If you have been keeping up with the scoring chance recaps, one thing you will notice is that Jamie McBain & Jaroslav Spacek have been the team's "highest rated" defensemen in about six of the last seven games. These two are also leading the defense corps in terms of possession metrics and are currently the only defensemen on the team with scoring chance percentages above the .500 mark. What this means is that whenever these two are on the ice, the puck is moving in the right direction and the Canes have been creating more chances.

Another thing they have in common is they rank near the bottom of the defense corps in corsi relative to quality of competition, which means they are mostly matched up against third and fourth liners from the opposing team. They are also among the team leaders in offensive zone starts, showing that they've been given a strong territorial advantage which has contributed to their success. Essentially, these two have been third pairing defensemen who have been seeing protected minutes and are used in mainly offensive situations. Some might see this as a knock on their game because they aren't being used against tough minutes, but I see it as head coach Kirk Muller utilizing both players to their strengths and it has had a very positive effect on the team's defense.

After the jump, we'll take a look at how McBain & Spacek have excelled in this role and the effect it has had on the rest of the defense corps.

One very small positive thing about this season for the Hurricanes is that they have avoided the embarrassment of being shutout for the most part. Tonight's 2-0 loss to the Florida Panthers was only the third time that the Canes have been shutout this season as Jose Theodore stopped all 34 shots thrown his way. Some might say that this was a "strong effort" by the Hurricanes because they outshot Florida 34-33 and had some good chances, but they definitely looked off for a good part of the game. A team is expected to look sluggish when playing the second night of a back-to-back and that was certainly the case with the Hurricanes tonight. They outshot the Panthers, but they were outchanced 16-17, showing that they were a bit off tonight and were not the better team. When your best player isn't at 100% and your third line is the most active offensively, it's hard to win a lot of games. That seemed to be the case tonight.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

A couple of weeks ago I said this:

"Despite having only two goals, Skinner actually had a great month and the chances were going heavily in Carolina's favor when he was on the ice. Same goes for Jokinen only on a lesser scale. The reason for Skinner not scoring enough despite driving play in the right direction is mostly due to bad luck. Skinner had 35 shots on goal, was clearly getting plenty of opportunities at even strength but the pucks just weren't going in for him....If Skinner keeps playing like this then the goals will eventually come."

We are now five games into March now and Jeff Skinner has three goals and five points during that time. Part of the reason for this outburst is because he and his line with Jussi Jokinen and Chad LaRose have been constantly getting pressure in the offensive zone and creating scoring chances. It is no surprise that he has been on ice for 28 of Carolina's even strength scoring chances this month, an amount that leads the team. There's always a stretch of time when the bounces don't go a player's way but hard work and good play will not go unrewarded forever and we saw that hard work pay off for Skinner's line tonight in a 4-2 win over Tampa Bay. He, Jokinen and LaRose contributed to three of Carolina's goals and they were Carolina's best line for the third night in a row. A strong performance from them and goaltender Cam Ward, who made 36 saves, is main reason why Carolina was able to pick up a victory in a game where they were heavily outshot and outchanced.

We've seen a lot of games go this way lately, haven't we?

Scoring chances & more after the jump

When the Hurricanes inked Tuomo Ruutu to a four-year, $19 mil. contract, the general consensus among the hockey blogosphere is that the team severely overpaid to retain him. There is no doubt that the contract is an overpayment but what I, and other Carolina fans, want to know is what can we expect from Ruutu over the next four years and what does he have to do to justify his contract value?

To figure out if a player is producing relative to how much money he is making, we can use an equation called "Goals Versus Salary." Invented by Rob Vollman of Hockey Prospectus, Goals Versus Salary (or GVS) measures how many goals a player is contributing towards his team compared to a player making the same amount of money. After the jump, we are going to see how much Ruutu needs to produce to justify his contract and whether or not we can expect that from him.

Carolina's game against the Sabres on Wednesday ended on a sour, familiar note as they dropped yet another game in overtime. How poor their performance in OT games this year is one story but that isn't the main reason why they lost this game. Penalties were. You know it, I know it, anyone who watched the game or looked at the box score knows it. It doesn't matter how badly you outshoot, outplay or outchance the opposition, when HAND your opponent seven powerplay opportunities, you are digging your own grave, especially in a game on the road. The worst thing about the penalties was that they were all legit and were the result of incredibly poor discipline from guys like Chad LaRose and Jussi Jokinen (who had THREE minors on the night).

The final shot & chance total (10-16 & 24-42 respectfully) indicates that the Sabres controlled this game, but narrow it down to just even strength play and things are slightly more even. Buffalo outchanced the Hurricanes 14-10 at even strength and Buffalo only had a 24-20 shot advantage, so this wasn't that much of a "blowout." Carolina got themselves into penatly trouble and things ended up looking much more lopsided in Buffalo's favor on the statsheet, but the penalties are what doomed Carolina in this game. That along with the Canes doing nothing in the third period and their powerplay looked absolutely horrible on all three opportunities. The "special teams" battle has been a reoccurring theme for the Canes lately and them losing that battle ended up burning them on Wednesday night.

Aside from the penalties and awful powerplay Carolina played a decent game considering it was the second night of a back-to-back on the road. They really need to give Cam Ward a breather, though. I thought the reason for signing Brian Boucher was to use him in situations like this but the coaching staff clearly trusts #30 more. He played great, but the team can not keep giving up 40+ shots a night and expect him to be a brick wall. Give him a night off or two off to rest.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

Tuesday night's 4-3 overtime win over the Washington Capitals goes down as one of the most exciting Carolina games I have seen this year. With 85 combined shots and 44 scoring chances between both teams, you would expect an exciting contest. However, "exciting" and "good hockey" are not synonymous and this certainly was a sloppy played game by both teams. There was a lot of bad defense, poor puck-handling (although it was par for the course for Verizon Center) and careless turnovers that led to odd-man rushes. It makes for an entertaining game but it's not the kind of hockey I would like to see Carolina play on a regular basis. In the end, the Canes took advantage of their opportunities and got the job done in overtime despite being outchanced 25-19.

Washington is not the team you want to give up 25 scoring chances against but Cam Ward came up big when he needed to and Carolina turned just about every Washington miscue into something positive, including three goals. The final one being Justin Faulk's game-winner. It was a thrilling game and a nice win but the Hurricanes are going to need to clean up their play in the defensive zone because giving up 40+ shots and 20+ chances at even strength per game isn't going to lead to many win streaks. 

Whenever I post the team's scoring chance numbers at the end of the month, it is important to remember that those are raw numbers and every player is used in different situations. For that reason, I make sure to include their offensive zone start percentage to give some context for their situation. For instance, Brandon Sutter and Patrick Dwyer are constantly sent out in the defensive zone and their raw numbers are always around .450-.460 as a result. Those numbers look pretty brutal at first glance but it's important to remember that they are playing with the least favorable conditions on the team so they are actually doing a lot better than their raw scoring chance number indicate.

Players like Sutter and Dwyer are the reason why we need to adjust scoring chance numbers for zone starts, because that will give us more context on the situations that these players are being used in. Thanks to George Ays of Blue Shirt Banter, we can do this. He came up with an equation which determined that an offensive zone start is worth approximately .425 in scoring chances and we can use that formula to see how Carolina's players have been performing. It will be nice to know how guys like Sutter, Gleason & Allen are doing relative to their situations and we will look at those numbers after the jump

The Hurricanes closed out the last three games of their home stand by going 1-1-1 and slightly outchancing their opponents at even strength by owning 52.5% of the scoring chances. This will be the second week in a row that the Canes outchanced their opponents in the span of the week, which is a good sign for the team moving forward. Although, it's worth mentioning that they only outchanced one team this week (Tampa Bay 16-10) and it was by a wide margin so that likely had a an impact on their overall score. I still think it's a good sign that this team isn't getting shelled at even strength every game like they were earlier in the year and are actually managing to keep things close with most of their opponents. They could have easily been 2-1-0 this past week but they still have some areas they need to work on, one of the biggest being staying out of the box. After the jump, we will take a closer look at how the Canes did this past week and single out some top performers.

There is about 20 games left in the NHL season and we still have yet to see one team emerge as the favorite in the Southeast Division. The Florida Panthers currently sit in first place by four points but I've seen biggest leads evaporate before, so this race is far from over. To get an idea of who will come out of this logjam in first place at the end of the year, I am going to take a look at each team's underlying numbers and determine who is more likely to win the division and earn that much desired playoff spot.

I'm going to do this at the end of every week until the season's over so we can see how things progress over time.

Before we get into anything, I'll break down the table for you. I have displayed the team's wins, points, even strength possession stats, how many goals they scored compared to how many they gave up and their expected win and point total going by Pythagorean expectations. If you don't know what that is, it's basically an expected winning percentage based on how many goals a team scores compared to how many they surrender. For instance, the Canes have scored 171 goals while giving up 197, which would give them an "expected" winning percentage of 46.4%. That equals to about 28 wins.

This method is a good way to see which teams are beating their opponents more handedly and relying less on overtime/shootouts for points. You can see the the Hurricanes have gotten the shaft in that department because they "should" be about four wins better than they are right now but the 14 OT/SO losses bring them down.

Right now, there doesn't seem to be a clear favorite in the division. All of the top four teams are separated by one win and six points and none of them are that great. Florida has been a solid team this year but the main reason why they are leading the division right now is the 12 points they've earned from overtime and shootout losses. The Panthers aren't blowing out teams this year at all as they have the same amount of "clear victories" as Carolina (10) and have earned points in 26 of the 31 one-goal games they were involved in. It's also worth mentioning that they are tied with the Caps for the division lead in fewest goals allowed, showing that good goaltending has been one of the reasons for their success. Florida technically has more points than they "should" right now but they have an edge on the Winnipeg Jets with games in hand and are slightly better at controlling possession than Washington. Their margin of error is also a bit larger than the Caps right now.

The Jets playoff chances are very realistic right now but the fact that they trail Florida by four points and have played two more games might hurt them. They haven't been overwhelmingly better than Florida this year, but I would not be surprised if they ended up winning the division when all is said and done, especially with the Caps seemingly in free fall mode. Although, Washington leads the division in clear victories (16) and have finally broke the .500 mark in corsi tied so they could possibly make a run for the division. Time is not on their side, though.

As for Tampa's recent surge, I still don't think they can take the division. That team has been awful at controlling possession all season and it hasn't changed much at all. The reason for their resurgence is due to some extremely high shooting percentages that aren't sustainable in the long run. Their goaltending is still worst in the league, too even if Mathieu Garon has improved lately. That and their depth is incredibly weak with Vinny Lecavalier and Victor Hedman out of the lineup. Steven Stamkos' line and Eric Brewer are going to need to carry this team the rest of the way if they want to make the playoffs. The Anaheim Ducks basically did the same thing last year so it's possible, but very unlikely.

That's how things look right now. I'll be interested to see what changes next week.

Once upon a time, Zach Boychuk was the Carolina Hurricanes top prospect. He was selected in the first round of the 2008 NHL draft and was known for having great hands and huge scoring upside that any team would welcome. At the time, he had 82 goals and 214 points in 194 games in the WHL so it's easy to see why he was such a high draft pick. Everyone, myself included, thought that he would be playing in the Hurricanes' top six at this point but he has still yet to find a full-time spot on the roster and was just reassigned to Charlotte again.

Boychuk has shown that he can score at junior and the AHL level but he still has not been able to carry over that success into the NHL. Some say that the reason for this is that he is undersized, which is a valid point because at 5'10" and 185 lbs., he isn't exactly a big player and can get knocked off the puck easier than others. Other say that his game is more suited for a bigger ice sheet but his high scoring rate in the AHL suggests otherwise. Whatever the issue is, he just doesn't seem to fit well with the Hurricanes no matter who the coach is.

In last night's game against the Lightning, Boychuk played about eight minutes and a grand total of two shifts after the first period. When I first watched the game, I didn't notice him make any glaring mistakes and wondered what caused Kirk Muller to pull the plug on him. So, I went back and re-watched all of his shifts and jotted down anything noteworthy that he did when he was on the ice. After I examined his play more closely, I'm still a tad confused but noticed some of the deficiencies in Boychuk's game.

We will take a look at those shifts and examine Boychuk's NHL career a little closer after the jump