This was a very frustrating game to watch if you are a Hurricanes fan because for the first 21 minutes, the Hurricanes had complete control of the game and were playing what could have potentially been their strongest effort of the season. They had a 2-0 lead, were outchancing the Blues 9-5 and were keeping most of the Blues shots to the outside. After Brandon Sutter scored to give the Canes a two-goal lead with 18:27 left in the second period, things fell apart. The Blues recorded nine consecutive chances (all at even strength) including two goals and the Canes could not come up with any response at all. They were outchanced 16-8 at even strength for the rest of the game and found themselves playing for OT instead of trying to win. They say a team needs to have "killer instinct" to win games and the Canes certainly did not show any of that last night.

More after the jump

Carolina's powerplay has been decent these first few games. They are getting plenty of shots on net, have an 18.2 conversion rate (tied for 12th in the league) and are at least averaging one chance per two minutes with the man advantage. That isn't great but it's an improvement over last season. Carolina's first powerplay unit was shaken up a bit with the addition of Tomas Kaberle but the second unit also has a new member in the form of Jay Harrison. Offense is not something that I expect out of Harrison but he has been used frequently on the second powerplay unit this season. He's already played more minutes on the powerplay in six games than he did all of last year. Harrison has stated before that he has worked on his shot over the summer but how much does using him on the second PP unit benefit the team? Let's examine his performance a ltitle closer to find out.

More after the jump

Once again, special teams were a key factor in the Hurricanes winning this game only in a different way than the last two. Carolina spent 11:35 of this game on the powerplay thanks to some incredibly undisciplined play by Boston and were extend their 2-1 lead in the third period thanks to a couple of 5-on-3's. As a result, Carolina outchanced Boston in this game 17-16 but lost the battle at even strength 12-11. They were not dominated by Boston in this game at even strength like they were in Buffalo but Boston playing 1/6 of the game with a man down certainly had a big factor in Carolina winning this game. It also helped that guys like Zdeno Chara, Milan Lucic, Nathan Horton and Dennis Seidenberg were the ones who were being penalized the most for Boston.

More after the jump

Carolina Hurricanes (2-2-1) vs. Boston Bruins (2-3-0)
TD Garden, 7:00 p.m.
TV: FS-Carolinas, NESN

After that dramatic win against Buffalo on Friday night, the Canes now head to Boston for a rematch of last week's game with the Bruins. Carolina managed to pick up their first win of the year in Wednesday's game and they did it through a solid defensive effort and strong penalty kill. Special teams have been a key for this team all season and in the Buffalo game, it was the only reason Carolina won. Some say that you live and die by special teams in the NHL but my personal opinion is that special teams are extremely variable and strong performances at even strength are what wins most game. This is why I am hoping for an effort similar to last week's game against Boston tonight. We may have shut down Boston's powerplay last game but we can't keep going shorthanded five times a game and expect to win. That's just the way things work in the NHL.

Other notes heading into tonight's game are that Zac Dalpe will be out week-to-week for Carolina and Brett Sutter was called up to take his place. Dalpe has boatloads of talent but he was playing around five minutes per night every game this year so him not being in the lineup will not mean much. All Sutter has to do is forecheck well and he should be an adequate replacement. Aside from Tim Brent, Paul Maurice hasn't really been using the fourth line that much but these three had a strong game against Boston last week so maybe it will happen again.

More after the jump

The Canes blue line has a bright future with the prospects they have in the system. We've already talked a little about Justin Faulk and Ryan Murphy, but today we're going to feature Mark Alt. Carolina's second round pick from 2010 is currently in his sophomore year at the University of Minnesota and my friend Nathan Wells was kind enough to write an update on Alt and how his sophomore season at University of Minnesota (or The U as some people call it) is coming along. Nathan is a writer at SB Nation Minnesota, the Wild blog First Round Bust and a fan of all things Minnesota. I'll let him take it from here.

"Hello Shutdown Line readers. My name is Nathan Wells and I'm the assistant editor over at SBN Minnesota along with many other things. One of the things I do there is write about University of Minnesota Golden Gophers hockey and thought it would be great this year to try to give NHL fanbases updates on the many Gophers draftees. Sometimes box scores can be deceiving or do not tell the whole story, especially with defensemen, so here is one person's first-hand account on Carolina prospect Mark Alt.

Two weeks into the season, Minnesota sits undefeated at 4-0, having swept Sacred Heart - who for those who don't follow college hockey are one of the worst teams and a gimme win - and the defending national champion Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs.

Friday's game was an overtime thriller which featured a late comeback by the Gopher hockey team after Duluth with two minutes left. Saturday's game ended up being a sloppy affair where Minnesota's power play shined and their defense withstood a late Bulldog charge. Mark, who is second in points by a defenseman, had a good weekend defensively in a series where Minnesota Duluth put up 100 shots.

For those who don't know anything about Alt other than being last year's 2nd round pick, he differs from defensemen like Justin Faulk and Ryan Murphy with his size (Alt is listed at 6'3", 202 lbs) and raw athleticism. College is the first time that Alt is dedicating himself one hundred percent to hockey - he was an all-state QB in high school - and while he is not the world's best skater, Mark is able to make up for his deficiencies for now with his athletic talent.

So far this season, Gophers head coach Don Lucia has had Alt on the second defensive pairing with ftreshman Ben Marshall (DET) and creating an oddball pairing. Although Minnesota has a young blue line (seven of the eight defensemen are underclassmen), Mark is being used as a safety net for Marshall, who is a 5'9", 178 lb offensive defenseman who likes to pinch.

That pairing has worked well for Minnesota this season and Alt has consistently been the best defensive presence so far. Whether it is the penalty kill or even strength, last weekend was a frustrating weekend for the Gophers blue line. Despite Carolina signing Justin Faulk this off-season, Minnesota Duluth still has a potent power play and one of the nation's best forechecks. While almost every other Gophers defenseman was having trouble getting the puck out of the defensive zone and turned the puck over for a Grade A Bulldog chance on net, Alt was reliable time and time again. He's used his size well and is not afraid to hit. It's actually been the cause of both penalties this season.
If Alt could improve two things from the first two weeks, it would be skating and being more offensive. Minnesota leads the nation with 6.25 goals per game but Mark gets no more than one shot on goal. One of his shots from the point against Sacred Heart ended up being scored by Sam Warning on a rebound but regardless of having four assists in four games, most of them are secondary assists.
At the same time, while Alt's skating is enough to get by on the college level, it might not be at the next level where forwards can him pay. Fortunately while size can't be taught, skating can and the Gopher hockey program has churned out its share of defensemen (Erik Johnson, Paul Martin, Keith Ballard, Jordan Leopold, Alex Goligoski amongst others). How much Alt's skating improves should be a good estimate of how close he can reach his ceiling.

Next weekend Minnesota hosts the University of Vermon and I will be there covering the team. If anyone has any questions which weren't answered, I'll be happy to answer them on here or Twitter.

Until then as a bonus here is an article covering Mark Alt and his college choice. Family is important to him and Mark ended up playing in Saturday's game after attending his sister's wedding."

Definitely check out some of Nathan's articles at First Round Bust or SBN Minnesota for more updates on Alt and other Minnesota prospects.

Every week, I'm going to look at how each player on the Hurricanes performed and give my thoughts on it. I'm going to be looking at both the boxcar stats and the underlying numbers for this feature to give an idea of what kind of situations the players were in. To help provide some context, I'm going to post a OZ/Corsi Rel QOC graph at the beginning to show how each player was used throughout up to a certain point in the season. If you don't remember what that is, it's a graph that plots the percentage of offensive zone starts a player had against his corsi relative to quality of competition rating to show what situations he was put in. We're only looking at five games worth of data here so the results will be a little extreme but they should get the job done for what we're doing here.

For this week, I will be looking at the first two "weeks' of the year seeing how the Hurricanes season started on a Friday. So we'll basically be looking at each player's performance for the first five games, which is a pretty fair assessment if we're doing a weekly evaluation. Let's begin, shall we?

One of my favorite things about the new season is how skewed the stats look one week into the year. For instance, Eric Staal is on pace to be a -131 and we all know that isn't going to happen. David Legwand leading the NHL in points probably won't sustain either but what we can do is look how certain players have performed up to a certain point and evaluate them. Granted, that's hard to do when you're only going by five games but there's a few things for Canes fans to be happy about this season. One of which is the newly formed defense pairing of Bryan Allen and Tim Gleason. These two have given the Canes something they didn't have for a lot of last season; a solid, stay-at-home defense pairing who you can put up against other team's top lines and be confident in them. At least that's how they've been so far.

In the first five games of the year, Allen and Gleason have been on-ice for zero goals against at even strength when paired together. They've also been on-ice for four Hurricanes goals at even strength and only two shorthanded goals. When I saw this, I was impressed but then I thought to myself, "Just how many shots are they giving up in their own end?" Going by scoring chances, these two have been on-ice for 10 of Carolina's chances 5-on-5 and only 9 of the opponents when paired together. That's pretty damn good for a defense pairing that gets a lot of tough assignments.

Will this sustain throughout the season? The percentages suggest they will not (both have ridiculous on-ice shooting and save percentages) but let's hope they can stay solid for the rest of the yera. The good news is that right now, Allen and Gleason are getting the job done.

It's already been stated countless times, but special teams (and Cam Ward) were the reason Carolina won yesterday's game against the Sabres. When you score two of your goals shorthanded and one on the powerplay that is generally the case. The scoring chance data reflects the same thing, but a lot more extreme than I had thought. Carolina was outchanced 13-8 at even strength and 20-16 overall, which isn't as bad as I expected it to be, but what really sticks out to me is the five shorthanded chances Carolina had. There are games where we didn't create that many on the powerplay. Buffalo had a very high-risk game plan with how often their defensemen pinched and jumped into the play with the man advantage and it probably cost them the game. Penalties were getting Carolina into trouble last week and they found ways to get themselves out of it last night. Let's not make a habit out of it, though. 

More after the jump.

In Carolina's first three games of the year, it's been mainly the big guns (Staal, Skinner, Jokinen) who have been getting on the score-sheet. However, there's been a few bottom-sixers who have been creating chances but not converting. One of whom is Jiri Tlusty, who is quietly having a pretty solid start to the year. Personally, I didn't see him getting past the fourth line this season but Paul Maurice elected to put him on the second line with Jussi Jokinen and Chad LaRose to start the year. The lines have already been jumbled countless times but Tlusty has still seen himself bounce between the second and third lines. He's been on-ice for 14 of Carolina's even strength chances and that's partially due to him feeding off linemates but that wasn't the case this game. He was on-ice for three chances and created them all by himself, one of which was a goal. Good to see the points come to him.

As for the rest of this game, it could have been better from the first line's perspective but the Canes managed to barely outchance the Bruins in this game and come away with the victory, too. Amazing what killing penalties can do.

More after the jump.

In my game preview, I said that the Canes needed to stay out of the box because there's a good chance that special teams would play a huge factor in this game. I was about the last part of this because special teams did play a factor in this game as the Canes struck twice shorthanded and once on the powerplay, the latter goal gave Carolina the lead with less than two minutes to go. The problem was the Canes were unable to stay out of the box as they were shorthanded seven times in this game but killed off all of their penalties and managed to produce some offense out of it thanks to an over-aggressive Sabres powerplay and some great awareness from their penalty killers. You could argue that the Canes were outplayed in this game (which they were for a good portion) but you live and die by special teams in the NHL at times and Carolina managed to win that battle in this game.

Ten thoughts

• Carolina was outshot 26-18 at even strength tonight and it could have been a lot worse had it not been for the 31 others that were blocked or missed the net. Like I said, the Sabres controlled most of this game but the special teams were the reason Carolina came on top....that and the next bullet point.
• Aside from some rebound issues, Ward was at his best tonight. 39 saves on 42 shots and he made quite a few key stops when the Canes were shorthanded. Definitely built off a strong performance against Boston with an even better one tonight.
• Being over-aggressive on the powerplay will cost you at times and it burned the Sabres tonight. The first shorthanded goal was due to a Sabres defenseman pinching in and leaving Thomas Vanek to defend the point. He lost control of the puck and Brandon Sutter hustled to the neutral zone to get it and snipe a goal past Ryan Miller. The second started with a turnover behind the Carolina net which went right onto the stick of Jiri Tlusty. With Marc-Andre Grangani pinching, Tlusty and Tim Brent had a two-on-one against Christian Ehrhoff and were able to easily get around him and score on a rebound chance.
• Spreaking of being aggressive, Jay Harrison's offensive skills are getting slightly better as he recorded his first goal of the season tonight on nice little wrister. Unfortunately, his offensive mentality hasn't quite blossumed yet as a bad pinch led to the Sabres second goal.
• When looking at the corsi numbers for tonight, it's no surprise to see a lot of Canes in the negative column with how badly they were outshot at even strength. However, it's interesting to see that Robin Regher and Tyler Myers were the only Buffalo defensemen with a negative rating. Those two were assigned to Staal and/or Skinner line for most of this game. Staal had five shots on goal and six total attempts, Skinner had three on goal and five attempts. These two along with Jokinen were very strong at creating offense.
• Bryan Allen and Tim Gleason were getting hammered by Thomas Vanek's line for most of this game but these two did some serious heavy lifting on the penalty kill and were a big reason why Carolina won this game. I have really liked what I've seen out of this pairing when it comes to defensive play. 
• Of course, I have to say something about Allen's hit on Jason Pominville, which looked pretty bad at first glance. I thought the hit was pretty late (you could argue that Allen had time to let up) but it shouldn't be anything more than an interference call. A scrum like the Gleason/Gaustad fight was bound to happen after that.
• Carolina may have been outplayed for most of that game but they kept the Sabres on lockdown for most of the third period. They only allowed three scoring chances that entire period and the only reason the game was tied was due to a bad bounce. Although, the Sabres were possessing the puck a lot more that period, most of their shots came from the outside and weren't of good quality. Canes did a solid job of finishing this one off...until the bad bounce occurred.
• I know we escaped with the win here but the team simply can not keep taking this many penalties every night, especially ones like the too many men on the ice call late in the game. Chad LaRose has been around long enough to know not to play the puck when he is supposed to be going off for a line change. Huge mental lapse. 
• If Maurice is going to split up Skinner and Staal, then I would love to see Jokinen and Skinner back on the same line. Those two had some great chemistry last year and the pass Jokinen made to Skinner tonight to set up the game winner was so nasty. Although, I'm sure part of the reason Maurice split up those two was to get one of them away from Myers and Regher.