For what I feel like is the twentieth time this season, the Carolina Hurricanes played a solid game for about 40 minutes, took a lead into the third period only to give it up and lose the game in overtime. That might be a bit of an exgerration, but I feel like I've seen this script way too many times this season and seeing this team constantly blow leads eventually grates on you.

Tonight's 4-3 loss to the Jets was especially frustrating because it seemed like Carolina had control of this game for the first two periods but let things slip away by playing poorly in the third period. While Carolina did have a huge advantage in shots, they were not winning the battle at even strength at all. Both teams were tied with 10 even strength chances through two periods of play and what gave Carolina the advantage was the excellent play of their penalty kill and their powerplay producing seven scoring chances.

Those helped the Canes out on the shot and chance chart, but not on the scoreboard. It's not too often you see a team create that many powerplay chances and not get rewarded for it, but that was the case tonight. Had they scored on one of those chances, then this could have been a different game but it's hard to fault the failed powerplay for the other things that went wrong in the third period.

There's a lot of things to breakdown but I think this stat sums things up well. The Hurricanes held the Jets to 16 shots on goal through the first two periods. They allowed 18 in the third alone. Protecting a lead. How does it work?

Scoring chances & more after the jump

An ongoing issue throughout the season is that neither coach has been rolling four lines as often as fans would like. Ideally, most coaches would like to roll four lines and have their fourth unit out there for around 8-10 minutes a game. The role of the fourth line depends on the coach and under Paul Maurice this season, the fourth line was barely used. That has somewhat changed ever since Kirk Muller took over as head coach as Tim Brent has seen his ice time and his role increase quite a bit, but that hasn't been the case for others. Anthony Stewart and pretty much anyone else who has been plugged on the fourth line, the most recent one being defenseman-converted-to-forward Derek Joslin, have been averaging around 7-8 minutes per game.

With Staal's average ice time being well over 20 minutes for most of the season, I wouldn't mind seeing things more spread out but I think the fourth line itself is part of the problem. What I mean is that it wouldn't hurt to upgrade the personnel we currently have there. However, in order to improve the fourth line, we may need to address other issues in the lineup beforehand.

On Monday evening, I joined the folks at Driving Play for their playoff race podcast and one of the topics that came up was the battle for the last two spots in the Eastern Conference. The Ottawa Senators, Buffalo Sabres and Washington Capitals are currently separated by a total of four points and at the time of the recording, the Sabres and Caps were tied with 84 points going into their showdown the next day. When we were asked which two of these teams would be the most likely to make the playoffs, I said that Ottawa will likely stay in the 7th spot and that Washington will make it in because Buffalo isn't that good.

Well....I got at least one of those predictions right. Ottawa is sitting tight at the #7 spot but the Sabres absolutely demolished the Caps last night 5-1, have claimed the #8 spot in the East and I look kind of like a jackass. There is still another week of hockey to be played so things can change but Buffalo definitely has to like their chances of making the playoffs now when you compare their schedule to Washington's.

The reason why I did not pick Buffalo despite their recent hot streak is because they are still a pretty bad team when playing at even strength in close games . Another thing is that a main reason for their turnaround is Ryan Miller having a .937 even strength save percentage in March and quite a few of their skaters have been striking gold lately as nearly 10% of their five-on-five shots have been goals. I figured that they will cool off eventually and return to how they were earlier in the season but I overlooked a couple things.

1. There's only a week left in the season the small sample size of Buffalo's hot streak could be enough to get them in.

2. Washington hasn't been that much better, if at all.

More to come after the jump.

Sometimes a great first period, solid defensive play and bad goaltending by the opposing team is enough to win you a few games and that was the case for the Hurricanes tonight in their 3-0 shutout over the Maple Leafs. The Hurricanes played terrific for the first 20 minutes in outchancing the Leafs 5-1 and gaining a 2-0 lead and then finished things off by sitting back and letting their defense and Cam Ward do the rest of the work. They gave up 31 shots, but only 12 were registered as scoring chances by my count and Ward didn't exactly need to stand on his head for the Canes to win this game.

Taking advantage of a cold goalie also helped as all three goals that Jonas Gustavsson let in were very soft and he was given the hook less than a minute into the second period. Toronto's offense really could not generate much the rest of the way as the Canes managed to bottle them up in the neutral zone and keep most of their shots from outside of the scoring chance range. After getting hammered by Detroit on Saturday night, it was good to see Carolina's defense respond with a strong performance against Toronto. Albeit, it was against a much weaker team with one of their top scorers out of the lineup.

Carolina is likely going to get a high spot in the draft so I don't really care about "tanking" at this point of the season so I'm happy with the team winning.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

It's time for our weekly look at the Southeast Division and it looks like things have boiled down to a two-team race as the Jets have fallen out of the picture. The Southeast Division will likely be won by either the Florida Panthers or the Washington Capitals and from the looks of things, the Cats have a big advantage. They have a three point lead and one game in hand over the Caps which means that they will probably win the division unless they lose out or something drastic. The Panthers also have games against Columbus, Minnesota and Carolina, which gives them an advantage compared to the Caps who have to play Boston, Buffalo and the Rangers to close out the year.

Based on schedule alone, Florida has a huge advantage even though they don't appear to be much better than any other team in the division. Washington has a shot at the division but it might take them winning out and getting a little bit of luck along the way. They haven't been getting much of it on special teams lately, so they will need for things to turn around there.

Regardless, I think Washington is good enough to at least make it in the playoffs but they really need to win their next game against Buffalo and at least earn points in all of their remaining games to solidify their chances. Ottawa winning tonight makes things slightly more difficult for them.

Any hope that the Hurricanes had for a miracle playoff push is all but gone now as they went 1-2-0 last week with two bad losses to the Columbus Blue Jackets and Detroit Red Wings. They ended up getting outshot and outchanced by a wide margin overall but that's mostly because of the Detroit game where they gave up over 50 shots on goal and 25 scoring chances. Carolina actually had the advantage in scoring chances in the games against Florida & Columbus but ended up negative overall because of the beating they took in Detroit. 

They always say that the scoreboard is where things count the most and Carolina was outscored 10-4 at even strength this past week. The Hurricanes have been able to keep a respectable goal differential over the past couple months but that obviously went out the window after that Jackets game. This is what usually happens when you get outshot regularly, though and it was only a matter of time before the Canes ended up getting burned. The team's talent level just isn't high enough to compete with the top teams in the league right now and we saw that against Detriot when they blew a 4-1 lead and were heavily outshot. Carolina has some nice pieces but they need to add a couple more forwards and maybe a defenseman to become a better possession team than they are now. Then we can start talking about whether or not this team will become a playoff contender.

The only thing that was discouraging about this week was that the team has at least been competing in every game under Muller and not laying down but we didn't see that in the Columbus or Detroit games. Brighter days are ahead but first, let's revisit this past week and single out some performances.

The last place a player wants to end up in is the coach's "doghouse" and it appears that the Hurricanes newly re-signed forward Tuomo Ruutu is in that spot right now with head coach Kirk Muller. There was some suspicion that Ruutu was in trouble on Friday when he was placed on the fourth line during the third period in the game against Columbus. That thought was confirmed the next day when Ruutu was benched six minutes into the third period after playing a total of three shifts in that frame.

Ruutu's performance since returning from injury has been underwhelming to say the least. He has only one point in nine games and the only game where I thought he made a difference was Wednesday's 3-1 win against Florirda. Ruutu needs to be out there making a difference in every game and going by the numbers, he has not been doing that at all.

Here's a game-by-game breakdown of Ruutu's scoring chance numbers & zone starts since returning from his upper-body injury.

In addition to this, Ruutu has only been on ice for two of the Hurricanes even strength goals and six of the opponents while controlling way less than 50% of the even strength corsi events. This is a very small sample size so it likely doesn't mean much in the big picture but it is safe to say that Ruutu's performance has not been up to standard in these nine games. Ruutu was one of the team's best forwards for most of the year so for him to be outchanced by 10 over nine games is pretty bad. Although it's a little odd for him to be starting in the defensive zone more because that's not how he's normally utilized, but it's still easy to see why Muller could be frustrated with him. We've seen Muller demand a lot out of his players and he clearly wants to see more out of Ruutu than what he's done so far.

The numbers explain things pretty clearly, but to get a better idea of what caused Muller to bench Ruutu, I went over his shifts from the last two games to see if there's any visual evidence of Ruutu playing poorly. I did a similar project with Zach Boychuk earlier in the month when he was benched and demoted. We'll begin this after the jump.

Last night, I said the Hurricanes turned in a good effort in a 5-1 loss to the Blue Jackets but were on the receiving end of a few bad bounces & gave up towards the end. Some might say the same thing about tonight's 5-4 loss to the Detroit Red Wings but I actually thought this was one of the worst games the Hurricanes played this season.Yes, they only lost by one goal to one of the league's elite possession teams but they also blew a 4-1 lead, were outchanced 25-10 and gave up over 50 shots on goal.

Something that may have been lost in this "playoff push" is that the Hurricanes are still a team that is rebuilding and going through growing pains. They are still one of the bottom-ten teams in the league in possession and it's hard to be a competing team when you're relying on third liners for most of your scoring and are giving up over 30 shots a game. A game like this was bound to happen and I think it was a humbling experience to say the least. After looking at the underlying stats for tonight's game, it's very surprising that the Canes nearly escaped Detroit with a win, but the better team was rewarded tonight. That's for sure.

As awful as these last couple of games have been, it's important to remember that the Hurricanes is some odd pieces away from being a good team and we saw that tonight as a legitimately great team picked them apart. Granted, Carolina was playing the second night of a back-to-back on the road but they've been outchanced more times than not this season. I just can't remember the last time it was by this big of a margin. Nothing left to do now but put this behind us and enjoy the two days off before Tuesday's showdown with Toronto.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

Eric Staal is having a very odd season to say the least. In November, he had only four goals and 12 points and looked to be on pace for his worst season since 2003-04. However, ever since the calendar turned 2012, Staal has been producing at over a point per game and is a good bet to put up at least 70 once the season is over. What's the reason for such a drastic turn-around? Some have said that the health of his brother Marc Staal, who missed time with a concussion after taking a hit from Eric, was the reason for his slow start. Other have said that firing Paul Maurice & hiring Kirk Muller as head coach is the reason for his turnaround, but the truth is that Staal's play has been relatively consistent throughout the year and a lot of what went wrong earlier in the year was beyond his control.

After the jump, we'll explore how Staal's shooting percentage, shot rates and possession numbers have changed over the year and explain why his low +/- really isn't that big of a problem.

The final score of last night's 5-1 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets does not accurate reflect the way the game went, because the Hurricanes did not turn in a horrible effort and outchanced the Jackets 20-15. The bounces just weren't going Carolina's way early and after having most of their best chances turned down by Columbus goalie Steve Mason, the Hurricanes became frustrated and just gave up. That's the best way I can summarize this game. Sometimes you'll have games where absolutely nothing goes right and that's what happened tonight. Cam Ward turned in a very weak performance, neither the powerplay nor penalty kill was working at all and all of Carolina's mistakes ended up resulting in goals against while Columbus was bailed out by Steve Mason numerous times. After numerous attempts to solve the Columbus netminder, the Canes just completely turned off the gas and let the Jackets do whatever they wanted and took a 5-1 loss.

Ever since Kirk Muller took over, one thing the Hurricanes have prided themselves in is giving a full effort every night and competing no matter what the score is. We saw that tonight...until RJ Umberger scored to make it 4-1 Jackets in the third period and then they looked like they had already left for Detroit. It wasn't a pretty sight and it reminded me a lot of the opening night game against Tampa Bay. A three goal lead that late in the game is tough to come back from but the Hurricanes could have at least made an effort to score one goal or generate a few chances to give themselves something to build off for tomorrow's game. Anything is better than just laying flat for the last five minutes.

Carolina had a good showing for two and a half periods even if the score doesn't indicate it, but the way they finished this game is something they shouldn't be proud of.