth forward and I assumed the 11 goals and 22 points he had last season was a product of playing on a line with Mike Richards. However, when you dig deeper into Nodl's game you'll see how he can fit into the Hurricanes plans.

Nodl did play on Mike Richards line in Philly (before the addition of Kris Versteeg) but it's worth noting that he got a lot of defensive zone starts when playing with him. He also faced the 2nd toughest competition among forwards with the only player above him being Jeff Carter and managed to come out with a respectable corsi percentage despite that. He also finished the season with a corsi tied rate of .540 which is damn good for a defensive forward, so the fact that he can hold his own ground against tough competition makes him a welcome addition to this team.

He's only played in 11 games this year and has gotten off to a rough start but if he can play like he did last season, then he should be a great fit on the Hurricanes' third line with Brandon Sutter and Patrick Dwyer. Those two have been getting a boatload of defensive zone starts and are facing the opponent's top lines nightly and it would be nice to have another forward to play on that line to make things complete. Jiri Tlusty has been only okay in that role and Alexei Ponikarovsky is playing on the second line now. The fact that we're getting Nodl for next to nothing is a plus, too.

The one knock on Nodl's game is that he isn't much of a scorer and has a very limited offensive skillset but that shouldn't be too much of an issue if he's only counted on for defensive purposes. Although, Nodl had some puck luck go in his favor last year with an on-ice save percentage of .942 and a PDO of 1024 so he may have over-performed just a little bit. This is still a solid, low-risk move for the Canes who could definitely use another defensive forward right now. If he kills penalties well, beats out his competition and can add a little offense to the table then this is a steal for the Canes. If not, then we can always put him back on waivers. Low-risk, decent-reward.

For more information on Nodl, check out Broad Street Hockey's 2010-11 report card for him.

Another week has past and the Canes managed to only win one game and pick up three points in the standings. All thee losses were by one goal (I usually don't count empty netters) and you could say that the Canes had a chance to win every game this week but a closer look at their performance proves otherwise. After a week where they actually outplayed most of their opponent's, it was the opposite this past week as they were outshot 99-87 at even strength and outchanced 51-45. The overall numbers look better due to a lot of powerplay chances (thanks Ottawa) but overall, they were outplayed for most of this week and that includes the game they won against Philadelphia. I'm thinking that Paul Maurice was fired at the right in terms of the team's future because why the team doesn't seem to be playing that bad by the eyes, they are still getting dominated at even strength and that can't continue. It's not all Maurice's fault but with his contract expiring and the team struggling, I think it was the right move to do.

The Canes did record 19 chances on the powerplay but nine of those came against Ottawa where they had eight opportunities with the man advantage so the data is skewed a bit. They scored only three times with the man advantage and came up empty handed in eight attempts against Montreal and Winnipeg. The penalty kill, however, was solid this week as they allowed only 6 scoring chances on 14 attempts but they also gave up two goals. I'm curious to see what improvements are made to the special teams with Kirk Muller taking over as coach. It was said that he basically took over the Montreal Canadiens when they were down 3-1 in their first round series against the Washington Capitals two years ago and I think we know how the story ended there. He was noted for improving their PK and powerplay which were both very successful in that series. However, he had nothing to do with turning Jaroslav Halak into a Super Man which was the main reason the Habs won that series.

After the jump we'll single out some performances from over the past week.

It's not even lunch time and we've already seen two NHL coaching changes this morning. The one we care more about is the Carolina Hurricanes deciding to relieve Paul Maurice of his head coaching duties and the word is that he will be replace by long-time Montreal Canadiens assistant coach Kirk Muller. I have made statements defending Maurice and how I don't think the team's 8-13-4 record is completely his fault but with his contract expiring and the Canes rebuilding, I think a coaching change was inevitable.

Maurice has been a good coach for Carolina during his time here and I'm grateful for his contributions but I think it is safe to say that he wasn't the right coach for rebuilding this team. I don't think he "lost the locker room" or anything like that, but his decisions regarding the forward lines and limiting ice time for younger players indicated that he probably shouldn't be the coach for Carolina's rebuild process. What tells me this is him deciding to give younger forwards like Zach Boychuk and Zac Dalpe fourth line minutes (which is about 5-7 mins. a game with him) even after the former was playing better in a bigger role. I understand that Maurice has high expectations from younger players and wants to make sure they are ready before he puts them in a key role (see Jeff Skinner last year) but Boychuk was producing scoring chances at a higher rate than almost anyone else on the team. It's really strange to me that he decided to place him back on the fourth line (and eventually send him back to Charlotte) after that, especially on a team that's struggled to generate offense like Carolina has.

That said, there's a lot of things going wrong that are beyond Maurice's control. He has sheltered Eric Staal this season (51.3 OZone%) and the captain still hasn't been able to get on the scoresheet consistently. Staal normally takes on tougher minutes than he has played this season but his struggles in October may have prompted Maurice to give him eaiser ice-time. He's been slowly improving over the season and appears that he could be on the verge of a breakout soon, but Maurice clearly wasn't getting the best play out of Staal. How much of the blame for that falls on Maurice is up for debate. What's interesting is that he's been giving tougher assignments to Jussi Jokinen & Jeff Skinner, the line that was sheltered last year, who have been producing despite the tougher assignments. Goalies Cam Ward and Brian Boucher both playing at below average levels also falls out of the coach's responsibility.

As for Muller, he has spent four years as the Canadiens assistant coach and was one of the top candidates for one of the vacant NHL head coaching positions this summer but ultimately ended up in the AHL as the Milwaukee Admirals head coach. He only spent 17 games as the coach there but he has received some good comments from other coaches and media members there so I'm excited to see what he can do. Like I mentioned earlier, the team is in rebuild mode right now so it would be nice to have a coach who will work with the prospects and Charlotte call-ups better than Maurice has recently.

In the long run I am excited to see what Muller can bring and glad that the team decided to not delay the inevitable and take another step towards rebuilding. This could also lead to some potential roster shake-ups among other things so I'm very intrigued to see what else happens in the next few weeks. Unfortunately, I don't think Muller will be able to bring that much improvement this season because history has shown that a coaching change makes a team roughly only one win better than they are now. The Canes have a team Fenwick rating of 47% with the score tied and that's even with Staal's re-emergence so Muller's got his work cut out for him this season.

I wish Maurice the best in his future endeavors and hope that he can find another head coaching job somewhere because I think there's still a fit for him in the NHL but it just wasn't in Carolina anymore. The Canes appear to have their head coach for the foreseeable future so now it's up to the players to start performing better and for GM Jim Rutherford to make the right moves when necessary because there's still a lot of work to be done with this roster if the Canes want to become a playoff team again.