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. 

With 12 goals and 24 points, Tim Brent ended up being a steal for the $700k the Hurricanes were paying him this season. His hard work ethic, ability to be used on multiple areas on special teams and outgoing personality made him a fan favorite with the Hurricanes and it also helped that he had career highs in goals and points. Brent appeared to give the fourth line a much needed boost as he produced at a very high rate for a guy who regularly played less than 10 minutes a game, but what are the chances of Brent having another year like this?

One other area that Brent had a career high in was shooting percentage, as he scored on 16.9% of his shots which probably isn't sustainable in the long run. He also ended up being a regular on the powerplay while Joni Pitkanen was injured and he earned seven of his 24 points there. Brent will probably need to have more time on the powerplay and continue to get fortunate when it comes to shooting the puck if he wants to have another season like this.

Why am I so pessimistic? Because Brent's underlying numbers aren't very good at all. Goals and points speak a lot more than possession and scoring chance metrics do, so Brent had a great season overall. His chances of repeating it, however, are very low. After the jump, we'll take a look at said numbers.

Yesterday, I talked about Drayson Bowman who is one of the Hurricanes prospects that has a very good chance of becoming a full-time NHL-er next season. GM Jim Rutherford has even gone on record saying that he's impressed with Bowman's development, but one player who he might not be as impressed with is 2008 first rounder Zach Boychuk.

Boychuk played only 16 games with the Hurricanes, failed to score a goal and recorded only two points. Some had labeled this season as a "make or break" year for him and he started things off on a poor note by failing to make the team out of camp. He didn't make much of an impact once he was called up either and that has been the case for most of his career as a Hurricanes.

That being said, Boychuk did a lot of good things when he was with the big club even if he wasn't showing up on the scoresheet, it just wasn't enough to impress either coach and Rutherford is going to have a tough decision on what to do with him this off-season. He's a restricted free agent and I'm not sure he will even get a qualifying offer at this point. Part of me thinks that is an awful idea because he is only 22 and still has a window to make it in the NHL, but it doesn't seem that the coaching staff or front office is high on him at the moment so Boychuk could find himself with a different club come next season.

After the jump, we'll take a closer look at Boychuk's season and see if it is smart for the organization to give up on him now.

Continuing our statistical look at the Carolina Hurricanes' players in the 2011-12 season, we move onto Drayson Bowman who is one of the team's better forward prospects. There were a few fans who thought he would make the Hurricanes out of camp, but he ended up starting the year in Charlotte and was on-and-off the roster for most of the season. He seemed to finally settle into a third line role around the time of late-February/early-March, though and it looks like he should be on the team to start next season.

Bowman is a player who I thought did everything right except score and that was the case for all of last season and most of this year. He was always one of the Canes' better players at controlling possession and creating offense but the goals just weren't coming. Part of this is due to bad luck because Bowman was getting decent ice time for most of the season but it could suggest a lack of finishing ability, too.

Thankfully for Bowman, he finished the year on a relatively strong note and ended up with six goals and 13 assists in 37 games. That isn't great but also not terrible for a kid called up from the AHL. Plus, Bowman does so many other things well that I think he's earned a strong look for a roster spot next season. If anything, he could be a solid third liner that gets the puck into the right end of the ice. 

After the jump, we'll take a look at Bowman's underlying numbers and how he performed compared to the rest of the team.

Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to take a player-by-player look at the Hurricanes' scoring chances to review their season's. There will be two parts done for each player, a scoring chance recap which will consist mostly of numbers and a more thorough review which will talk about the player's season as a whole, the roles he played on the team and what kind of outlook I have for the player next season. It'll be a long process since going through the data takes time, but I think it will be worth while in the end. Going by memories and boxcar stats can tell you one thing about a player, but going deeper into the data tells you a lot more, which is why I am doing this project.

To kick things off, we are going to take a look at one of the Hurricanes more interesting players in Bryan Allen. He was acquired from the Florida Panthers near the end of the 2011 trade deadline for Sergei Samsonov and has played a bigger role than a lot of people expected him to. Most thought that he would be a third pairing defenseman for most of the year but he ended up getting top-four minutes on a lot of nights and was part of the team's main shutdown defense pairing for most of the season.

He played some of the toughest minutes on the team and was considered a reliable shutdown guy for most of the year. Allen is a free agent come July and the general consensus is that most Carolina fans want to keep him around because of how good he played this season. Was he as everyone perceived him, though? Going by scoring chances he was, but not for the entire year. A closer look at this is coming after the jump.

This past season wasn't quite what the Hurricanes fans were hoping for. In fact, it was a lot worse than most of us were expecting and now the finger pointing game has begun with a lot of fans criticisms directed towards General Manager Jim Rutherford. There's definitely a lot of reasons to be upset right now. The Hurricanes have failed to make the playoffs the last three seasons and have finished in the bottom-10 of the league in two of the last three seasons.

How much heat does Rutherford deserve for the Hurricanes problems, though? He's been with the organization for almost 20 years so it's tough to rate his whole body of work, but what we can do is look at some of his recent moves to see how much of Carolina's struggles are on him. Over the last few years, Rutherford has done a mix of both good and bad things for the Hurricanes so it's tough to place the blame solely on him. After the jump, we will take a look at some of those moves and talk about what JR has to do to make the Hurricanes a winning team again.

The Hurricanes might be out of the playoffs but they did release some very good news earlier in the week as the team has signed Brian Dumoulin to an entry-level contract. Dumoulin is rated the team's fourth best prospect and numerous scouts have said that he is NHL ready as of right now so it is very possible that he could be playing in Raleigh next season.

What does this mean for the rest of the defense corps, though? Carolina has five defensemen under contract next season with Jaroslav Spacek and Bryan Allen becoming unrestricted free agents and Jamie McBain being a restricted free agent. McBain will likely be retained but there is also talk that Allen might be re-signed, as well. Should that happen, that means Carolina will have essentially the same defense next season as they did last year but things could easily be very different if both Dumoulin, Ryan Murphy and even Bobby Sanguinetti are impressive enough in training camp to make the team. 

That's when you realize that there's a lot to be excited about with Carolina's defense even though it's in pretty bad shape right now. With Justin Faulk leading the way this year, the Canes could be seeing a massive youth movement on their blue-line as soon as next season. Is letting the kids play the right way to go or should the Canes let Dumoulin & Murphy ease their way in? After the jump, we'll talk about that and look into how different the Hurricanes defense might be come October.

The Coyotes really have bad luck with drawing the worst possible first round opponents possible as their first round matchup is the Chicago Blackhawks, a team that a lot of people think are good enough to go to the Stanley Cup Finals. That's not to say that Phoenix will be a complete pushover but the matchup doesn't look very good for them at all. There are a couple playoff teams who I think Phoenix can defeat, but I'm not sure if the Blackhawks are one of those teams.

That said, the 'Yotes have their advantages over the Blackhawks and could possibly win this series. We'll look into those more after the jump.