Players like Jerome Samson are frustrating because they are known as goal-scorers, need top-six minutes to be successful and have scored at nearly a point-per-game pace in every level but the NHL. Every team has a player like this in their organization and most of them are kept around for scoring depth at the AHL level and for emergency call-ups. Samson seems to fit in this class because he has been a 20-goal scorer for the Hurricanes AHL affiliates in Albany & Charlotte over the last four (could be five) seasons and has still yet to make his mark in the NHL. He has played 46 games with the Hurricanes over the last three years and has accumulated a grand total of nine points and scored his first NHL goal only this season.

Samson is a restricted free agent at the end of the year and considering that he was scratched in favor of Derek Joslin, a defeseman who has been forced to play forward due to depth issues, and eventually sent back to the AHL, many are wondering if Samson's time with in the NHL is coming to an end. His future with the organization is not looking promising but who is to say that Samson is destined to be a career AHL-er at the age of 24? With so many 19-21 year olds entering the league, it's tough for older "rookies" like Samson to make their mark in the league but it isn't impossible for a player to enter the league and become a full-time player in their mid-20's. The question is can Samson become a full-time NHL player next season at the age of 25, what kind of player will he be and will he break into the NHL as a Carolina Hurricane? Those will be explored after the jump.

A couple of the Hurricanes players had today's game against the Minnesota Wild circled on their calendars because it was the first time that they would be playing in their home state at the NHL level. Justin Faulk and Jamie McBain both grew up playing in Minnesota and the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul was the building where Faulk's University of Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs won their first NCAA national championship a little under a year ago. Both of them had an emotional return to the State of Hockey but the guy who stole the show today was Colorado-native Drayson Bowman, who had a two-goal, three point performance to lead the Hurricanes to a 5-3 victory over the Wild.

This win did not come easy, though as Carolina had to battle back from a 3-1 deficit and really made goaltender Brian Boucher earn his first win of the season late in the game. Neither team had much of a territorial advantage and things could have gone either way but it looked like the Wild had a win locked up when they took a 3-1 lead. This was a team that was 18-4-2 when leading after the second period and Carolina wasn't exactly producing a lot of offense but if there's one thing Minnesota hockey has taught us this weekend, it's that a two-goal lead isn't safe in hockey and the Hurricanes showed that today. They got a late second period goal on a lucky bounce and then came out strong in the third with two more goals to take the lead. Despite not recording a scoring chance in the last ten minutes, the Hurricanes held onto the lead and took home a win.

A very nice win to build off of as we head into the final stages of this road trip.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

The Hurricanes were hit with some surprising news yesterday evening as it was announced that forward Jeff Skinner would be suspended two games for "kicking" St. Louis player Scott Nichol with his skate blade during Thursday's game against the Blues. This is the first time that a Hurricanes player has been "Shanabanned" this year and the news surprised a lot of fans because not much was made of this incident by either broadcast team when it happened during the game. It did not miss the eye of Mr. Shanahan, though and Skinner will sit out the next two games.

When looking at the suspension explanation video, you can clearly see that Skinner uses his skate blade in a kicking motion on Nichol in an attempt to make more room for himself. This is in violation of Rule 49.1 and is an extremely dangerous play by Skinner. Martin Havlat was suspended five games for a similar instance in 2005. Skinner absolutely deserves this suspension and there is no debate about that, but this has led to some interesting discussions among Carolina fans about the team's need for an "enforcer" to look out for Skinner.

Anyone who watches Carolina knows that opposing teams have been taking liberties with Skinner ever since he came into the league and its easy to see why. Skinner is younger, smaller and weaker than a lot of his competition in the NHL and it has led to him be on the receiving end of some punishing hits from the likes of Brooks Orpik, Andy Sutton and Mark Fistric. The Hurricanes don't have a designated figher or "tough guy" on their team and Skinner's had to defend himself most of the time and it has led to him doing some pretty bad things between the whistles. The kicking incident that got Skinner suspended was done out of self-defense and he's also resorted to some cheap tactics in an effort to defend himself as of late and I am not a fan of it at all. Skinner is an amazing player and I understand that he has to defend himself despite being at a size and height disadvantage but I want him to be known for his goal-scoring and play-making skills rather than the stuff he resorts to between whistles to defend himself.

This is where the "enforcer" would come into play for most people. The idea is that having a big, intimidating fighter in the lineup will prevent other teams from taking runs at their players but in today's NHL, the role of an enforcer is very limited. Most play only five minutes per game, have little to no hockey skills and generally don't have much of an effect because of the instigator rule. It's a debate that has been run to the ground among hockey bloggers and all I can think of when people bring up a team's "need for an enforcer" is how little of them have much of an effect in the NHL right now. Many teams have tried to make room for a player like that but how many of them actually use these enforcers? Steve MacIntyre has played only 11 games for the Penguins this year, Brian McGrattan has played 30 games for the Nashville Predators, Darcy Hordichuk, Kevin Westgarth and Jody Shelley are healthy scratches on most nights and I don't even need to get into the Joel Rechlicz fiasco in Washington.

I am not sure if an enforcer is needed on the Hurricanes to protect guys like Skinner but what would help is having more of the team's bigger players help defend him. Tim Gleason and Bryan Allen have done this many times in the past and I guess it wouldn't hurt to have them step up their games a little bit. The only problem with them fighting and "roughing up" those who take runs at Skinner is that it normally results in one of them going to the box and that hurts the team because both are two of Carolina's best penalty killers. Anthony Stewart and Derek Joslin are two other players who have been willing to drop the gloves in the past and both are big, physical players that can provide an intimidating presence to opponent's. The issue here is that neither play a lot of minutes and likely will not be on the ice when Skinner is. I could see both of them playing a role similar to an enforcer, only they help the team in other ways besides fighting. Tuomo Ruutu is another player who I can see sticking up for Skinner during scrums and he plays on a line with him almost regularly. 

Skinner is only 19 and he will eventually mature enough physically to fight his own battles but until then, he is going to need some help. Like I just said, he's still a kid and his actions between the whistles show that he still has some learning to do when it comes to picking his battles and defending himself. His teammates can help him out with this area of the game but I do not think that help should come in the form of an enforcer.

The "first" game at the newly christened PNC Arena was a great one as the Hurricanes and Blues had themselves a good old fashioned goaltender duel between Cam Ward and Brian Elliott. Both netminders were tested plenty and played well enough to give their teams a chance to win but in the end, Carolina came out on top and Ward earned his 200th win with a 40-save shutout performance. He certainly did his part to keep this game tied at zero for the first two periods and the offense eventually came through for him in the third period with two goals.

This was a pretty odd game because despite a quarter of it being played at special teams, nothing too drastic happened as a result. The Blues and Hurricanes both had five powerplays a piece and neither scored on any of them. That doesn't happen too often so both teams should consider themselves lucky to get out of that mess relatively unscathed, and the Hurricanes should be glad that going 0/5 of the powerplay didn't come back to hurt them in the end like it has many times this year.

Solid win for the Canes against one of the best possession teams in the league. They were outshot 40-30 but they lowered the amount of chances they were giving up at even strength, got the goaltending they needed and the offense showed up at the right time. They also got a solid performance from the top line for the first time in about a week. Lots of things to feel good about with this win that we'll dive into after the jump.

The Hurricanes are now winless against both New York teams as they dropped a 4-2 decision to the Rangers last night. The game went about as most would expect considering the Rangers are sitting on top of the Eastern Conference and the Hurricanes are out of the race but are still battling to win games. Despite the score, that's pretty much what this game was like. Carolina managed to turn a 3-0 game into a one-goal deficit but could not complete the comeback as the Rangers put the Canes on lockdown for the rest of the third period an got an insurance goal from Carl Hagelin to put the game away. Hagelin's line with Brad Richards and Marian Gaborik was the story of the game as that line scored all of the Rangers goals, had 15 shots on goal and 13 scoring chances. Not many defenses are going to stop that.

"Good effort" is a phrase that's been thrown around here lately and that's all you can really say about Carolina's play when they lose. They haven't been playing bad and there's even been a few games when they've been able to outchance their opponents despite not coming away with the two points. Last night wasn't one of those instances, but the Canes certainly did not look bad. The Rangers just played better and got a couple more bounces.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

The news of Bobby Sanguinetti being called up has a lot of people talking about the future of Carolina's defense corps and how bright it is. With young players like Justin Faulk, Ryan Murphy, Brian Dumoulin, Mark Alt, Danny Biega and Sanguinetti in the system, there is a reason to be excited and we've seen Faulk step in and contribute immediately. However, it will be awhile before some of the other prospects start making an impact and if Carolina wants to become a competitive team again, their defensive play is going to need a ton of help. They are last in the NHL in shots allowed at even strength and are a bottom-10 team on the penalty kill.

In my latest weekly report, I made a note saying that this team was giving up too many chances on a nightly basis and they reached a new low last week by surrendering 77 scoring chances over four games. You can't give up over 20 scoring chances per night and expect to be a winning team, so defense has to be somewhat of a priority for the Hurricanes over the next couple of years. Adding a scoring winger would be nice, but I feel that Carolina's defense really needs to be addressed with this rebuild. I've discussed goaltender Cam Ward and how his inconsistency has been a reason why Carolina is in the spot they are right now. The team's poor defensive play is a reason why Ward is depended on so much and why the Canes have lived and died by his performance this year. Addressing this need can go a long way.

When I say "defensively play," I do not mean that the defense corps needs to overhauled because I do not think the play from our blue-liners has been horrendous this year. More times than not, the defensemen are put into bad situations due to the forwards refusing to back-check or commit to playing in the defensive zone. It has led to some odd-man rushes and catastrophic breakdowns that turned into goals for the opposing team. Both goals Tampa Bay scored on Saturday night are examples of what I am trying to explain.

Going by what I see, I believe that the forwards are more of a problem with the Hurricanes poor defensive play than the blue-liners themselves, but part of the fun of being a statistician is testing hypotheses like the one I just came up with. Is the Hurricanes poor defensive play mostly due to the forwards not playing a strong two-way game or is it the fault of the blue-liners? It would be nice to know this now so we know what holes to fill over the off-season and whether or not bringing in another defenseman is a need. We'll start examining this after the jump. 

The Hurricanes managed to pick up three points in four games this past week when you consider how badly they were outplayed in all four games. They were outshot in all but one game (which was the one they lost, oddly enough), controlled only 41% of the even strength corsi events and 36% of the shots on goal which shows that they were struggling to control play and had a few bounces go in their favor the last week. Goaltending was one of the main reasons why they picked up five out of eight possible points last week as Cam Ward was outstanding in all four games. The Canes were also turning about 9% of their shots into goals, which definitely factored into them being in more games than they should have.

I'm willing to bet that the road trip had something to do with the Hurricanes being outplayed so badly as all four games were on the road and both were back-to-backs. Despite the tough conditions and rough defensive play (gave up over 60 even strength scoring chances) the Canes were still able to win two games and earn points in three, which is good but not promising in the long-term. Acquiring a first line winger might be the first priority this summer, but Carolina really needs to improve defensively if they want to be a better team next year.

After the jump, we will single out some performances.

Another week is in the books and with that, we will look at the updated standings in the Southeast Division:

Remember, we are looking at wins, possession stats, each team's expected win total based on their goals for/against totals and their current point pace. See last week's post for more information on that.

The race for the top in the Southeast Division looks slightly clearer now. What was once a four team race has dwindled down to three teams with the Tampa Bay Lightning losing all three of their games last week and earning only one point. The playoffs looked like a longshot for them with the way their team has played, but they were only three points out a week ago. This slight losing streak they've been on has them seven points out now, which shows how small the margin of error is this late in the season.

It appears that Florida, Washington and Winnipeg are going to be the main contenders now and Washington has really closed the gap on Florida now. They did themselves a huge favor by winning three of their four games this week and earning points in all of them. The Caps have also seen their possession metrics improve and still have the best goal differential in the Southeast. This strong week puts them within one point of Florida, who earned three points in three games and still have a lead on the division. The four shootout wins and 13 OTL points has helped them a bit in that department, though. It is worth noting that the Panthers are missing a key player in Kris Versteeg and once he gets healthy, they could start to pull away but they are going to need to accumulate as many points as they can with Washington right on their tail. What could make or break Washington is the next couple of weeks where they have a five-game road trip featuring games in Winnipeg, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia. They need to earn points in the majority of those games to stay in the mix. 

Winnipeg is in the mix despite being four points behind but they've seen their possession stats take a tip the last couple of weeks. They are still a borderline positive team when the game is close, but they are getting hammered in corsi, which probably means that they block a lot of shots. The theme for the Jets this year is they have been great at home and are struggling on the road, and that was the case this past week. They defeated Buffalo at the MTS Centre and lost to Vancouver and Calgary on the road. Winnipeg has three home games coming up this week, but only two more after that so they are going to need to make those games at the MTS Centre count and dramatically improve their play on the road. I still think that they are good enough to possibly make the playoffs as the #8 seed or even make a run at the division if Washington or Florida begin to slip up.

If you have been keeping up with the scoring chance recaps, one thing you will notice is that Jamie McBain & Jaroslav Spacek have been the team's "highest rated" defensemen in about six of the last seven games. These two are also leading the defense corps in terms of possession metrics and are currently the only defensemen on the team with scoring chance percentages above the .500 mark. What this means is that whenever these two are on the ice, the puck is moving in the right direction and the Canes have been creating more chances.

Another thing they have in common is they rank near the bottom of the defense corps in corsi relative to quality of competition, which means they are mostly matched up against third and fourth liners from the opposing team. They are also among the team leaders in offensive zone starts, showing that they've been given a strong territorial advantage which has contributed to their success. Essentially, these two have been third pairing defensemen who have been seeing protected minutes and are used in mainly offensive situations. Some might see this as a knock on their game because they aren't being used against tough minutes, but I see it as head coach Kirk Muller utilizing both players to their strengths and it has had a very positive effect on the team's defense.

After the jump, we'll take a look at how McBain & Spacek have excelled in this role and the effect it has had on the rest of the defense corps.

One very small positive thing about this season for the Hurricanes is that they have avoided the embarrassment of being shutout for the most part. Tonight's 2-0 loss to the Florida Panthers was only the third time that the Canes have been shutout this season as Jose Theodore stopped all 34 shots thrown his way. Some might say that this was a "strong effort" by the Hurricanes because they outshot Florida 34-33 and had some good chances, but they definitely looked off for a good part of the game. A team is expected to look sluggish when playing the second night of a back-to-back and that was certainly the case with the Hurricanes tonight. They outshot the Panthers, but they were outchanced 16-17, showing that they were a bit off tonight and were not the better team. When your best player isn't at 100% and your third line is the most active offensively, it's hard to win a lot of games. That seemed to be the case tonight.

Scoring chances & more after the jump