Once again, there aren't many notable individual performances to speak of among the Carolina Hurricanes NCAA prospect pool, but still plenty of things to talk about regarding their teams. It was also one of those weekends where there was a lot of good news mixed in with bad, so we're going to follow the same format as last week and break things down by those two topics. There's only so much that can happen over the span of two games, so I'm expecting for there to be more weekends like this over the course of the season but hope that we start to see one of these players break out relatively soon. 

Until that day, we'll continue to discuss the happenings of NCAA hockey and what is happening with the teams currently housing Carolina prospects.

Michigan Wolverines (Phil Di Giuseppe)

Good News

The Wolverines took down their in-state rivals Michigan State 5-1 in the first game of their weekend series on Friday. This was a pretty close game for the most part but Michigan exploded in the third period with three unanswered goals included a bomb on the powerplay from Winnipeg Jets prospect Jacob Trouba. Di Giuseppe did not record a point in either game but he was definitely involved with five shots on goal and he had one really good scoring chance in Saturday night's game but was robbed by the Spartan goaltender.

Bad News

On that note, the Wolverines were blown out 7-2 in Saturday night's game and were pretty over-matched by Michigan State in all phases of the game. They fell into a 3-0 hole early and just seem to keep digging themselves deeper as the game went on. Di Giuseppe didn't commit any critical errors in this game from my view point but he ended up getting tagged with a -2 after being on-ice for two Spartan goals.

The Wolverines are still ranked but they are under .500 in conference play and have a tough series against #7 ranked Notre Dame coming up this weekend followed by a home game against Bowling Green the following Wednesday.

Harvard Crimson (Danny Biega)

Good News

Biega recorded 5 shots on goal this weekend and Harvard won their second conference game of the year by shutting out RPI 4-0. We are also going to get a chance to see Biega first-hand next week when the Crimson take on Cornell on a game that will be televised on the NBC Sports Network. Remember to set your calendars for that.

Bad News

While the shutout over RPI was nice, Harvard also dropped a 6-2 decision to Union College in a rematch of last year's ECAC championship game. The Crimson still have a winning record on the season at 3-2 but their two losses were both very, very ugly and it doesn't help that they both came at home. Biega also had a rough night by taking two penalties and ending up a -3. Here's to hoping that he'll play better with the NBC Sports cameras rolling next week.

Harvard will be on the road for the next few weeks when they take on Cornell, Colgate and Merrimack Colleg.e

Minnesota Golden Gophers (Mark Alt)

Good News

Alt was the only Carolina NCAA prospect to record a point this weekend, as he recorded an assist on Eric Haula's goal in Minnesota's game against Alaska-Anchorage. The Gophers were also the only team in this group to not lose any of their games this weekend, picking up a 4-0 win in their first game against UAA and tying them 2-2 in the second game. A little fun fact from the first game is that all of their goals came on the powerplay.

Regardless, Minnesota appears to be in good shape for now with a 6-2-1 record and a 3-2-1 record in conference play. They will have a struggling Wisconsin club at home next week in what should be a good WCHA matchup.

Bad News

The one blemish from Alt's stat-line this weekend was his four penalty minutes from the 4-0 win on Friday night. Two of them came after elbowed an Anchorage player in the head and from the sound of things, it wasn't pretty. Discipline hasn't been that much fo a problem for Alt this year, but let's just hope we don't see him deliver a hit like that again.

Ohio State Buckeyes (Collin Olson)

I'll keep things short here. The good news is that Olson had the best game of his college career on Saturday night against Alaska-Fairbanks, stopping 42 of 45 shots and keeping the Buckeyes in the game for the entire way. The bad news is that the Buckeyes lost that game 3-1 as their offensive issues this year continue. They have yet to score more than three goals in a game and have been stuck playing for the shootout in a lot of cases because of it. They have only two regulation wins on the year and three OT/shootout decisions. This has to be frustrating for Ohio State fans but Canes fans should be happy that Olson has performed well in limited action. He has allowed only 11 goals on 140 shots, good for a save percentage of .921.

The Buckeyes have a CCHA matchup with Northern Michigan on the schedule for next week.

The junior hockey season has been an odd one so far, or at least it has for a lot of the teams currently housing Carolina Hurricanes prospects. Take Ryan Murphy's Kitchener Rangers for instance, they were struggling a fair bit at the start of the year but have straited to turn things in the right direction over the past few weeks. They won all three of their games in the last week and are 8-1-1-0 in their last 10 games. Murphy hasn't been the main catalyst for this turnaround but he has been improving a lot after a rough month of October and had another multi-point performance this weekend. The news of both Murphy and the Rangers turning things around is good news for the Canes organization as a whole.

On the other hand, some teams that were flying high early in the year are now going through a rough patch with the current prime suspects being Daniel Altshuller's Oshawa Generals. The Generals were one of the most exciting teams in the OHL during the beginning stages of the year and were mostly backed by a high-powered offense and one of the OHL's leading offensive threats in Boone Jenner. At the time, Altshuller wasn't providing the Generals with remarkable goaltending, but he was performing well enough to prevent them from losing games and maintain their spot at the top of the East Division. Over the last 10 games or so, things have gotten tougher for the Generals as they have won only three games in that stretch and are hanging on by a thread to the top spot of their conference. Their offense appears to have run into a bit of a bad stretch and Altshuller just hasn't performed well enough to steal games for them, which is something he may need to do eventually.

Brock McGinn's Guelph Storm could also fit into this category but they haven't struggled as much and are still in the mix in the Midwest Division. They certainly helped their cause this week by getting a shutout over the first place team, Owen Sound, but that was undone after they dropped their next two games to Sarnia and Brampton respectively. It's still along season ahead for everyone and we've already seen how much can change over the course of a month, so it will be interesting to see how the standings look come mid-December. Some good news is that all but one of the OHL teams with Carolina prospects are in the top-half of their conference so most of the team's we're following have had a decent first 20 games or so.

After the jump, we will look at the performance of Carolina's CHL prospects in more detail.

The Charlotte Checkers domination of the Peoria Rivermen continued this weekend as they took both games against them in two-game series this weekend. These two wins did not come as easily as they did a couple weeks ago, though as the Rivermen put up a much stronger fight and responded well after getting shutout in back-to-back games. Still, in the end it was the Checkers who came out on top and the two wins improve their record to 9-3-0-1 on the season and give them a six-point lead in the South Division over the Houston Aeros and Oklahoma City Barons. 

Charlotte struggled a bit during the first game of the series on Thursday night, falling behind 1-0 early and having to fight an uphill battle during the early stages. This was a problem for them early in the year, but this team always seemed to be able to battle back and reclaim control of the game and that's exactly what they did against Peoria. Shortly after Anthony Nigro scored the opening goal, Zach Boychuk answered for the Checkers to tie the game and Zac Dalpe added a powerplay goal later in the period to give the Checkers the lead. Peoria would respond in the second period with a pair of goals including a powerplay strike from Ian Cole to reclaim the lead for the Rivermen. Once again, though, the Checkers just continued to fight back and their hard work payed off in the third period with Jeremy Welsh tying the game. Drayson Bowman would then give the Checkers the lead off a rebound chance to score his 10th goal of the season and give the Checkers a 4-3 lead with less than 10 minutes remaining.

This would be a lead that didn't last long for the Checkers as the Rivermen were able to tie the game via a late goal by Derek Nesbitt, who scored twice in this series. The late goal did not demoralize Charlotte, though and they were able to get the win in overtime after Zach Boychuk made a terrific individual effort in the neutral zone to force a turnover and score on a breakaway. Some may say that the Checkers made this win a lot harder than it needed to be, but Peoria put forth a great effort and made the Checkers work for this win. The next night would be a little different.

The opening script was a bit similar with the Rivermen jumping on top early with a 1-0 lead in the first period with a powerplay goal by Taylor Chorney, but things changed dramatically after that. The Checkers would go on to outshoot Peoria 32-12 in the final two periods and outscore the Rivermen 3-1 in the second period. Zach Boychuk played a big role in the comeback as he scored the initial game-tying goal and recorded a secondary assist on Chris Terry powerplay goal. Speaking of which, Terry himself had a big game with a two-goal night and he now has three tallies in as many games since returning from his suspension. Justin Faulk would add another goal in the third period to put this one away for the Checkers, who coasted to a 4-1 victory.

That goal was Faulk's only mark on the scoresheet this weekend, but he is still maintaining an impressive scoring rate with 14 points in 11 games. That puts him tied for third in the AHL scoring race and when you add in his 31 shots in 14 games, it's hard not to be impressed with the season he has had thus far. Also tied for third in the AHL's scoring race is Zach Boychuk, who added four points to his total this weekend and is still registering over three shots per game. With Drayson Bowman inevitably cooling down, I was curious about who would replace his goal production but it looks like Boychuk has done just that, at least this weekend. The return of Chris Terry obviously helps that cause, too since he has been one of the team's top-scorers for the last few years.

One player who has rebounded after a bit of an off-week is Zac Dalpe, who had a goal and a pair of assists this weekend. Dalpe's season got off to a tough start with him missing the first game with an illness and he hasn't exactly been putting up the numbers like Boychuk and Bowman have this year. What he has done, though, is turn in a pretty good season with 10 points in 12 games.  Dalpe is also registering nearly three shots per game and has been getting some bad shooting luck (8.8% shooting percentage), so I think we could see him get some more goals relatively soon. Also in this category is poor Jerome Samson, who was held off the scoresheet completely despite registering eight shots on goal.

Riley Nash also had a very productive weekend with three assists in two games and so did Jeremy Welsh, who picked up a pair of points. These two aren't producing as much offense as some of the other guys on the team both in terms of shots and boxcar stats, but I think they could be players who may begin to emerge once the big guns start to slump. Secondary scoring is always critical and these two along with Brett Sutter will play a big role in it as the year goes on.

If you haven't been keeping up with NHL Numbers over the past week, then you missed a fantastic post from Benjamin Wendorf where he examined which players in the NHL could be labelled as "puck hogs." A puck hog being a player who takes an unproportionally high amount of shots compared to his linemates. Whether or not a player being a "puck hog" is a good or a bad thing is up to you. On one hand, a player that is shooting the puck more often than his teammates is creating more scoring opportunities for himself and the team but on the flip-side, he could be aimlessly shooting from everywhere instead of waiting for a better opportunity to score. These kinds of players are usually labelled as "selfish" and whatnot by the media.

To find out which players are "puck hogs," Wendorf looked at the total number of shots on goal and missed shots every player in the NHL was on-ice for and how many of those shots came from each player. He explains it in more detail in the article, but the main idea is that a player who takes a high percentage of shots he is on-ice for is a "puck hog" by this definition. Wendorf also lists the top and bottom-25 "puck hogs" in the NHL from 2007 through 2012 and you may notice that there are no Carolina Hurricanes players on either list, at least during those years.

This leaves the door open for a lot of questions about the Hurricanes and whether or not they have housed any "puck hogs" over the last five seasons. Carolina fans have always voiced their opinions about players such as Joni Pitkanen not shoot as often as they would like, while others such as Chad LaRose tend to shoot from everywhere instead of waiting for a better scoring opportunity. Do these perceptions match up with reality, though? To find out, I applied the same method as Wendorf to every Carolina Hurricanes player from 2008 to 2012 to see who was hogging the puck the most during those seasons.

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.