This series is now in the books and the Predators managed to oust the Detroit Red Wings, in five games and advance to the second round of the playoffs for the second time in franchise history. Most pundits and bloggers were split on their prediction on who would win this series but one thing they agreed on was that it would be a long series. That obviously wasn't the case as the Preds made quick work of their Central Division foes and became the first team to advance this post-season.

For my prediction, I had the Wings advancing in six games based on the fact that the Wings have been one of the best possession teams at even strength during the regular season while the Preds have been one of the worst. In addition to that, the Preds were relying on a hot powerplay and elite goaltending to get them to a playoff spot and I figured both of those wouldn't be enough to match against the Wings.

The part about the Wings being a superior team at even strength reigned true throughout this series, but the Preds absolutely dominated the goaltending matchup, which is part of the reason why they are in the second round and Detroit is golfing. After the jump, we'll take a closer look at what went right for Nashville and what went wrong for Detroit.

The biggest surprise of the year for Carolina has to be the emergence of Justin Faulk. The thought coming into this season was that the 19-year old would spend most of the season in Charlotte but he ended up playing 66 games with the Hurricanes and was one of their more consistent defensemen. Faulk's development is leaps and bounds above what many expected as he is already playing top four minutes on the Hurricanes without needing to be sheltered from tough competition. In addition to that, he performed a lot better than most of the team's other blue-liners in those situations and was one of the Canes' best special teams players.

Faulk is probably the best defenseman of this year's rookie class but his defensive game is still coming along, which is evident when you look at his even strength play. Faulk was on ice for more of Carolina's even strength chances relative to his ice time than any other defensemen, but he was also on ice for more of the opponent's, showing that his two-way game is still a work in progress. He performed better than most of Carolina's defensemen but he was also playing easier minutes than the likes of Tim Gleason and Bryan Allen, which is worth keeping in mind when evaluating Faulk as a player.

It's hard to be upset about the season Faulk had, though. He's already playing 20+ minutes a night while contributing on both the powerplay and penalty kill as a rookie. Faulk is still very young and I am sure that his overall game will be more polished in years to come. His numbers on the powerplay and penalty kill suggest that he plays well when he has a specific task, but finding the balance between offense and defense is what he needs to work on. The Hurricanes have to be happy with what they saw out of Faulk this year as it looks like he can be a top pairing defenseman somewhere along the line if he can continue to improve.

Scoring chance breakdown coming after the jump

Yesterday, Hurricanes beat writer Chip Alexander tweeted that GM Jim Rutherford re-signed 24-year old forward Jiri Tlusty to a two year contract extension which will have a cap hit of $1.6 mil. each year. Tlusty is coming off a breakout season where he set career high marks in both goals and points (17 and 36 respectively) and became a regular on the first line with Eric Staal. He was about to become a restricted free agent and was a huge bargain for the $525k he was making this season, so he absolutely deserved an extension and a raise but there are some questions looming about him.

Whenever a GM signs a player to any contract, he is taking a risk by investing years and dollars in that player. Is Tlusty worth that kind of risk to the Hurricanes. My first thought is yes because Tlusty is coming off a great season and a two-year deal with less than $2 mil. per isn't exactly a huge investment, especially for a team like Carolina who doesn't spend to the cap.

However, I can't help but be reminded of the Edmonton Oilers getting themselves into a huge mess by signing a number of young players to multi-year deals after they had one good season, most specifically Gilbert Brule and Robert Nilsson. Brule in particular has some similarities to Tlusty. Both entered the league at a young age and clearly weren't ready for the NHL at the time. As a result, they couldn't make much of an impact with the clubs who drafted them and ended up having breakout seasons with their new team's shortly after.

Brule had 17 goals and 37 points in his second season with the Oilers which led to him getting a two-year extension worth about $1.9 mil. per year. That decision ended up burning the Oilers as he struggled with injuries the next year and wasn't very effective when he was healthy either. The Oilers attempted to trade him, but his concussion issues prevented that and Brule was eventually put on waivers and claimed by the Phoenix Coyotes. The point behind this is that the risk the Oilers took on Brule didn't appear to be terrible at first, but it ended up looking like a horrible decision the year later. Can the same thing happen with Tlusty?

Tlusty and Brule are completely different players, but their underlying numbers from their breakout seasons (2009 for Brule & 2011 for Tlusty respectively) are a tad similar. They didn't have spectacular possession numbers, started a slight majority of their shifts in the defensive zone and faced similar opponents in terms of quality of competition. The most glaring similarity though comes in the first Copper & Blue article I linked two paragraphs earlier and that's the effect of good linemates. Much of Brule's success in his breakout year was attributed to playing with Dustin Penner during his career season. Likewise, Tlusty's success can possibly be attributed to Eric Staal.

I examined this a couple months ago and determined that Tlusty is a lot more effective when he is playing with Staal. Just about all of Tlusty's underlying numbers went up when he was playing on Staal's line and they took a nose-dive when he wasn't. Another telling stat is that Staal was on ice for 30 of the even strength goals Tlusty scored, which is 71.4% of the 42 he was on-ice for all season. You have to wonder what happens when he isn't playing with Staal.

That being said,Tlusty and Brule have their differences. Brule has a very sketchy injury history and Tlusty's isn't nearly as bad. Tlusty has also been a lot more successful at the AHL level as he was almost a point-per-game player with the Toronto Marlies. He was still in his early 20's during those years, too. It's also possible that he might stay in a top-six role next season and if he can continue to develop chemistry with Staal, then the Hurricanes have themselves a good player locked up for two more years. Tlusty was also somewhat effective in a bottom-six role in 2010-11 in Carolina and proved to be useful even if he wasn't scoring. 

Just about every player has "red flags" that people will point to when it comes time for contract negotiations and Tlusty is no different. The Hurricanes are taking a risk with Tlusty but in today's cap world, a $1.6 mil. cap hit isn't going to severely damage a team beyond repair. If Tlusty can improve on this season or even have something similar to it, then this is a great deal. If not, then the Canes can easily work their way around it. What we don't know is whether or not they will get the Tlusty of this most recent season.

If you look at the rosters for every team in the NHL, most of them will have a player like Patrick Dwyer in their bottom-six. Dwyer is a prototypical defensive forward who specializes in killing penalties, blocking shots and preventing chances and he does all three of those tasks very well for the Hurricanes. You could say that he's a "dime a dozen" player but what makes Dwyer more valuable than other defensive forwards is how big of a workload he (and Sutter) take on.

For most of the year, these two and Andreas Nodl made up the team's shutdown line and they started almost 70% of their shifts in the defensive zone. Dywer and Sutter alone were in the bottom quarter of the league in offensive zone start percentage and were always matched up against opposing team's top lines. The Hurricanes also yielded fewer scoring chances whenever Dwyer was on the ice, which shows that he's above other standard defensive forwards when you consider the situations that he plays in. That is what makes Dwyer a valuable member to the Hurricanes.

What keeps Dwyer from being more than just a defensive or a bottom-sixer is his offensive skill-set, which is almost non-existent. He can skate well and his hands aren't made out of stone, but he doesn't have much of a scoring upside at all. That's the reason why he appears as a replacement level player in both boxcar and underlying numbers but he plays a very important role on the Hurricanes and does a solid job at it.

We will look at said underlying numbers after the jump

There are a lot of phrases you can use to sum up the Capitals 4-3 overtime loss to the Bruins in Game 6 this afternoon. I've heard most people call it an "opportunity missed" for the Caps because they could have closed out the series with a win, but failed in overtime. Personally, I see this as a wasted effort for Washington. The Caps played arguably their best game of the series but ended up taking the loss because of a few miscues and a poorly played overtime period. Now they have to play one more game to advance. 

The Bruins are still winning the overall battle at even strength so they should be confident going into game 7, but they dodged a bullet in today's game.

Scoring chance breakdown after the jump

The Washington Capitals are one win away from pulling off an upset that not many predicted after defeating the Bruins 4-3 in game 5 earlier today. Just about all of their success in this series has been attributed to goaltender Braden Holtby, who has been absolutely phenomenal with a .946 save percentage. However, one thing that has been slightly overlooked is the defensive play of the Capitals as they have been able to limit the Bruins scoring chances.

They've been giving up a lot of shots but they've been forcing the Bruins to settle for soft wristers from the point with no traffic in front countless times. Washington has also done a good job of clogging up the neutral zone and not allowing the Bruins to genera much momentum at even strength. That has been the story for games 1-4, but today's game was slightly different.

The Capitals had one of their better offensive performances today with four goals and 16 scoring chances but their defense unraveled a bit once they took a 2-0 lead and Holtby had to do his best to prevent Boston from taking the lead. He kept them in it long enough for the Caps to draw a penalty which led to Tim Thomas giving up a soft goal that ended up being the game winner.

Washington now has Boston on the ropes but they had a bit of luck on their side with this win today and will need to play a lot better than they did in the final 25 minutes. We will breakdown the rest of this game after the jump.

When I look at the Hurricanes' scoring chance numbers that I have been tracking since the beginning of the season, there is a lot of emphasis placed on even strength play. This is because most of the game is played at five-on-five and it is generally better to use even strength data as a way to find out a player's talent level. With that being said, special teams are very important, too and Carolina had a lot of trouble on both the powerplay and penalty kill this season. Their powerplay was not nearly as bad as their 19th ranking suggests, as they were getting shots on net with the man advantage but their PK gave up a lot of shots and chances.

There were a lot of different players used on both special teams units this year, so finding out who was the most and least effective will give us a better idea of what holes the Hurricanes have to fill next season. The PK appears to have quite a few holes judging by how many shots they surrender on a nightly basis.

Other than going by goal and points, one effective way to find out who is the most effective on special teams is to look at how many scoring chances the team surrenders when a certain player is on the ice. After the jump, we will look at those numbers from the Hurricanes last season.

This season was projected by many to be Zac Dalpe's "breakout" year, but things didn't quite turn oute as planned. The highly touted forward prospect struggled with injuries early in the season, was given very limited ice time and ended up playing only 16 games with the Hurricanes. Dalpe is only 22 and still has plenty of time to break into the NHL but this season seemed like the perfect time for him to do so. There were open spots in the top-six, specifically on the wings, and he definitely had his chance to really make an impact, but he didn't.

Now, most of this was out of Dalpe's control because he was good enough to make the team out of camp, but the injury he sustained in October was a definite setback. It also didn't help that Paul Maurice, head coach at the time, mainly kept him on the fourth line and played him for less than five mintues a game. It's tough to succeed in those situations, but Dalpe was eventually given a shot in the top-six in late December and had some moderate success. Regardless, it wasn't enough for him to stay on the roster and he spent most of his time in Charlotte.

The book is still open on Dalpe since he's still young and has a pretty high ceiling but I think it is safe to say that it was a little disappointing to not see him take that next step into the NHL this season. We saw Drayson Bowman make that leap because he can play in other roles besides the top-six, which might be the issue with Dalpe. I do think that next season is going to be an important year for Dalpe because he has a lot of potential and it's time for him to show it to the coaching staff so they can trust him with a bigger role.

Breaking down scoring chances over a sixteen game span is pretty pointless since it's a small sample size, but we're going to look at it anyway and see how Dalpe performed during his short stay in the NHL.

Just before the game, I said that the Preds would not be able to go far in the playoffs or this series on goaltending alone and Detroit would push this series to seven games if they continued to do so. Nashville responded by putting together their strongest performance of the playoffs by far and closing out their series with Detroit in five games.

I have to hand it to Nashville because I thought they wouldn't get past the first round but they proved me wrong and then some, especially tonight. Had they won purely due to goaltending I might be singing a different tune but that wasn't the case tonight. The Preds were strongly attacking the offensive zone for the first two periods and managed to sustain pressure for prolonged periods of time. That led to them creating more scoring chances and they eventually ended up exhausting the Red Wings because they had them pinned in their own end for most of the game.

This is the way the Predators need to play if they are going to be Cup contenders and they certainly looked like they could be tonight. Whenever you can limit a team like Detroit to only eight total scoring chances, you know you are playing some damn good hockey. Let's see if this carries over into the next round. 

Scoring chance breakdown after the jump

I have been a bit behind with getting the scoring chances up in time for this series due to cable problems and Game Center's 48 hour blackout. I do have the first four games tracked, though and this really has been a strange series. The refs are calling just about anything (aside from that little Shea Weber thing that I'm sure you all know about) so there have been a lot of powerplays between both teams and neither team has been able to take advantage of their opportunities with the man advantage.

The Predators had the "league's best" powerplay during the regular season and it was expected that their success their would go down since it was driven by a high shooting percentage and guess what? It has. Nashville's powerplay is only clicking at 10.9% this post-season but luckily for them, Detroit's hasn't been much better at only 19%.

With both teams not being able to score much with the man advantage, even strength play and goaltending are likely going to be the deciding factors in this series. The Preds have a 3-1 series lead because they've been getting outstanding goaltending from Pekka Rinne while Jimmy Howard of the Red Wings has the lowest save percentage of any goalie in the playoffs outside of that circus in Pennsylvania.

Nashville appears to have a stranglehold on this series but after the jump, we'll look at why Detroit might have a comeback up their sleeves.