It was only a month ago when the Hurricanes were in the driver's seat in the Southeast Division and basically all they needed to do was gain points in a little under 60% of their games to make it in. Since that point, the Canes have gone 3-11-1 and are now in the running for a top-five pick rather than a playoff spot. This free fall was something that even I didn't see coming because, as I have often reiterated here, the Hurricanes have been one of the better teams in the NHL at controlling puck-possession this season. This is usually what leads to success in the NHL, but not all the time. Goaltending, shooting luck and injuries are going to keep some good teams out of the playoffs this year because there are fewer games to make up for lost ground. The Hurricanes have been hit especially hard by the injury bug this year, but they've also seen a lot of other things go wrong for them as of late. This is evidenced by taking a look at their PDO over the season. 

For those who don't know what PDO is, it's the sum of a team's even strength shooting and save percentages and shows how lucky or unlucky a team has gotten. A PDO over 1.000 shows that a team has gotten very fortunate while a team with a PDO under 1.00 shows that they may have gotten a few bounces that have gone against them. Carolina's PDO has stayed stagnant for most of the year, but recently it has taken a nose dive. Looking at it over five-game segments shows this team's fall from grace pretty well.

Last night's game was a good chance for the Hurricanes to get a win. They were going up against a Rangers team who just played an overtime game the previous night, had to travel and were starting the same goalie in a back-to-back situation on top of that. This seemed like a good chance for the Canes to right the sinking ship that is their season, but as you probably know, nothing has been going their way as of late and that trend continued last night. They outplayed a tired Rangers team during five-on-five play and ended up losing 4-1 because of a few reasons with the biggest one being the reigning Vezina Trophy winner Henrik Lundqvist. He was a brick wall last night, stopping 48 of 49 shots and 27 of 28 scoring chances. Goalies usually perform poorly in back-to-back starts, but I guess that rule doesn't apply to the King.

If you had flashbacks to the Tampa Bay game where Ben Bishop stoned the Hurricanes then I don't blame you because Lundqvist was just as good, if not better. It might be a tough sell to fans to say that goaltending was the difference in a 4-1 loss, but it was when you consider how much the Hurricanes controlled play at even strength. The Canes did basically everything they could to beat Lundqvist and couldn't solve him until the third period when they were already trailing 3-0. When you are facing a goalie who is playing as well as Lundqvist, the margin for error becomes smaller and smaller by the game, which makes mistakes like Dan Ellis vacating the net to give Ryan Callahan an open goal to shoot at hurt so much more.

That's just the way things have gone for the Hurricanes as of late, though. They managed to put up a huge offensive performance without their best winger in the lineup and don't get rewarded for it because they ran into an elite goaltender. It's frustrating to watch from a fan's standpoint and I can bet the players are probably even more infuriated with how the last three games have turned out. The Hurricanes probably deserved better than the 4-1 loss they took but they also made a lot of mistakes to help seal their fate.

15 goals. That is all the Hurricanes have gotten from players not in their top-six this season and it's probably even lower than that if you take away special teams goal. Scoring depth is something that I did not think would be a problem for the Canes this year, but it's a pretty big issue right now. Their top line has accounted for a little under 45% of the team's overall goals and 33 of the 55 non-empty net goals they've scored during five-on-five play. As nice as it is to have a potent first line, the other players really need to produce to help take some of the burden on them. 

The Hurricanes might possess one of the best first lines in the NHL right now, but they aren't going to score every night, so the other lines are going to need to pick up the slack and they haven't done that lately. Jordan Staal's line with Jeff Skinner are somewhat guilty of this, too but I'm more willing to give them a pass because they have been productive in terms of creating scoring chances. The third and fourth lines, however, have not been so innocent.

The last time a Hurricanes third liner produced a goal was on March 16th against the Washington Capitals when Patrick Dwyer deflected in a point shot from Jay Harrison and the ONLY time a Carolina fourth liner scored came all the way back in early February when Tim Wallace scored against the Islanders. The Canes bottom two lines have gone through a lot of changes this year, but when you have only one total goal all season from an entire line, then that's not good. Even if a lot of fourth lines aren't depended on for scoring. Compare the Hurricanes scoring numbers with the rest of the league and you can see that they lean on their top-six a lot more than the majority of the NHL.

This is coming a few days late thanks to Game Center Live's 48-hour blackout rule, but I just wanted to get the scoring chance numbers from the Washington game up so that everyone can see them. It was one of the few games of the losing streak that Carolina probably "deserved" to win but ended up on the losing end because of a terrible performance in net by Justin Peters & Dan Ellis. Despite greatly outplaying Washington for two-thirds of the game, the Canes were trailing 5-3 and then Washington was able to settle things down and force the Canes to play their game. The Canes were guilty of some bad defensive breakdowns on a couple of the Washington goals, but they had limited the Caps to only 19 shots & 11 scoring chances. Allowing five goals on that kind of a workload is inexcusable on any goalie's part.

The Hurricanes played a good game but got a bad result and I was hoping they could at least build off this for Thursday night against Tampa Bay, which did not happen obviously.

The Hurricanes do not have many pleasant recent memories from games against the Tampa Bay Lightning and the 5-0 white-washing they took last night was just another chapter added to the book of what has been a painful three weeks for this team. It seems that each loss is more frustrating than the last and last night's game may have been the worst of the last 11 games, which is odd to say because the Hurricanes did not play as bad as the final score indicates. They certainly don't lose any points for work ethic from me, since they had a pretty huge territorial advantage over Tampa Bay in this game and fired 78 shots at the net during even strength play alone. The 45 that actually got on net were turned away by Tampa Bay's newly acquired goaltender Ben Bishop, who frustrated and shut down the Hurricanes all night to earn his second career shutout.

Sometimes there's nothing you can do when you run into a hot goalie and Bishop played as well as any goaltender that Carolina has faced this season. Considering that 24 of the shots he faced were scoring chances, I think it's fair to say that he was the main reason Tampa Bay won this game, but he also got a hefty amount of goal support from the team in front of him. Part of that was due to some shaky goaltending on the part of Dan Ellis and brutal defensive breakdowns by the Hurricanes in the third period. Ellis took the blame for the loss after the game and while the first and third goals he let in were awful, the Canes defense left him out to dry on the other three.

Tonight's game was pretty much a microcosm of what this entire season has been for the Hurricanes. They outplayed the Lightning in the first period but did not get rewarded for it, gave up an early goal in the second period and then everything just seemed to snowball after that. "Fragile" has been the word of choice to describe this team lately for this exact reason, since everything seems to become more difficult for them whenever they fall into a hole. I wouldn't say that they "give up" whenever they are in a tough spot, but I do notice that they get rattled easily, become too afraid to make mistakes and it results in them getting away from their game and leading to more mistakes. This is what I saw after the Hurricanes fell down 2-0 and it's becoming a common theme for this team lately. Bishop stopping everything thrown his way probably added to their frustration.

The Canes had no problem responding to adversity earlier in the season, so I'm not exactly sure what happened to them over the last three weeks. If a team is playing well but falls behind due to unfortunate circumstances, the coach's response is usually just to "stick to their game" and that hasn't been happening for awhile now. The team was able to win games despite their flaws earlier in the season but now it seems that all of their problems are insurmountable. I'm also not sure what Kirk Muller needs to do to fix this since it's been almost a month of these performances and we've yet to see much of a change. It's disappointing, but the end of this season really can't come soon enough for the Hurricanes. They are beaten up physically from all the injuries and mentally since nothing has gone their way for over three weeks. It might be easy from the fan's standpoint to tell them to "just suck it up and win the game," but hockey is a tough game and the Hurricanes are making things a lot more difficult than they need to be right now.

The Hurricanes have signed yet another one of their junior prospects after coming to terms with Brock McGinn on a three-year entry level deal. McGinn was one of the team's 2nd round picks in last year's draft and he just finished his third season with the Guelph Storm with 26 goals and 54 points in 68 games. McGinn will be reporting to the Charlotte Checkers for the remainder of the year and should provide them with a nice boost as they march toward the playoffs.

McGinn turned only 19 two months ago, so he is one of the youngest prospects the Canes have in their system right now and could return to juniors next season if he doesn't make the Checkers roster. His season got off to a very slow start, but he began to play really well from December onward and ended up second on the team in goals and fourth in points. He also had two goals and four points in three playoff games in the Storm's first round series against the Kitchener Rangers. Unfortunately, he was suspended for two games for a head-check penalty and his team was eliminated in five games but McGinn did make his presence felt when he was in the lineup.

I considered him a reach as a second round pick because he is more of a checking line-type player, but I have liked what I've seen from him in highlights. He has good strength, has no difficultly winning board battles and isn't afraid to go to the net to score. He may need to put on some muscle for his type of game to translate to the NHL since he is only 5-11 and 172 pounds right now, but he's only 19 so I'm not concerned about that right now. He might be in for a test with his upcoming stint in the AHL since he will be going up against bigger forwards and defensemen there and his performance there should be a good barometer of his development.

McGinn is probably a good few years away from making the NHL and should have a future as a solid checking line player if all goes according to plan. I'd expect him to take part in Charlotte's training camp this fall but I would be surprised if he doesn't end up in Guelph next year since he might be better off getting first line minutes there. I am excited to see what he can do for the Checkers down the stretch, though and hope he can become a solid player for this franchise.

"I believed we had a good product. As we speak today we don't." - Jim Rutherford

This is what Carolina Hurricanes GM Jim Rutherford had to say after the trade deadline yesterday regarding the current state of his team. Things looked promising heading into the year with the team adding two top-tier forwards to their roster and the Canes were sitting at the top of the Southeast Division for a good chunk of the year. Then they went through horrible ten-game stretch, winning only one game and earning three points in the standings during that time. The Canes are now basically hanging onto dear life for a playoff spot, which is disappointing because everyone was expecting better things this year, including Rutherford.

If the Hurricanes don't pull a miracle in the last 14 games, it will be the fourth season in a row where they have missed the playoffs and the 7th time in nine years. That doesn't reflect well on Rutherford, but how much of this season is his fault? Looking at how the team has played the last three weeks, it's easy to say that he didn't do enough to improve this team over the season. The defense had problems from day one, scoring depth has been an issue all season and the special teams have been just wretched on all accounts. Some of that responsibility falls on Rutherford's shoulders, but I still think that there were plenty of things that went wrong that were out of his control. Most of it relates to how different the roster is now compared to the beginning of the season.

Here was what the Hurricanes depth chart looked like entering the season.

Personally, I was somewhat confident with this team heading into the season. The defense was going to take their lumps but it certainly looked like the Canes had enough offense to help off-set things a little. Tlusty, Semin, Skinner and the Staal brothers were going to provide most of the team's offense with Jokinen, LaRose, Dwyer and the kids from Charlotte (Dalpe, Boychuk & Bowman) providing the secondary scoring. On paper, this looks like a decent forward corps and the Canes should have had a relatively balanced lineup.

Tlusty-Staal-Semin have been one of the best scoring lines in the NHL and Jordan Staal has been good, but the rest of the group didn't pan out as well. Boychuk was benched after one game and waived about a week later, Dalpe was sent back to Charlotte after 7 games, Bowman and LaRose have only 4 combined goals on the season, Jokinen had only 10 points and Dwyer has been occupying a top-six spot for most of the year. I suppose you could fault Rutherford for putting faith in one of the Charlotte kids to take over a top-six role, but can you really blame him for that? Bowman, Dalpe and Boychuk all performed very well during the lockout and deserved a chance there. None of them ended up working out for different reasons. 

Bowman's two-way play has been very bad this year and he isn't exactly proving himself to be a capable top-nine player like I thought he could be, Boychuk ended up being waived by two other NHL clubs and is now back in the AHL while Dalpe was sent back to Charlotte after seven games and has spent most of the season on IR. The only mistake made here was sending Dalpe back to Charlotte even though he had played very well in a top-six role with the Canes. The rest of the fault can go to the players for underperforming, and the same can be said for guys like Jussi Jokinen and Chad LaRose, who produced at much lower rates than normal this season. Both of them were slotted into bottom-six roles for most of the season and given their history, they should have been able to thrive in this setting but did not for whatever reason. Some of it was due to bad puck luck (Jokinen) while others simply did not play up to their standards (Bowman & LaRose). Factor in Jordan Staal having a revolving door of linemates along with Jeff Skinner's shooting percentage slump and you have a team that's currently starving for offense outside of their first line.

Most of what went wrong with the team's forwards were beyond Rutherford's control aside from the mistake with Dalpe, but he isn't as innocent with the defense. Rutherford tried to build a team that could fit Muller's up-tempo system and that involved letting Bryan Allen walk and replacing him with Joe Corvo. While Corvo has been good and a nice surprise this season, he isn't a top-four defenseman anymore and he, along with many others, were forced into that role because of the lack of depth on Carolina's blue line. Entering the year, this defense corps was probably average in terms of puck-possession combined with the forwards in front of him. The major issue with this plan is that Rutherford was placing a ton of faith in a 20-year old defenseman in Justin Faulk and a player who was healthy for only 30 games the previous year in Joni Pitkanen. Both of them ended up getting hurt and Rutherford did not have a contingency plan for this. Injuries are injuries and it's tough to replace two top-four defenseman, but I think Rutherford should have had some kind of back-up plan for Pitkanen given his recent health.

On that note, injuries are something that has been a really big problem for the Hurricanes this season. There are other teams who have lost more man games, but Carolina certainly has had a lot of impact players go down. Both Cam Ward & Dan Ellis got hurt, Tuomo Ruutu was out before the season even started, Jeff Skinner suffered another concussion, all but one defenseman has missed considerable time and Carolina had a to make due with a depth chart that looked like this for a couple weeks. Every team has to deal with injuries, so I'm not going to say that it's the only reason for the Hurricanes struggles, but I do think it's pretty crazy that they have gone through 32 different skaters this year, 12 of which were defensemen.

The whole nature of this shortened season has played a role in Carolina's struggles, as well. It makes injuries that much more difficult to overcome and each good/bad streak ten times more important than usual. Every team goes through streaks, but this recent skid the Hurricanes have been on could put them out of the playoffs because there is less time to make up ground. A team that goes 1-8-1 through 10 games at this time of the year probably doesn't belong in the playoffs but even good teams have their struggles (see Chicago & LA last year) and Carolina's underlying numbers still speak in their favor. They are in the top-half of the league in terms of controlling possession, which is generally a good sign for a team making the playoffs but I'm not sure if it will matter this season. There are only 14 games left, the Hurricanes roster is still pretty banged up and they just dealt away one of their better puck-possession forwards for basically nothing, so the most they can do now is just play out the rest of the season and see what happens. The horrific state of the Southeast Division has kept them alive in the playoff race, so there is some hope for the playoffs but it's very small.

If the Canes end up missing the playoffs yet again, I think all three parties are to blame. Rutherford accomplished his goal of improving the team but they still had major flaws on defense that became exposed once the injuries piled up. You also have many players who underperformed and there was nothing he could do about that and the coaching staff hasn't exactly gotten the most out of this squad either. I'm not in the locker room and don't know what goes on in there, so I'm not going to question the team's effort & work ethic, but the Canes have been playing lower than their ability in a lot of games this year and that doesn't exactly reflect well on the coaching staff.

At the same time, there have been a lot of things that have gone wrong for the Hurricanes this year, too. Between the widespread injuries, inability to score on the powerplay and the poor puck luck of players like Jokinen & Skinner, you could say that the Hockey Gods have not been completely on their side this year. In a full season, there is usually time for things to normalize, but it's very different in a condensed schedule so I'm going to refrain from over-reacting to what the results are this year and I'm hoping the higher-ups in the organization do as well. Long-term, the Hurricanes appear to be in decent shape assuming Rutherford doesn't go all Scott Howson and blow everything up. The defense needs to be re-tooled a bit, obviously but the top-six should stay in-tact and acquiring better depth forwards will also be a priority. This has just been a crazy year all around, so it's going to be important to keep a level head when analyzing this season regardless of what happens the rest of the way.

Whether the Hurricanes were buyers or sellers at the deadline, the one thing I did not want to see Jim Rutehrford do was make trades purely for the sake of it. The Hurricanes weren't going to find an answer for their defensive problems this deadline, so there was no point in dealing for another third-pairing guy and they didn't have enough assets to acquire a better player. At the same time, if the Hurricanes chose to be sellers, they don't exactly have a lot of attractable players on the roster right now and the most they would get in a trade were fringe prospects or low/mid-round draft picks. Draft picks in general are never a sure thing and the probability of one turning into an NHL player gets lower as you get into the later rounds, which is why I did not want to see the Hurricanes give away players for that price. Unfortunately, the Canes ended up doing that by sending Jussi Jokinen to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a conditional 6th/7th round pick. 

Jokinen is currently on pace to have his worst season in the NHL in terms of goals and points but I still believe that he had trade value for other teams, all of which went down the toilet when Rutherford elected to place Jokinen on waivers last week. He ended up clearing without any team putting in a claim. Now Jokinen had absolutely no value and Rutherford would pretty much have to accept any return he could get. Supposedly the reason why no team ended up claiming Jokinen was because he still had a year left on his contract, which will pay him $3 mil. next season. Sure, that looks bad when you see that he has only 11 points in 33 games, but there was a time when Jokinen was worth that kind of money and it was only a year ago.

Stats courtesy of Behind the Net

Jokinen's goal-scoring pace in 2009-10 was clearly an aberration, but he has produced at a pretty solid rate for most of his career with his numbers taking a complete tailspin this year. Carolina's head coach, Kirk Muller tried just about everything to get Jussi going this year. He started the year centering the third line and that didn't work out, which promted Muller to move him back over to right wing on Riley Nash & Jordan Staal's line respectively. Jokinen ended up not producing much, which has made everyone believe that he is washed up, worthless and "not a fit" for Muller's system, but I think he was just having a bad year more than anything else.

While Jokinen's scoring was down, he was shooting the puck a lot more and doing a solid job at driving the play forward despite having weaker linemates for most of the season. Puck luck is something that a lot of hockey fans don't accept, but Jokinen clearly did not have any of it this season. He was shooting at only 9.8%, nearly 3% lower than his career average and the Hurricanes, as a team, were shooting at less than 5% at even strength with him on the ice. His scoring numbers will probably decline as his career goes on, but he is nowhere near as bad as his boxcar numbers suggest right now. 

That being said, it was going to be tough to find a suitor for Jokinen because of his contract and low-boxcar stats, which meant that the Canes would have to sell-low regardless. What I don't understand is why the Hurriacnes were so eager to rid themselves of Jokinen a week ago when they placed him on waivers. Players like Blake Comeau and Ryan Clowe (who had a combined total of 4 goals) were traded today for bigger returns, so would it have hurt Carolina to hang onto Jokinen for another week instead of offering him for free on the waiver wire?

By doing that, Rutherford basically sent a message to the entire NHL saying that he doesn't want this player on his team's roster and would accept any turn to get rid of him. No team is going to give up anything more than a conditional pick for a player who was available for free only a week ago, thus giving Rutherford zero leverage in a future deal. Penguins GM took full advantage of this situation by acquiring Jokinen for a conditional 6th/7th round pick AND making the Hurricanes pay the rest of Jokinen's salary next season. In orther words, they essentially got a top-nine player for almost nothing. 

Even if the Hurricanes were going to sell and tank the rest of the season, you want to manage your assets well as a GM, which I do not think Rutherford did with Jokinen by waiving him. Even if the Hurricanes wanted to free up space for Tuomo Ruutu, they had enough room on the roster to keep Jokinen on the team for the rest of the year and could have traded him in the summer while eating some of his salary. The return certainly couldn't have been any lower than what they actually got for him today.

I'm not sure if Jokinen will be a fit in Pittsburgh and see more bounces go his way, but I wish him the best. He was a class act during his time in Carolina and will be missed.

The Hurricanes trade for a "veteran defenseman" finally happened, only the player they acquired was someone nobody expected. Instead of getting a "gritty veteran defenseman" like many thought, Rutherford added some help to the powerplay by acquiring Marc-Andre Bergeron from the Tampa Bay Lightning. All the Canes gave up to acquire him was a 7th round pick and waiver acquisition Adam Hall (who was subsequently waived again after the trade), so this is a low-risk move for the Hurricanes, but it's also a very strange one at that.

Assuming no one else is traded, the Canes will have nine defensemen on the roster once Justin Faulk and Bobby Sanguinetti are healthy and Kirk Muller is going to have to do his best to shuffle players in and out of the lineup. Even if the Hurricanes trade one of their defensemen within the next 24 hours, that leaves eight on the roster and I'm having a very hard time figuring out how Bergeron fits into the lineup. There is no doubt that he can provide help to a powerplay that's currently ranked dead last in the NHL, but his usage at even strength has been pretty suspect over the years.

For those who know nothing about Bergeron's history, here's a quick bio. He is a very skilled powerplay quarterback and puck-mover. He has a very hard, accurate slapshot that makes him dangerous on the powerplay and he can also lead defensive zone breakouts very efficiently. He's basically your prototypical offensive defenseman,  something the Hurricanes have too many of as it is but Bergeron is a bit of a special case. While he has improved the powerplay of just about every team he has been on, he has yet to stay with any team for more than three years because he is a defensive liability at even strength. His underlying numbers speak for themselves here.

Bergeron plays third-pairing minutes and usually starts the majority of his shifts in the offensive zone. Guy Boucher protected the hell out of him when he was with the Lightning the last three seasons, starting him in the offensive zone over 70% (!) of the time. I wish I knew how the Hurricanes planned to fit Bergeron in their lineup but I honestly don't see how it can work right now with Faulk still injured. The entire point of making a trade for a defenseman was to get someone to take pressure off McBain & Pitkanen and it seems like Bergeron will do the opposite of that since he needs to be sheltered to be effective.

With that being said, Bergeron is very, very good at what he does. He has been a negative possession player in only one of the last six seasons and has produced at a pretty impressive rate at even strength on top of that. The nice thing about a player like Bergeron is that while he might be a defensive liability, he is good enough at keeping the play in front of him that he's only defending 20-30% of the time he's out there. Bergeron actually thrived quite a bit under Boucher in his first two years with Tampa Bay. He's been a healthy scratch for most of this year, though.

The main thing to take away about Bergeron is that he can do a lot of good things for you in the offensive zone and he's even better on the powerplay.

Bergeron has produced terrific results on the powerplay for every team he has been on and I think this is where he will help the Canes the most. I mentioned earlier that their powerplay is ranked last in the NHL, but they are in the top-half in producing shots, The problem is that none of them are going in.. Only the Buffalo Sabres have a worse shooting percentage during 5v4 play and I'm not sure if Bergeron can help that. His big shot from the point and puck-handling skills will definitely create more chances, but not many are going to care if the goals don't come. The encouraging news here is that Bergeron has been able to give his teams results on the powerplay in the past, so hopefully that continues.

We know that Bergeron can help the Canes produce more offense and possibly help on the powerplay, it's just that  finding a spot for him in the lineup is going to be tough. Can Muller protect Bergeron as much as Boucher did? He's been giving extra offensive zone starts to any defenseman not named Justin Faulk or Tim Gleason, so I guess it shouldn't be too hard to shelter him, but I still don't see how he fits in unless another defenseman is traded. The Hurricanes had an abundance of puck-moving defenseman heading into this season and just added another, so it's going to put a lot more pressure on their heavy-lifters (Gleason, Faulk, Pitkanen) to do a lot more. We could possibly see the Canes use seven defensemen with Bergeron taking Westgarth's spot and being used in strictly offensive situations.

In short, this is a low-risk move for the Canes and while Bergeron does fill a need, I'm not sure just how good of a fit he will be. He only makes Carolina only a marginally better team if he plays to his full potential, but that's usually what a 7th round pick will get you.

Stats courtesy of Behind the Net.

We are only one day away from the trade deadline and every Hurricanes fan is wondering why GM Jim Rutherford has yet to make any moves. It seems pretty confusing at first glance because the Canes are currently in the middle of a playoff race and have been playing some of their worst hockey of the season. Since Rutherford has yet to make any deal at all, some fans have gotten the impression that he's either fine with the way the team is playing now or is low-balling other teams in trades. Any competent NHL executive isn't going to sit back when their team suffers a bad losing streak at this time of the year, so Rutherford has probably been very active in talking to other teams and trying to make trades. The problem is that he is in a very tough spot right now and there are going to be a lot of things standing in his way when it comes time to make moves.

The Canes are also not definitive "buyers" or "sellers" right now since they are on the cusp of even being in playoff contention. The weakness of the Southeast Division and the Eastern Conference has allowed them to stay in the pack despite their recent stretch of terrible play and a win streak could turn their season around. There are a lot of other teams who are in similar situations, so they are also going to be reluctant to buy or sell at this deadline and that's going to make a lot of trades tough to accomplish, especially for a team in the Hurricanes situation.