We are now at the series that as being regarded as the best of the first round. I have different opinions on that, but I do think that this will be a very entertaining series as it features two of the best teams in the Eastern Conference. It's a shame that one of these teams has to go out in the first round because I think both are capable of pulling off a great run, especially this season. 

Going by the season series, one could say that the Flyers have the upper-hand in this series but the Penguins have played better in this series than the final scores indicate. In some of the games they lost against Philly, the Pens outshot and outplayed the Flyers for most of those games but fell victim to poor goaltending and it ended up sinking them. The team's second to last meetings is a fine example of that.

Both teams have undergone various roster changes over the season, too with so many different players getting hurt and returning throughout the year. Therefore, going by the season series isn't going to tell you everything you need to know about this series. After the jump, we'll take a closer look at both teams and determine who will advance to the second round.

The long playoff drought in Florida is over as the Panthers made the playoffs for the first time in over a decade this year by winning the Southeast Division. I'm very happy for them and their fans but one thing to keep in mind is that they won an awful division and are probably the weakest team in the playoffs. Their goal differential is among the worst in NHL history for a division winner and over half of their points were accumulated in one goal games, 18 of which coming in overtime and shootout losses.

Does this mean that they are destined for a first round exit? Teams that earn a lot of their points in close games generally don't do well in the playoffs so it's easy to see why people think this is a good draw for the Devils but I don't think this is a complete mismatch. The Devils have also been involved in a lot of one-goal games and have the second highest winning percentage in the league in that category. New Jersey also has 12 shootout victories so I think it's unfair to discount Florida solely because of this as the Devils have clearly gotten a bit lucky this season too.

That being said, New Jersey plays in a tougher division and plays more difficult opponents so I think they deserve some slack but I still think that Florida will not completely lie down for them in this series. Does this mean I think they can win the series? You'll find that out after the jump.

When people were making their pre-season predictions, many had this as a possible Eastern Conference final. The Bruins did their part of winning their division and locking up the #2 seed but the Capitals have been struggling all year and barely made it into the playoffs. They've been marred by injuries, inconsistencies and coaching problems but they managed to make it do the dance. Unfortunately for Caps fans, making the playoffs hasn't been an issue in years past, it's been having success after that.

Can Washington manage to get over the hump and pull of an upset in the first round. We will see what the odds of that are after the jump.

It's the most wonderful time of the hockey year and I am going to celebrate it by breaking down every series. I will also be tracking scoring chances, this one I'm about to talk about not being one of them. The Ottawa Senators and New York Rangers both have terrific bloggers who already track scoring chances for their respective teams and I am sure that they are looking forward to what should be a great series. I have a feeling that this series should be a lot closer than most people are predicting because Ottawa is a little better than a lot of people give them credit for and at the same time, the Rangers aren't as good as their #1 seed indicates.

We will break this series down after the jump.

At the beginning of the season, I attempted to project the performance of every regular skater on the team by looking at players similar to them going by their career scoring patterns. The way this method is utilized is that the player's performance is supposed to mimic those of their comparables and their projected performance of a given year will fall in between a certain set of point. This is essentially what I did for my projections but I also looked at the player's career performance and took into account what kind of ice time and linemates he would have throughout the year. I also came up with one projection instead of a range of points because I thought it would be a good challenge. 

Some of my projections were accurate while others were completely off and we are going to go through all of them after the jump.

There really isn't much to say about this game other than the Canes got off to a horrible start and score effects did the rest. Congratulations to the Florida Panthers on winning the Southeast and making the playoffs for the first time in over a decade. This isn't the way that I wanted the Hurricanes to end their season but a rebuilding team is going to take their lumps. Carolina had a miserable first half to the season and it looked like they were destined for a lottery pick, but they have improved a lot since January and it looks like there are some pieces here that we can possibly build something with. It's too bad that the season had to end on a losing note, but don't let it erase the great things we have seen over the last couple of months.

Now it's time to look forward to the off-season and what Jim Rutherford will do with the Canes #8 pick.

The Hurricanes finally got involved in the college agent game the other day by signing Union College forward Jeremy Welsh to an entry-level contract hours after they were eliminated from the NCAA Frozen Four by Ferris State. Welsh was very good in the NCAA tournament for Union College as he was one of their best players with eight points in nine games.

Welsh is described by college fans and scouts as a big forward who has a solid shot and great offensive prowess. He was also known as one of the leaders of the leaders of this Union squad and is coming off quite a season with a career high 27 goals and 44 points in 40 regular season games. Some scouting reports also say that Welsh plays a somewhat physical game and uses his big frame to his advantage when battling for pucks and gaining position against defensemen.

Not everyone has access to watch every college hockey game, so the only information I know about Welsh's game is through stats, what scouts say and from my observations of him in the NCAA tournament. The scouts seem to think that he can be a solid contributor to the Hurricanes at some point and he was very impressive by the eye-test and through stats in the NCAA tournament. What does this say about his future, though?

The best that we can do to project a college hockey player's production at the pro level is to go by translations from Behind the Net hockey. It is tougher to score goals in the NHL than any other league in the world and each league has it's own difficulty level that compares how players from each league have performed in the NHL compared to where they came from. For the NCAA, the difficulty level is set at 41%, which means that players who jump from college to the NHL keep 41% of their scoring. That isn't true for everyone, but it is a decent way to predict future performance for college free agents like Welsh.

What we are going to do is look at Welsh's point totals from college and then use the .41 translation to see how many points he is projected to have in a year in the NHL.

Stats from HockeyDB.com

Welsh has scored 100 points in 119 games at Union College, which equates to .84 points per game. Factor in the .41 translation and he he expected to be a .34 point per game player at the NHL which would equate to about 25-30 points in an 82 game NHL season. He might do better than that, he could do worse but that's where the bar is set for now based on his college numbers.

That said, Welsh is still young and could be a better NHL player than the projections expect him to be and he is getting a chance to show what he can do tonight as Kirk Muller is putting him on the second like with Tuomo Ruutu and Jeff Skinner. I am very excited to see how he does tonight and in future years with the Hurricanes organization.

Carolina fans have a lot to be excited about in Jeff Skinner. He is only 19 years old, has played two full seasons in the NHL and has been one of the team's best players in both of them. That is pretty amazing because there are some top prospects at his age who are still playing junior hockey. Overall, his game is still developing but he is already a dynamic offensive threat and it has shown this year as he leads the Hurricanes in scoring chance percentage and is second on the team in goals. His play away from the puck still needs some work and he really needs to clear up his act between the whistles but other than that, he's made a lot of improvements since last season. It might not be showing up on the scoreboard, but Skinner's offensive game has actually made a lot of strides this year which is what we will look at after the jump.

Whenever I write my scoring chance recap or any kind of stats, it is important to remember that the raw numbers need to be taken into context. Not all ice time is created equal as some players are used in tougher situations than others, making it more difficult for them to drive play in the right direciton. I have discussed zone starts numerous times before and how much of an effect they have, but another thing I want to touch on is matchups.

A coach will usually have a set of forwards and a defense pairing who he likes to use against the opposing team's top line, and their job is obviously tougher than a line that gets a lot of offensive zone starts against the bottom-six of other teams. Sometimes this line will be a primarily defensive unit and not expect to score often but there are teams who use one of their top-six lines in a "power vs. power" role because they have a center who can play tough minutes. Patrice Bergeron, David Backes, Tomas Plekanec, Mike Fisher and Olli Jokinen (this season) are some examples of these types of players. Zone starts are very important, but you also have to consider what kind of opponents they are playing against to see if they are beating out top-quality competition or feasting on weaker matchups.

The most commonly used stat to determine what kind of role a player is being used in is called "Quality of Competition" which measures how good of an opponent a certain player is facing on a regular basis. Some people, myself included, prefer to use "corsi relative to quality of competition" for this because it provides context. This is a really helpful stat but it doesn't tell you everything and it's hard to judge how a player is doing against certain competition when looking at raw possession stats. To fix this, I went back through every Carolina game this year and measured every player's scoring chance rating when they were playing against a certain line. We will look at this more after the jump.

History was made last night at the PNC Arena as the Hurricanes on their first shootout of the 2011-12 season. It only took them 81 games and seven attempts but they finally came out on the winning side of the skills competition and it was nice to finally get the monkey off their back there. Sure, the odds of winning a shootout is the equivalent of flipping a coin, but when you've witnessed 16 overtime overtime losses, six of which coming in the shootout, over the course of one season, it makes you want to pull your hair out so it was nice to see a win in that situation. 

Last night's game wasn't exactly the perfect way to close out the PNC Arena since the Hurricanes had a stretch of about 20 minutes where the Canes looked flat and it didn't help that the refs were calling anything and everything. There were approximately 28 penalty minutes between both teams, which meant that this game would likely be decided by special teams and that was almost the case. The Hurricanes only goal came on the powerplay and the Canadiens were given a 5-on-3 late in the third period which very well could have decided the game, too. Both teams were relatively even in shots and scoring chances (19-18 Carolina overall) so it was fitting that this game needed to be decided by extra time and a shootout. It was also nice for Carolina to finally catch a break in the shootout and end the season's home stand on a winning note.