Pittsburgh Penguins (10-3-3) at Carolina Hurricanes (5-8-3)
RBC Center, 7 p.m.
TV: FS-Carolinas, ROOT Sports

Remember what I said yesterday about trying to be optimistic? The Canes are making it hard for me to do that. It's not just because they have lost five in a row and failed to score more than two goals in each of those games, but also the fact that injuries are piling on. Joni Pitkanen is out week-to-week with a foot injury and I can't stress out huge of an injury this is. The Canes do have a lot of NHL-quality defenders at their disposal but Pitkanen is the backbone on this defense. He plays in all situations, leads the team in time on ice and is actually keeping his head above water in corsi on a team that is getting shelled at even strength. This also means that someone else is going to have to step up and take over the minutes that Pitkanen plays. As much as everyone doesn't want to hear it, that someone might be Tomas Kaberle. He hasn't been used in that role in awhile but I'm all for giving it a shot and he, along with Jay Harrison, played the most minutes on defense last night against the Rangers. Let's see how Kaberle does when he's not protected as much as he has been this year. 

Also of note is Paul Maurice hinting that Eric Staal could see some time at wing tonight. I'm all for trying anything at this rate because Staal just can't seem to find his way onto the score sheet no matter what. His underlying numbers have improved a lot in the past couple weeks but the results haven't come yet so why not shake things up a bit? Everyone's guess is that Brandon Sutter will center his line and I like that idea because Sutter has a lot of offensive potential but he has been used in a more defensive role ever since being on the Hurricanes. Let's see how he does when he's not buried with defensive zone starts for a change. His 21-goal season a couple years ago was mostly due to a high shooting percentage but he's a great skater and has shown some goal-scoring ability so I'm all for giving this a shot. Carolina is going to need all the help they can get against Pittsburgh tonight.

Lines, analysis and more after the jump

Ever since Martin Gerber was played out of a job by Cam Ward in the 2006 Stanley Cup playoffs, the Canes have constantly relied on Ward for their goaltending and haven't gone to great lengths to provide a back-up to him. In the five seasons Ward has been the Hurricanes franchise netminder, he has started in at least 70% of their games with the exception of the 2009-10 season when he was out for about a month with a leg laceration. His back-ups in all of those seasons have basically been replacement level goalies ranging from AHL call-ups (Justin Peters) to waiver claims (Manny Legace). Last season Ward played in a career high 74 games and had his best season in the NHL, but the Hurricanes began to see that the still relatively young goalie was getting overworked and may need a few more games off this season. Thus, they went out and signed Brian Boucher to two-year deal worth $950k per year. That's reasonably more than they spent on other back-ups but how different is Boucher from the other goaltenders who played behind Ward? We'll explore that after the jump.

I was going to wait until I finished double-checking the chances from the Devils game to post this but I figured it would be best to get it over with fast. Last night's game ended in yet another 5-1 loss as the Hurricanes took a tie game into the third period and collapsed after a series of bad bounces and atrocious defense. This is similar to last week's game against Washington where the Canes were hanging tough with the Rangers for at least the first forty minutes and then a series of ugly plays occured and next thing you know the game was out of reach. People will point to Eric Staal's high sticking penalty which led to a powerplay goal by Dan Girardi as the turning point but the Canes were failing to create chances all game. They arguably had the advantage territorially for the first two periods but they couldn't create and take advantage of them. That came back to hurt them in the end when the implosion occurred. Being outchanced 8-2 in the final frame and giving up four goals was just icing on the cake

More after the jump.

Carolina Hurricanes (5-7-3) at New York Rangers (8-3-3)
Madison Square Garden, 7 p.m.
TV: FS-Carolinas, MSG

With the losing streak now at three games and the Canes near the bottom of the conference, you would believe that things are all gloom and doom in Carolina right now. It doesn't help that tonight they are going up against the surging New York Rangers who have won five in a row. I, however, am optimistic about tonight's game because the Canes had a relatively strong game against the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday and are finally starting to let some of their young talent play. All season long I have been waiting for guys like Zach Boychuk and Zac Dalpe to get a shot in the top-six and one of them finally has. That one was Zach Boychuk (Dalpe is a healthy scratch, unfortunately) as he had one of his strongest games as an NHL-er last Tuesday when he played on the second line with Tuomo Ruutu and Alexei Ponikarovsky. Maurice has rewarded his good play with a promotion to the top line and now we finally get our chance to see if Boychuk can work with this year's Eric Staal, who really needs to get the wheels turning at even strength. Oh, and that Jussi Jokinen guy who was the team's best forward in the first month is returning after many thought he would be done for at least a month.

Optimism all around for me.

Lines and analysis after the jump

Shooting percentages and PDO are things that I have been monitoring this year because there's a lot of Canes players who have fallen on some rotten luck this season (Eric Staal comes to mind) while others have been much more fortunate. I know saying a player has been "unlucky" is a lazy way to dismiss their shortcomings, but sometimes that's just what happens. Take a player like Alexander Ovechkin last year. He is normally an elite goal-scorer, a terrific possession driver and can be counted on for at least 40 goals per season. Last year, he netted only 32 but was still posting great possession numbers and appeared to be no worse than he was last season at driving the play. The fact is he was shooting the puck at a much lower percentage than his career average and simply just fell on some bad luck. That has carried over into this year, too.

When determining how lucky a player is, we normally look at their on-ice shooting percentage and PDO. An average shooting percentage is about 8-9 percent and an average PDO (which is just a player's shooting + save percentage) is 1000. A player with a low PDO is said to be very unlucky and it's the other way around for a player who has a PDO of over 1000. However, this isn't a tell-all stat as it only states how lucky a player is and things like corsi, scoring chances, etc. need to be taken into consideration. If a player is getting drowned in corsi, then he will have a low PDO because he isn't doing much. There are also some player who rarely shoot the puck and have a low shooting percentage as a result.

Let's see who has been lucky and unlucky on the Canes so far this year.

There was a time when the the Hurricanes were carrying nine defensemen on the roster but that number has now dwindled down to seven, but you can still make the argument that Carolina has eight NHL-ready defensemen in their system, which is why there has been a lot of buzz about Carolina possibly trading one of their spare defenseman. I am all for keeping Justin Faulk in Charlotte because he is only 19 and think he could use some more time to work on his all-around game, especially with the amount of offense-first guys Carolina has on their blue line right now. That leaves seven on the roster and the two fighting for playing time are Jamie McBain and Derek Joslin. Joslin has only played one game so far this year and while he played pretty well, he finds himself sitting out tonight against New Jersey. Then there's McBain, the player who will likely garner a bigger return. McBain has been very inconsistent this year and it would be nice to get something in return for him, but is trading him now really the correct move?

We'll look at both sides of the coin after the jump

In a week where the Canes were 1-2-0 and outscored 12-7 there are bound to be very few positives. That's pretty much what the case is for this past week. With all three games being at home, I expected much better from Carolina and they got off to a good start with a 4-2 win over Tampa Bay, but the next two games were disasters. It's even more frustrating when you bring up the fact that they were 2/13 on the powerplay over the course of two games with a few of those chances coming when the games were still in reach. The loss of Jussi Jokinen played a huge role in that as he was our best forward for the first month of the year but the second line has been doing fine without him. The first line and the powerplay are completely different stories, though. Staal has been posting better underlying number lately but they aren't turning into points, but I have a feeling that will change soon.

As for now, let's revisit the past week and see what the bright spots were for the Canes.

I have defended the powerplay for weeks now because while they weren't scoring goals, they were at least creating chances and getting shots on net. That's all I really wanted to see after how terrible it was last season in both areas but I have almost nothing positive to say about how the powerplay performed the last two games. Against Washington, they had four opportunities with the extra man, scored on none of them and created only three chances. It's okay, bad games happen right? Well, an even worse game happened Sunday against the Dallas Stars where the Canes had nine opportunities on the powerplay, a few of them coming when the game was reasonably still in reach and they managed to create only five scoring chances. Sure, they scored twice but one of those came when the game was already 5-1 in favor of Dallas and they also gave up a shorthanded goal. Just awful.

The scoring chances for this game do not reflect the game too well because a lot of Carolina's came in garbage time and all Dallas had to do for 60% of the time was sit back and watch the Canes dig their own grave as they could not sustain any pressure for a prolonged period of time. The Stars just had to wait for Carolina to make a mistake and that's exactly what they did which is why this game got so out of hand early. That and the awful powerplay which I talked about earlier.

More after the jump

I would mark this game as one of the most frustrating losses of the year. Judging from the boxscore, the Canes were overmatched and blown out but the truth is that Carolina was in this game for a long time and had multiple opportunities to come back but failed and had yet another third period meltdown. I would put this on the same level as the Flyers and Lightning games in terms of how bad of a collapse this was. Carolina wasn't playing awful at even strength the first forty minutes and could have easily tied the game in the third when the score was 2-1 but they committed a bad penalty, gave up an early goal and then didn't bother to show up for the rest of the period.

We'll revisit the disaster after the jump

Dallas Stars (9-3-0) vs. Carolina Hurricanes (5-5-3)
RBC Center, 1:30 p.m.
TV: NHL Network, FS-Southwest

Since the Panthers have a bye week, here's hoping that most of the Carolinas tune into the Hurricanes Sunday afternoon showdown with the Dallas Stars. This is the final game of Carolina's brief home stand and I said at the beginning of the week that Carolina needed to get a point in all three of these games to help them in the standings (mainly looking towards the future). The game against Tampa Bay was exactly what I wanted to see from this team. They came out strong, converted on the powerplay, the first line had a good game and they killed penalties while the game on Friday against the Caps was exactly the opposite of what I wanted to see from this team. There were numerous defensive breakdowns, the powerplay failed and it was just an ugly game overall. I am hoping for a much better effort in today's game against Dallas and pray that it is nothing like the last time we played the Stars. I have wiped most of that game from my memory and you should have too.

Either way, it's looking like the Canes are going to have a hard time without Jussi Jokinen judging from how the powerplay looked against Washington but let's hope things can turn around here. Maybe introduce some new blood into the powerplay in the form of some fourth liners who should be getting more ice time. Cough.

Lines, analysis & more after the jump