For a young player, adjusting to the speed and skill of the NHL is very difficult and it usually takes years of development before they are ready to contribute full-time. This process is especially true with defensemen as most of them aren't ready until at least their early-20's. Young defensemen in the NHL are generally used in a more sheltered or offensive rule because they are still learning the game and are obviously going to have trouble facing pro-level forwards. This is the case with just about every young defensemen no matter how big or talented they are because a good majority of them are coming straight from either a junior level or college, which doesn't compare to what they will have to deal when they get to the NHL.

It takes a really special talent to make it in the NHL at a very young age and there have been only 16 defensemen since the lockout who have played more than 30 games in the big show before they turned 20. One of those 16 players is Justin Faulk of the Carolina Hurricanes. Faulk still has a ways to go before he is a top-tier defenseman but his pro career got off to a great start this year. He was playing over 20 minutes a night, was used in just about every situation and looked incredibly poised for someone his age. He was also arguably the team's best puck-mover last season with Joni Pitkanen on the shelf for most of the year.

The major concern with Faulk is his defensive game. He had trouble controlling possession at even strength and the Canes gave up a lot of scoring chances when he was on the ice. The ongoing explanation for this is that Faulk is still very young and most players his age playing his kind of minutes would fare no better. This got me thinking, how does Faulk compare to other defensemen his age? What situations were they playing in and how did they perform? Was Faulk better or worse than them and most importantly, what predictions can we make about Faulk's future based on it?

After the jump, we will look at the 16 defensemen who played at least 30 games in the NHL before their 20th birthday and see how Faulk's performance during his rookie season compares to them.

In the past, I have talked about how I hold certain players to higher standards than others because of the situations they are used in or how much they are being paid. For the Hurricanes, the player that is held to the highest standard is their team captain, Eric Staal and there are plenty of reasons to expect a lot out of him. Staal has been the Canes best player for the last seven years, he is being paid top-level money and he has been at least a 70-point player since the lockout. As fans, we have become accustomed to seeing Staal be a dominant force, which is probably why most people see this year as a disappointment for him. He had 70 points in 82 games, was one of the few forwards with a positive even strength scoring chance differential and led the team in shots on goal.

For most players, this would be a great season, but a lot of fans thought that Staal lost a step this year. Why is this? For one, his scoring rate was down from what it was in previous seasons (dropped from .94 to .85 points per game this year) and he got off to possibly the worst start of his career. Staal had only 12 points through the first 26 games of the season, which is bad for most players but even worse for player of Staal's caliber. It's tough to figure out what was wrong with Staal during that time but a lot of it was related to bad luck. His shooting percentage this season was lower than it has ever been (9.2%) and the Hurricanes, as a team, were shooting at an extremely low rate in the first half of the season. The Hurricanes goaltenders were also stopping only .897 of the even strength shots they faced when Staal was on the ice, which directly affected his horrible plus/minus that was harped upon for most of the season.

The point here is that some of the things that contributed to Staal's "down year" were out of his control because it certainly isn't his fault that the team's goalies couldn't stop a beach ball whenever he was on ice at even strength. That's something that was overlooked during his rough first half of the seaso. Another thing that was somewhat overlooked is how good Staal was after the rough start. He had 58 points in his 56 games since December and still finished with 70 points despite having only 12 in two months. Staal's overall year might have been a disappointment but it's hard to look at how he played over the last four months and say that he underachieved.

Players who produce as much offense as Staal aren't going to shoot at less than 9% forever, so it was only a matter of time before Staal had a scoring outburst, but a look at his underlying numbers show that Staal had some legitimate stretches of bad play this year and guessing which part of the season they came in shouldn't be too difficult.

We will look at those numbers after the jump.A

The Hurricanes have another restricted free agent locked up for the next couple years with the team re-signing Jamie McBain to a two-year contract with a cap hit of about $1.8 mil. per season ($1.7 mil. + $1.9 mil. in salary). This is a pretty safe deal for McBain since two years isn't a big commitment and the cap hit is pretty low, as well. McBain has really done a lot in two and a half seasons in Carolina and he has shown the potential to be anything from a decent top-four defenseman to a very solid third pairing guy/powerplay quarterback. He has been more effective in the latter role and his game in his own end still needs some work, but I think keeping him around for the next two years is a good move for the Hurricanes.

While there have been some arguments in favor of trading McBain, re-signing him is probably the better call for now. Yes, the Canes have a lot of defensemen in their system (and too many puck movers), a couple of them are another year or two away from making the team. At the very least, McBain will provide a good stopgap for the Canes until Ryan Murphy is ready to be called up. He is also only 24 years old and is still developing. What we're seeing right now isn't his ceiling and he could very well turn into a stronger two-way player. If he doesn't progress at all in the next two years, then the Canes have a good offensive defenseman who can give them 25-30 points for about $1.8 mil. per year.

Let's pretend that McBain doesn't progress at all in the next two years and stays the same player. Would $1.8 mil. be an overpayment for him? To figure this out, let's take a look at some other defensemen who were given a contract similar to his. Below is a list of defensemen, their contract's cap hit and the age they were when they were signed to those deals.

All of the players here are 2nd or 3rd pairing defensemen and some of them had a defined role which made them a little more valuable than a standard bottom-pairing defenseman. What this means is that if McBain were to stay the same way he is now, his new contract fits his current value just fine. If he phases out offensively or is a complete defensive liability, then it's an overpayment but that isn't the case with him right now. McBain is also younger than the majority of defensemen on the list with the one exception being Matt Niskanen. Niskanen also brings an interesting comparison to the table because he was also a 25-35 point defenseman early in his career but his offensive numbers fell off a cliff around the time that Dallas extended him. He was also a bottom-pairing defenseman like McBain, only sheltered a lot more.

A couple other players who I would compare to McBain are Alex Goligoski and Johnny Boychuk. When they were signed to their contracts listed above, they were known more as puck-movers and were bottom-pairing defensemen on their respective teams. Goligoski was primarily a third pairing defenseman and powerplay quarterback when the Penguins re-signed him to a three year deal and while his two-way game hasn't come around much, he is playing as a top-four defenseman in Dallas and has been more effective as an offensive defenseman. Boychuk has played regularly in Boston's top-four and has even spent some time playing alongside Zdeno Chara. His numbers in the NHL are a pretty big contrast from his impressive point totals in the AHL.

McBain had more experience at the NHL level before he signed his second contract so he's a little different from Boychuk and Goligoski but the main idea here is that the Bruins and Penguins committed 2-3 years and roughly $1.8 mil. to a young defenseman with a decent amount of potential, which is the same thing that the Hurricanes are doing with McBain. Goligoski and Boychuk progressed as their contracts went on and were able to earn big deals with their current clubs. Can McBain do the same thing? Let's hope so.

If there is one positive thing to take away from the Tomas Kaberle fiasco last, it is that Jim Rutherford was able to dump off his contract on then Montreal Canadiens GM Pierre Gauthier without giving up much of anything. All the Hurricanes had to do was take on the expiring contract of 37 year old defenseman Jaroslav Spacek in return and this deal ended up being more than just a salary dump. Spacek quickly found his role in Carolina as a third pairing defenseman and made a great first impression in his Hurricanes debut by recording two assists. He was able to give the Hurricanes stronger defensive depth as he performed very well as a sixth defenseman and proved to be a good mentor for some of the younger defensemen, most notably Jamie McBain.

Spacek was just about everything you would want a third pairing defenseman to be and his experience could make him somewhat valuable to the Hurricanes going forward. Does that mean that the Hurricanes should re-sign him in the next couple of weeks? Not necessarily. While Spacek was solid when healthy, he was also very brittle and missed a considerable amount of time with various injuries. This is something that Spacek has struggled with for the last few years and it's gotten worse as he's gotten older. His limited mobility and durability also make him no more than a third pairing defenseman at this point in his career, which is a role that shouldn't cost a team more than $2 mil. per year. Spacek might re-sign under those terms but it seems more likely that he will be the odd-man out given how many defensemen Carolina has in their system right now. A one-year deal wouldn't be out of the question, though.

As of right now, it is tough to say what the Canes will do with Spacek but if he wants a new contract, his play last season might be able to help him earn one. His point total isn't going to wow anyone, but Spacek was able to control possession as he had the highest scoring chance percentage at even strength among Carolina defensemen.  After the jump, we will take a closer look at the season Spacek and see why he was able to succeed in Carolina.

The excitement of the NHL off-season is just around the corner and there have already been numerous rumors and speculations about who the Hurricanes might go after in the next couple of months. Unfortunately, the majority of it is just scuttlebutt from the media or fans with big dreams and expectations. While there’s nothing wrong with setting your sights high and hoping for great things, the likelihood of Carolina being able to land a big free agent this off-season (see: Zach Parise & Ryan Suter) is very low.

I am not trying to be Mr. Pessimist, but Jim Rutherford is going to need to outbid at least 5-10 different teams to land those players and it’s probably going to have to come at a very high cost. Big ticket free agents like Parise are going to want long-term deals at high cap hits, so Carolina is going to make sure they are competitive within the next couple of seasons to land Parise. Why is this? Because Parise is in the prime of his career right now and there is a good chance that his production will tail off as he gets older. I like the idea of having Parise on the team but keep in mind that the team that ends up signing him could end up paying at least $5 mil. for a 20 goal season out of him. Knowing Rutherford, he isn’t going to take a risk like that unless he think he can build up a Cup contending team in the off-season.

Everyone’s focus in the off-season is always on the big names but before talking about Carolina being able to sign anyone, it’s important to go over the prospective roster for next season and the team’s cap situation so we know what the team needs and what they have to work with. Some needs are much more obvious than others (cough first line winger cough), getting a general overview of the Canes needs is a good starting point because there might be some areas that are being overlooked.

We will look at Carolina’s prospective depth chart and monetary situation (with the help of Capgeek) after the jump.

After having a tremendous rookie season and taking home the Calder Trophy, Jeff Skinner's sophomore year was met with much anticipation. There were some who feared that he would have the dreaded "sophomore slump" and while he did score fewer goals, anyone who watched Skinner play this year could see that he looked like a better overall play. Skinner looked stronger than he did his rookie season and he is showing signs of becoming a complete player rather than just a goal-scorer. My biggest concern with Skinner after his rookie year was wondering whether or not he had the ability to carry a line at such a young age, and in only his second season he proved that he could. It makes Skinner a huge bright spot in a mostly forgettable season and a great sign for things to come.

In addition to that, Skinner was also one of the team's most consistent forwards at creating scoring chances and managed to keep his head well above water on a team that was very poor at controlling both possession and scoring chances. Most of the time, it takes a couple seasons to develop their games and become more well-rounded players but Skinner appears to be ahead of the game in that department. He is already shown the ability to carry lines, drive the play forward and he's even killing penalties now, too. Most of the news surrounding Skinner was negative because he suffered a concussion and his bad attitude has gotten both him and the Hurricanes into trouble. Skinner is just a kid but his play on the ice and with the puck has matured at a quicker rate than anyone could have imagine. However, his antics between the whistles is something that he needs to work on because that overshadowed what was a great season for him.

After the jump, we'll take a look at Skinner's underlying numbers throughout the season and see just how good he was.

Last season, one of my favorite call-ups from Charlotte was Jerome Samson. He didn't score a goal in the 23 games he played in, but he was effective at getting shots on goal and creating scoring chances. I felt that he would be effective in a depth role and would eventually get on the scoresheet if he continued to do the same things he did last year. Samson didn't make the team out of camp and wasn't called up until mid-January but he made an immediate impact by scoring his first NHL goal in his season debut against the Philadelphia Flyers. After that game, Samson struggled to stay in the lineup and was sent down for good in early-March. I was a little disappointed but not entirely surprised because it is hard to keep a guy in the lineup if he's getting top-six minutes but can't score.

The reason why I liked Samson so much last season is because he showed the ability to be effective offensively even if the wasn't scoring, and this team desperately needed forwards who could drive the play. Samson wasn't nearly as good in that department this season and that coupled with his inability to produce points made it tough for him to stay in the NHL. At the AHL level, Samson is a pure goal scorer and a very effective offensive player but he has still yet to translate that into NHL success and at 24, it is tough to say that he will ever turn into a goal-scorer at this level.

I think that Samson has a future in the NHL but he seems to work best as a depth forward or a third-liner because he can at least be someone who can help drive puck possession and create energy. Unfortunately, I don't think he will make it in the NHL on the Hurricanes because what they need is a goal-scoring winger. This team has enough players similar to him and he could end up being an odd-man out this off-season if he can't find his scoring touch. He was actually given top-six minutes in Carolina this season but didn't produce much with them and Kirk Muller wasn't going to keep him on the team to be a fourth liner. That isn't going to work for Samson or Charlotte so he was better off finishing the year in Charlotte.

Sixteen games isn't the best sample size to go by, but we're going to take a closer look at the year that was for Samson and see how he might have been less effective at driving the play than his strong corsi relative rating suggests.

Something that was discussed a lot over the course of the season was how hard the Hurricanes centers worked over the off-season to improve their overall performance at the faceoff dot. This was something that needed to be done because the team was just awful at faceoffs during the 2010-11 season (44.6% success rate) and it was one of the reasons why they struggled so much on special teams then. With face-off master Rod Brind'Amour now serving as an assistant coach, the Hurricanes made a considerable effort to improve their ability to win draws this year and it paid off. The Hurricanes went from being the second worst face-off team in the NHL to the 10th best. Just about every player who takes faceoff regularly saw an improvement, as evidenced by the table below.

Staal has struggled with face-offs his whole career but he made a huge leap forward this season and won well over half of his draws. Brandon Sutter also improved significantly after being brutal at the faceoff dot last season and Jussi Jokinen got even better. The only player who didn't improve at faceoffs was Tuomo Ruutu, who went from bad to worse. Perhaps the strangest thing here is that Tim Brent won less than 50% of his draws even though his ability to win faceoffs was one of the reasons that teh Canes signed him in the first place.

There is one big problem with all of this information, which is that faceoff percentage, in general, is misleading and somewhat overrated. No one is denying the importance of winning a faceoff but there is a lot of grey area that can cloud up the accuracy of a player's faceoff percentage. If you were to watch every single faceoff that happens in a game, you will probably notice that not all of them are won cleanly. There are many cases where the wingers have to battle in the trenches to come out with the puck. Sometimes the two centers will battle for the puck for a good couple of seconds and neither come away with posession. Then there are other instances where one team wins the faceoff but fails to come away with possession because the players covering the points can't keep it in or the opposing team forces a turnover.

This shows that, while important, winning faceoffs can be overrated, misleading and not the best way to judge a player's ability. If a team can win a faceoff but not control possession, then winning the draw becomes essentially meaningless. Which is why a player needs to be able to do more than just win faceoffs to have a considerable amount of value. However, wining faceoffs plays a huge role in the success of two main areas; the powerplay and penalty kill.

A faceoff win on the powerplay likely means more zone time and a greater chance at being able to strike with the man advantage, while a faceoff win on the PK usually kills off at least 10-20 seconds of the powerplay, so winning the draw can go a long way on special teams. With that in mind, let's see if the Hurricanes have improved their faceoff numbers in all three areas and who has improved the most compared to last season.

If you could sum up Tuomo Ruutu's season in one word, it would likely be "inconsistent." At the end of October, Ruutu had only four points and a lot of people wondered if he was playing through an injury because he didn't look like himself at all. We all knew that Ruutu couldn't continue to play this poor forever and he eventually came around with a solid performances in November and December, and the talk among fans shifted to Ruutu needing to be re-signed or traded for Kings Ransom because he appeared to be the team's best forward at the time.

December remained Ruutu's highest point of the season as he would cool off in January and sustain an upper-body injury in February which kept him out of ten games. His quality of play after returning from the injury was underwhelming to say the least as he struggled to get back up to speed with the rest of the team and found himself in Kirk Muller's dog house for a couple games. This was something that troubled a lot of fans because Ruutu had signed a four-year contract extension worth $4.75 mil. per year about a month prior and getting on the coach's bad side can have some bad long-term effects.

The issue with Muller ended up not being as big of a deal as it was made out to be, but there is going to be a lot of talk about Ruutu's price-tag and whether or not he isn't worth the 18 goals and 34 points he produced this season is worth $4.75 mil. This was Ruutu's lowest point total since 2007-08 and he was just coming off a career high 57 points the year prior, so I think we can expect better boxcar stats from Ruutu next year. He also produced at what is considered a top-six rate at even strength, which is a good sign for next season.

What concerns me the most is that Ruutu's inconsistencies are not only present in his counting stasts, but his underlying numbers, as well. A look at those is coming after the jump.

The Hurricanes are a team with plenty of holes but Jim Rutherford has made it clear that finding a forward to play on Eric Staal's line will be the top priority, whether that be by trade or free agency. While the contributions that the team got from Jiri Tlusty and Chad LaRose were nice, they aren't ideal first liners and probably wouldn't be getting those minutes on a lot of teams in the league. So it is obvious that there is a big hole to fill there, but Rutherford is going to have a hard time filling this hole because the free agent market this summer is very thin if you're looking for a winger.

The player who is first on most Hurricanes fans wishlist is Zach Parise from the New Jersey Devils, who is one of the top players in the league at his position. Fans really seem to want Rutherford to make a push for him and while it would be wise for him to do so, the problem is that he will need to outbid at least ten other teams in order to get him. Parise is going to want a very long contract and I don't think the Hurricanes can take that risk right now. The team is rebuilding and still has long-term money invested in Staal and Ward, so I don't think adding another 5+ year deal is the best way to go at the moment.

While the Hurricanes are going to need to take a few risks in order to acquire a top-level player, I don't think that Rutherford can give Parise what other teams are willing to offer him. There's just too many teams in the mix and Parise's demands are going to be pretty large. There are other options, though and one of them might be unpopular with some Caniacs. Yes, I am talking about Alexander Semin of the Washington Capitals.

Semin might not have the greatest reputation around the league but he is a great talent and I think the Hurricanes might have somewhat of a realistic shot at signing him this off-season. Find out why after the jump.