"I believed we had a good product. As we speak today we don't." - Jim Rutherford

This is what Carolina Hurricanes GM Jim Rutherford had to say after the trade deadline yesterday regarding the current state of his team. Things looked promising heading into the year with the team adding two top-tier forwards to their roster and the Canes were sitting at the top of the Southeast Division for a good chunk of the year. Then they went through horrible ten-game stretch, winning only one game and earning three points in the standings during that time. The Canes are now basically hanging onto dear life for a playoff spot, which is disappointing because everyone was expecting better things this year, including Rutherford.

If the Hurricanes don't pull a miracle in the last 14 games, it will be the fourth season in a row where they have missed the playoffs and the 7th time in nine years. That doesn't reflect well on Rutherford, but how much of this season is his fault? Looking at how the team has played the last three weeks, it's easy to say that he didn't do enough to improve this team over the season. The defense had problems from day one, scoring depth has been an issue all season and the special teams have been just wretched on all accounts. Some of that responsibility falls on Rutherford's shoulders, but I still think that there were plenty of things that went wrong that were out of his control. Most of it relates to how different the roster is now compared to the beginning of the season.

Here was what the Hurricanes depth chart looked like entering the season.

Personally, I was somewhat confident with this team heading into the season. The defense was going to take their lumps but it certainly looked like the Canes had enough offense to help off-set things a little. Tlusty, Semin, Skinner and the Staal brothers were going to provide most of the team's offense with Jokinen, LaRose, Dwyer and the kids from Charlotte (Dalpe, Boychuk & Bowman) providing the secondary scoring. On paper, this looks like a decent forward corps and the Canes should have had a relatively balanced lineup.

Tlusty-Staal-Semin have been one of the best scoring lines in the NHL and Jordan Staal has been good, but the rest of the group didn't pan out as well. Boychuk was benched after one game and waived about a week later, Dalpe was sent back to Charlotte after 7 games, Bowman and LaRose have only 4 combined goals on the season, Jokinen had only 10 points and Dwyer has been occupying a top-six spot for most of the year. I suppose you could fault Rutherford for putting faith in one of the Charlotte kids to take over a top-six role, but can you really blame him for that? Bowman, Dalpe and Boychuk all performed very well during the lockout and deserved a chance there. None of them ended up working out for different reasons. 

Bowman's two-way play has been very bad this year and he isn't exactly proving himself to be a capable top-nine player like I thought he could be, Boychuk ended up being waived by two other NHL clubs and is now back in the AHL while Dalpe was sent back to Charlotte after seven games and has spent most of the season on IR. The only mistake made here was sending Dalpe back to Charlotte even though he had played very well in a top-six role with the Canes. The rest of the fault can go to the players for underperforming, and the same can be said for guys like Jussi Jokinen and Chad LaRose, who produced at much lower rates than normal this season. Both of them were slotted into bottom-six roles for most of the season and given their history, they should have been able to thrive in this setting but did not for whatever reason. Some of it was due to bad puck luck (Jokinen) while others simply did not play up to their standards (Bowman & LaRose). Factor in Jordan Staal having a revolving door of linemates along with Jeff Skinner's shooting percentage slump and you have a team that's currently starving for offense outside of their first line.

Most of what went wrong with the team's forwards were beyond Rutherford's control aside from the mistake with Dalpe, but he isn't as innocent with the defense. Rutherford tried to build a team that could fit Muller's up-tempo system and that involved letting Bryan Allen walk and replacing him with Joe Corvo. While Corvo has been good and a nice surprise this season, he isn't a top-four defenseman anymore and he, along with many others, were forced into that role because of the lack of depth on Carolina's blue line. Entering the year, this defense corps was probably average in terms of puck-possession combined with the forwards in front of him. The major issue with this plan is that Rutherford was placing a ton of faith in a 20-year old defenseman in Justin Faulk and a player who was healthy for only 30 games the previous year in Joni Pitkanen. Both of them ended up getting hurt and Rutherford did not have a contingency plan for this. Injuries are injuries and it's tough to replace two top-four defenseman, but I think Rutherford should have had some kind of back-up plan for Pitkanen given his recent health.

On that note, injuries are something that has been a really big problem for the Hurricanes this season. There are other teams who have lost more man games, but Carolina certainly has had a lot of impact players go down. Both Cam Ward & Dan Ellis got hurt, Tuomo Ruutu was out before the season even started, Jeff Skinner suffered another concussion, all but one defenseman has missed considerable time and Carolina had a to make due with a depth chart that looked like this for a couple weeks. Every team has to deal with injuries, so I'm not going to say that it's the only reason for the Hurricanes struggles, but I do think it's pretty crazy that they have gone through 32 different skaters this year, 12 of which were defensemen.

The whole nature of this shortened season has played a role in Carolina's struggles, as well. It makes injuries that much more difficult to overcome and each good/bad streak ten times more important than usual. Every team goes through streaks, but this recent skid the Hurricanes have been on could put them out of the playoffs because there is less time to make up ground. A team that goes 1-8-1 through 10 games at this time of the year probably doesn't belong in the playoffs but even good teams have their struggles (see Chicago & LA last year) and Carolina's underlying numbers still speak in their favor. They are in the top-half of the league in terms of controlling possession, which is generally a good sign for a team making the playoffs but I'm not sure if it will matter this season. There are only 14 games left, the Hurricanes roster is still pretty banged up and they just dealt away one of their better puck-possession forwards for basically nothing, so the most they can do now is just play out the rest of the season and see what happens. The horrific state of the Southeast Division has kept them alive in the playoff race, so there is some hope for the playoffs but it's very small.

If the Canes end up missing the playoffs yet again, I think all three parties are to blame. Rutherford accomplished his goal of improving the team but they still had major flaws on defense that became exposed once the injuries piled up. You also have many players who underperformed and there was nothing he could do about that and the coaching staff hasn't exactly gotten the most out of this squad either. I'm not in the locker room and don't know what goes on in there, so I'm not going to question the team's effort & work ethic, but the Canes have been playing lower than their ability in a lot of games this year and that doesn't exactly reflect well on the coaching staff.

At the same time, there have been a lot of things that have gone wrong for the Hurricanes this year, too. Between the widespread injuries, inability to score on the powerplay and the poor puck luck of players like Jokinen & Skinner, you could say that the Hockey Gods have not been completely on their side this year. In a full season, there is usually time for things to normalize, but it's very different in a condensed schedule so I'm going to refrain from over-reacting to what the results are this year and I'm hoping the higher-ups in the organization do as well. Long-term, the Hurricanes appear to be in decent shape assuming Rutherford doesn't go all Scott Howson and blow everything up. The defense needs to be re-tooled a bit, obviously but the top-six should stay in-tact and acquiring better depth forwards will also be a priority. This has just been a crazy year all around, so it's going to be important to keep a level head when analyzing this season regardless of what happens the rest of the way.

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.

We are only one day away from the trade deadline and every Hurricanes fan is wondering why GM Jim Rutherford has yet to make any moves. It seems pretty confusing at first glance because the Canes are currently in the middle of a playoff race and have been playing some of their worst hockey of the season. Since Rutherford has yet to make any deal at all, some fans have gotten the impression that he's either fine with the way the team is playing now or is low-balling other teams in trades. Any competent NHL executive isn't going to sit back when their team suffers a bad losing streak at this time of the year, so Rutherford has probably been very active in talking to other teams and trying to make trades. The problem is that he is in a very tough spot right now and there are going to be a lot of things standing in his way when it comes time to make moves.

The Canes are also not definitive "buyers" or "sellers" right now since they are on the cusp of even being in playoff contention. The weakness of the Southeast Division and the Eastern Conference has allowed them to stay in the pack despite their recent stretch of terrible play and a win streak could turn their season around. There are a lot of other teams who are in similar situations, so they are also going to be reluctant to buy or sell at this deadline and that's going to make a lot of trades tough to accomplish, especially for a team in the Hurricanes situation.

This might sound terrible since the Hurricanes are battling for a playoff spot right now, but their game against the Canadiens last night was one I did not expect them to win. Montreal has been one of the best teams in the NHL this season and has been very tough to beat at home on top of that while the Hurricanes recently ended a seven game losing skid. The Hurricanes showed some improvement in the game against Winnipeg, but Montreal is at a different level than the Jets, so the most I was hoping for was for the Canes to get at least a point or show some improvement from the last two weeks.

Considering they lost 4-1 and were outchanced 18-13 (15-10), neither of those things happened but after watching the game, I didn't feel that the Hurricanes played as poorly as the final score indicates. They simply lost and were outplayed by a better team and you know what? That happens a lot. I'm not exactly sure what it says about the Hurricanes playoff chances, but I think it does show that they aren't good enough to be competitive with the other top teams in the Eastern Conference like the Canadiens. They won't have to play the Canadiens for the rest of the season, but they do have a a few more games against top Eastern Conference teams remaining, which could prove to be a very tough test if last night's game is any indication.

With that being said, I did not think the Hurricanes were awful last night despite putting up only 19 shots on goal and losing 4-1. In terms of territorial play, things were relatively even, but the Hurricanes weak powerplay and inability to hit the net (39 total missed & blocked shots) came back to haunt them again, resulting in them being on the losing end of the scoring chance battle for the ninth game in a row.

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.

I don't think any Hurricanes player or fan cares about the numbers from their 3-1 win over the Winnipeg Jets and I can't blame them for it either. When you haven't gotten into the win column for seven straight games (spanning a little over two weeks), you take any victory you can get. It doesn't matter if the team plays flawlessly or just barely eeks out an ugly win because each one is very important at this stage of the year. The Hurricanes certainly pulled out an ugly win today over Winnipeg but they got the job done in the end, which is all that matters right now. 

The team's confidence was beginning to reach a new low during this losing streak so if anything, the Hurricanes being able to get a win could help give the team a bit of a spark going down the stretch and get back to the brand of hockey they were playing for the majority of the season. With only 15 games remaining, every bounce you get is going to have a much bigger impact than it would in a full-year, so the Canes being able to win despite not playing their best game is pretty huge.

With that being said, the Hurricanes certainly played better than they have in a couple of weeks and at least showed signs of progress. That's not exactly saying much since the bar was set low coming into today, but it's still a step forward and hopefully the Canes can build off it for the rest of the season. Now that we got that out of the way, let's take a closer look at the Hurricanes first win in over two weeks.

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.

Last night, the Hurricanes nearly won a game that they had no business being in. They may have shown some "character" by battling back to tie the game in the second period and taking the lead in the third, but the Leafs were more deserving of the win. Toronto held Carolina to only six even strength scoring chances to the entire game and took 14 more shot attempts than them at even strength. There were only two Carolina players who were not outchanced at even strength in this game, most it being due to the Hurricanes being unable to produce offense while not on the powerplay. This goes down as a "heartbreaking loss" to some, but the only "heartbreaking" thing is whatever happened to this team over the last two weeks.

There was a time when the Hurricanes were a great team at even strength, outchanced their opponents regularly and generally were the better team even if they didn't pick up the win. It's pretty easy to remember this time because it was only a month ago and that really makes the last two weeks even more frustrating. We know that this team is what they've shown lately, and seeing them play at a level such lower than their ability is both frustrating and depressing. It's a mystery as to when this team will put the pieces back together but it might be too late by the time they do.