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

A couple of weeks ago I said this:

"Despite having only two goals, Skinner actually had a great month and the chances were going heavily in Carolina's favor when he was on the ice. Same goes for Jokinen only on a lesser scale. The reason for Skinner not scoring enough despite driving play in the right direction is mostly due to bad luck. Skinner had 35 shots on goal, was clearly getting plenty of opportunities at even strength but the pucks just weren't going in for him....If Skinner keeps playing like this then the goals will eventually come."

We are now five games into March now and Jeff Skinner has three goals and five points during that time. Part of the reason for this outburst is because he and his line with Jussi Jokinen and Chad LaRose have been constantly getting pressure in the offensive zone and creating scoring chances. It is no surprise that he has been on ice for 28 of Carolina's even strength scoring chances this month, an amount that leads the team. There's always a stretch of time when the bounces don't go a player's way but hard work and good play will not go unrewarded forever and we saw that hard work pay off for Skinner's line tonight in a 4-2 win over Tampa Bay. He, Jokinen and LaRose contributed to three of Carolina's goals and they were Carolina's best line for the third night in a row. A strong performance from them and goaltender Cam Ward, who made 36 saves, is main reason why Carolina was able to pick up a victory in a game where they were heavily outshot and outchanced.

We've seen a lot of games go this way lately, haven't we?

Scoring chances & more after the jump

When the Hurricanes inked Tuomo Ruutu to a four-year, $19 mil. contract, the general consensus among the hockey blogosphere is that the team severely overpaid to retain him. There is no doubt that the contract is an overpayment but what I, and other Carolina fans, want to know is what can we expect from Ruutu over the next four years and what does he have to do to justify his contract value?

To figure out if a player is producing relative to how much money he is making, we can use an equation called "Goals Versus Salary." Invented by Rob Vollman of Hockey Prospectus, Goals Versus Salary (or GVS) measures how many goals a player is contributing towards his team compared to a player making the same amount of money. After the jump, we are going to see how much Ruutu needs to produce to justify his contract and whether or not we can expect that from him.

Carolina's game against the Sabres on Wednesday ended on a sour, familiar note as they dropped yet another game in overtime. How poor their performance in OT games this year is one story but that isn't the main reason why they lost this game. Penalties were. You know it, I know it, anyone who watched the game or looked at the box score knows it. It doesn't matter how badly you outshoot, outplay or outchance the opposition, when HAND your opponent seven powerplay opportunities, you are digging your own grave, especially in a game on the road. The worst thing about the penalties was that they were all legit and were the result of incredibly poor discipline from guys like Chad LaRose and Jussi Jokinen (who had THREE minors on the night).

The final shot & chance total (10-16 & 24-42 respectfully) indicates that the Sabres controlled this game, but narrow it down to just even strength play and things are slightly more even. Buffalo outchanced the Hurricanes 14-10 at even strength and Buffalo only had a 24-20 shot advantage, so this wasn't that much of a "blowout." Carolina got themselves into penatly trouble and things ended up looking much more lopsided in Buffalo's favor on the statsheet, but the penalties are what doomed Carolina in this game. That along with the Canes doing nothing in the third period and their powerplay looked absolutely horrible on all three opportunities. The "special teams" battle has been a reoccurring theme for the Canes lately and them losing that battle ended up burning them on Wednesday night.

Aside from the penalties and awful powerplay Carolina played a decent game considering it was the second night of a back-to-back on the road. They really need to give Cam Ward a breather, though. I thought the reason for signing Brian Boucher was to use him in situations like this but the coaching staff clearly trusts #30 more. He played great, but the team can not keep giving up 40+ shots a night and expect him to be a brick wall. Give him a night off or two off to rest.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

Tuesday night's 4-3 overtime win over the Washington Capitals goes down as one of the most exciting Carolina games I have seen this year. With 85 combined shots and 44 scoring chances between both teams, you would expect an exciting contest. However, "exciting" and "good hockey" are not synonymous and this certainly was a sloppy played game by both teams. There was a lot of bad defense, poor puck-handling (although it was par for the course for Verizon Center) and careless turnovers that led to odd-man rushes. It makes for an entertaining game but it's not the kind of hockey I would like to see Carolina play on a regular basis. In the end, the Canes took advantage of their opportunities and got the job done in overtime despite being outchanced 25-19.

Washington is not the team you want to give up 25 scoring chances against but Cam Ward came up big when he needed to and Carolina turned just about every Washington miscue into something positive, including three goals. The final one being Justin Faulk's game-winner. It was a thrilling game and a nice win but the Hurricanes are going to need to clean up their play in the defensive zone because giving up 40+ shots and 20+ chances at even strength per game isn't going to lead to many win streaks. 

Whenever I post the team's scoring chance numbers at the end of the month, it is important to remember that those are raw numbers and every player is used in different situations. For that reason, I make sure to include their offensive zone start percentage to give some context for their situation. For instance, Brandon Sutter and Patrick Dwyer are constantly sent out in the defensive zone and their raw numbers are always around .450-.460 as a result. Those numbers look pretty brutal at first glance but it's important to remember that they are playing with the least favorable conditions on the team so they are actually doing a lot better than their raw scoring chance number indicate.

Players like Sutter and Dwyer are the reason why we need to adjust scoring chance numbers for zone starts, because that will give us more context on the situations that these players are being used in. Thanks to George Ays of Blue Shirt Banter, we can do this. He came up with an equation which determined that an offensive zone start is worth approximately .425 in scoring chances and we can use that formula to see how Carolina's players have been performing. It will be nice to know how guys like Sutter, Gleason & Allen are doing relative to their situations and we will look at those numbers after the jump

The Hurricanes closed out the last three games of their home stand by going 1-1-1 and slightly outchancing their opponents at even strength by owning 52.5% of the scoring chances. This will be the second week in a row that the Canes outchanced their opponents in the span of the week, which is a good sign for the team moving forward. Although, it's worth mentioning that they only outchanced one team this week (Tampa Bay 16-10) and it was by a wide margin so that likely had a an impact on their overall score. I still think it's a good sign that this team isn't getting shelled at even strength every game like they were earlier in the year and are actually managing to keep things close with most of their opponents. They could have easily been 2-1-0 this past week but they still have some areas they need to work on, one of the biggest being staying out of the box. After the jump, we will take a closer look at how the Canes did this past week and single out some top performers.