Fan expectations always vary from player to player in a given year and this season, I think Carolina fans had higher hopes for Jordan Staal than anyone else on the roster. It made sense to expect a lot from him, too. He has always been one of the best two-way centers in the NHL and has shown the ability to be even more than that during his time with the Pittsburgh Penguins when given the opportunity. The Hurricanes also gave up a fan-favorite player (Brandon Sutter), a promising defensive prospect (Brian Dumoulin) and a high-first round pick to acquire him, so Staal was going to need to do a lot to prove himself with the fans and win them over. In addition to that, Staal signed a long-term deal with the Hurricanes shortly after they traded for him and is going to be an integral part of this team going forward.

While Jordan did not have a bad season, he seemed to be a disappointment in the eyes of a lot of fans based on results alone. During his Pittsburgh days, the common belief with him was always that he had the ability to be a top-six center on a lot of clubs and was never given the linemates, ice-time or power play time to perform at that level because of the Penguins center depth. I've always thought that these claims were overblown because injuries to Sidney Crosby & Evgeni Malkin have given Jordan the opportunity to step into a bigger role, but it still isn't far-fetched to say that he hasn't reached his peak offensively. After all, he was coming off a year where his even strength point production was at a first-line level and it was not the first time in his career that he put up these kind of numbers. Staal has also done an amazing job of dominating puck-possession while playing tough minutes throughout his entire career, so there was a lot of evidence to believe that Jordan Staal could take that next step and be a top-tier player.

Unfortunately, the Hurricanes didn't get those results this year. Staal had his lowest even strength scoring rate since 2007-08, had the second worst plus/minus rating on the team and his point-per-game rate was the lowest it had been in three years. Staal still had a good season, but since he was playing in a bigger role than he was in Pittsburgh, a lot of people were expecting more so he had a disappointing season in a lot of people's eyes. 

If you judge a player only on boxcar stats then yes, Jordan had a disappointing season, but there is more to the game than just that and Jordan actually excelled in a lot of areas this year, many of which don't show up on the scoresheet.

Even in a year with a $70.3 million salary cap, finding players on cheap deals is essentially to building a winning club. Not every team has the same funds and those in smaller markets have to find players on bargain contracts to stay in contention rather than try to outbid their competitors. Big market teams have to do this, as well and it will be important next year with the cap going down, whether it's through entry-level contracts or buying low on certain free agents. The Hurricanes have done a fine job of acquiring these types of players over the years and they've had to do it out of necessity for awhile since they normally operate under a budget. Things have changed a bit over the last couple of years, though as Jim Rutherford has stated that he plans for the team to spend more money than in years past. That gives them some more wiggle room, but finding good deals will still be important.

The Hurricanes are still not going to be a cap team and are set to be about $9 mil. under the limit next season. With over $4 mil. committed to eight players next season and a few holes on the roster to fill, finding bargains is going to be essential. It's tough to predict what exactly you are going to get from a player each year, but one way to judge his contract is looking at his "Goals Versus Salary" value, which was developed by Robert Vollman. Each player has different expectations and more is expected out of players with higher salaries than those who are making the league minimum. Goals Versus Salary (GVS) tells us how each player performed relative to these expectations. 

GVS is determined by looking at each player's "Goals Versus Threshold" value, which is a stat that shows the offensive, defensive and shootout "value" of each player, and comparing it to what is expected of them based on their salary. Their expected value is determined by taking their salary, subtracting it by the league minimum salary and multiplying that number by 1.99, which is the number of goals $1 mil. is worth under the current salary cap. Originally, the rule is that 3 goals costs $1 mil., but that was when the cap was much lower so I adjusted the value to what it is now. For more information on GVS, check out Hockey Prospectus' articles about it here.

After the jump, we'll look at who gave the Hurricanes the most for their money based on GVT.

A "need" that Hurricanes GM Jim Rutherford wanted to address last off-season was acquiring an enforcer to help prevent other teams from taking liberties on some of Carolina's more skilled players. The Hurricanes specifically wanted to invest in some protection for Jeff Skinner, who has already suffered two concussions in his young career, and the old theory is that getting a "tough guy" will help prevent other teams from roughing up your stars. The times have changed in the NHL, though and enforcers don't play as big of a role as they used to. In today's NHL, most "tough guys" play less than 10 shifts a game and aren't even on the ice long enough to serve as "protection" for star players. They aren't very skilled players, so coaches generally don't give them a lot of ice time and it's a rare occurrence for an enforcer to be out there in a key situation. This is the role of the enforcer in the NHL now and why the idea of them providing "protection" for stars is silly. The Hurricanes found this out the hard way when they acquiring Kevin Westgarth from the Los Angeles Kings this season.

Compared to other enforcers across the league, you can do a lot worse than Westgarth because while he isn't particularly a useful player at even strength, he isn't a complete liability like Jared Boll, Cam Janssen or Colton Orr. That being said, he still doesn't contribute in many other areas outside of his intangibles and as a result, he spent a fair mount of the season in the press box and whenever he was in the lineup, he played an average of about five minutes per game. You need to be able to roll all four lines to be a competitive team in the NHL now and dressing Westgarth to play 5-8 shifts a night isn't accomplishing that. I don't have that many bad things to say about Westgarth as a person because he knows his role and says all the right things, but I don't think the Hurricanes were icing their best possible lineup when he was playing.

As far as him "protecting" the Hurricanes other players goes, Skinner was hurt twice this year and Westgarth was in the lineup in both games. Neither injury was his fault, but this shows the limitation of enforcers in today's NHL. It's tough for them to protect star players because they are rarely going to be on the ice at the same time as them and they only take action after said injury occurs. Protecting younger players is always going to be a tough challenge but there were probably better ways to do it than acquiring an enforcer.

After the jump, we'll talk about what contributions Westgarth made when he actually got to play.

We will continue our player reviews from this past season by taking a closer look at the year that was for Tim Gleason. Recently signed to a four year, $16 mil. contract, Gleason is set to be a key cog in the Hurricanes defense corps for the next few season and is expected to provide a solid, veteran presence for players like Justin Faulk to learn after. Gleason has also established himself as a fine shutdown defenseman over the last few years. The Hurricanes have always leaned on him to do the bulk of the heavy lifting for the defense corps, as he is normally matched up against the opposing team's best forwards and is a regular on the team's first penalty killing unit and for the most part, his performance has been very good compared to similar defensemen. He was also coming off his best season in the NHL and was expected to anchor the team's "new" shutdown defense pairing with Justin Faulk for most of the year. Unfortunately, Gleason ended up being a different kind of anchor.

There are a lot of different types of "shutdown" defensemen out there and I've always considered Gleason one of the more underrated in the league. As it was noted earlier, he managed to fare okay territorially in tough minutes, can skate well and not be a liability when it comes to things like leading breakouts and moving the puck out of the zone. This year was a different story, though as Gleason posted some very ugly underlying numbers for his standards and looked considerably slower this year compared to year's past. This led to him getting bumped off the top defense pairing for part of the year and even benched toward the end of a few games.

Some of this wasn't exactly his fault since it was revealed at the end of the season that Gleason was playing a lot of the year with a broken foot, which is tough to deal with no matter what minutes you play. Gleason only missed six games this season despite this and that was the first time in over two years that an injury forced him to miss any action, so that says a lot about his toughness and pain threshold. Gleason's durability is very admirable, as I am sure this isn't the first time he's had to battle through an injury but I think it was pretty clear that the injury was affecting his play quite a bit since his performance this season was much lower than what is normally expected from him.

Gleason is normally the type of shutdown defenseman who can take away space from opposing forwards, preventing shot attempts and be useful with the puck by helping drive the play forwards, but some of these qualities were there for most of this season and it had a chain reaction on the rest of the defense. Again, Gleason clearly was not at 100% for most of the year, so I can't be too hard on him but when you put this much weight on the shoulders of one player and he struggles, the rest of the defense suffers because they have to pick up the slack. When healthy, Gleason is easily this team's best shutdown option and capable of playing in the top-four but he wasn't healthy this year, so he was a little less than that.

After the jump, we'll take a closer look at his season.

It's about that time of the year where we will look back at the season that was for the Hurricanes by taking a look at the individual performance of each player.  Last season I did this by showing how effective each player was at controlling scoring chances but I'm going to take a different route this time. Scoring chances are very important, but they're just part of an even bigger picture, so we're going to dig a little deeper with our player analysis this season. We're going to be looking at how they were used and how they performed in all three zones. This means looking at their ice time, special teams usage, quality of competition, zone starts and their performance by scoring chances, puck-possession, scoring chances and point-production. We want to be thorough as possible with this analysis so that everything is covered, so we're going to be looking at basically everything I've tracked along with data that is available on sites such as Behind The Net. 

Who better to begin this analysis with than the fan base's scapegoat of choice for most of the year, Jamie McBain? Going by the eye-test and most fan's opinions, McBain's third season in the NHL was a tough one. He was on-pace to have his lowest point total in a full season (8 points in 40 games), gained a reputation for making bad defensive mistakes and his most memorable moment of the season was when he back-handed the puck into his own net on a clearing attempt. This may have been only McBain's third full-season in the NHL, but I think management and fans had some higher expectations for him.

At 25 years of age, McBain is still young but we're starting to see more of what kind of player he is and right now, he is pretty much a third-pairing defenseman and not much more than that. The Canes had him take on a larger role for parts of the season due to injuries and he struggled with them, so I think it's fair to say that he is basically just a #5/6 defenseman at this point of his career. The Hurricanes had too many of these players, which led to McBain's name being circulated in trade talks for the latter half of the season and will continue to be for most of the summer. That and every Carolina fan seems to want him off the team because all they remember are the mistakes. 

Scapegoating is one of my least favorite things in sports because it is rarely ever one player's fault, especially in hockey when you have six different players on the ice at the same time. Whenever a fan finds a scapegoat, they become the subject of harsh ridicule and anything good they do is virtually unnoticed. McBain definitely deserved some of this because his mistakes were just plain horrible to watch at times, but was he as bad as some of the scapegoats would lead you to believe? Let's find out.

When I wrote about who the Hurricanes should select with with fifth overall selection in this summer's draft, I said that they should take the best player available. Defense might be their biggest need right now, but  thinking long-term, the Canes are going to have to replace Alexander Semin, Tuomo Ruutu and possibly Jiri Tlusty so taking a forward isn't the worst thing you can do. It's a lot more appealing to take a forward early because a lot of the forwards at the top of this draft are some of the best prospects the draft has seen in quite some time. Drafting for needs is an advisable route to go, but you also want to get the most value out of your picks and the Hurricanes could pass on a potentially elite player if they choose to take a defenseman at fifth overall.

It's okay to be skeptical of any player in this draft because there's always the potential that one of them might be a bust or not work out in the NHL, but when you look at how good the top of this draft is, it's hard to not get excited about adding one of these prospects to your organization. How good are they, though? Going by their statistical performance, some of them are the most promising young players to come out of their respective leagues in years.

I managed to go 7-1 in my first round playoff predictions and now we'll see if I can keep the ball rolling in the second round. I have a feeling that it will be tough since most of the matchups have two very good even strength teams going up against one another, so things like goaltending, special teams and puck luck are going to play a role in whichever team wins. The one series I predicted incorrectly in the first round was Ottawa/Montreal and that was similar to a lot of the second round matchups here in the sense that both teams were very good possession clubs. I predicted it to be a close series with Montreal coming out on top and the Sens ended up winning in five games, blowing out Montreal in a couple of them.

My gut tells me that at least one of the second round matchups could end up like this despite how "close" they appear on paper. There's a good chance that my prediction record gets flipped completely this round, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway.

One of the growing developments in hockey analysis is tracking zone entries to gauge a team's performance in the neutral zone. Why is neutral zone play important? I've gone over this a few times, but I don't have a problem repeating myself. A recent study done by Eric Tulsky and some other hockey bloggers & researchers have shown that being able to win the battle in the neutral zone leads to a team outshooting their opponents more often and in turn, getting more scoring chances and possibly winning more games. However, the team who wins the battle in the neutral zone isn't the one has more entries, but rathers who gains the offensive zone with possession more often.

This was an interesting discovery because dump and chase play is something that's often encouraged by coaches, ex-players and analysts and it kind of makes sense in theory. Simply getting the puck deep is a safe play and often considered a good strategy to use if the other team is playing a trap-style defense that would increase the risk of a turnover if you attempted to carry the puck across the blue-line. Although, how effective dump and chase play is depends on how strong of a forecheck you have because you are essentially giving up possession of the puck and the only way to get it back is to beat out the opposing defense to it or force turnovers. Because of this and many other factors, it has been determined that carrying the puck into the offensive zone is what leads to more shots and in turn, more scoring chances and goals as opposed to entering the zone without possession.

You may remember that I started posting the Hurricanes zone entry stats in my post-game reports later in the season and that I was making note of how often the team gained the blue line without control of the puck. The statements made above as well as in the articles linked should tell you why I was frustrated with that. However, there were some games where the Hurricanes were getting a fair amount of offense off uncontrolled entries and it made me wonder if dump & chase play can also be successful if done with the right players. For instance, a dump-in by Jiri Tlusty would have a better chance of leading to a shot or a scoring chance on goal as opposed to one by Tim Brent because Tlusty plays with better linemates who would likely win the race to the puck. Kirk Muller's system seems to rely on dump & chase play quite a bit and while it worked with some players, it's impact as a whole wasn't great.

We'll explore this more after the jump.

Yesterday, the Rangers forced what is now the third Game 7 of this year's playoffs by defeating the Caps 1-0. Washington may have a new coach, but last night's game had a very similar vibe to the series these two teams played in the second round last season. Aside from the second period, neither team managed to produce much offense and the Rangers were playing a very conservative style in the third period when they had a 1-0 lead. IT didn't make for the most exciting hockey, but I'm sure the Rangers won't have many complaints about that since they got the job done and kept their post-season hopes alive.

All that stands in their way of advancing is winning one game on the road and unfortunately for them, they have been pretty bad when playing at Verizon Center this post-season. They've been outchanced in two out of three games and haven't been bailed out by goaltending because they've only given Lundqvist two total goals during that time. It's really been a case for Murphy's Law for the Rangers when they've played away from Madison Square Garden, but fans can at least be comforted by the fact that Game 7's are a coin flip and any result is possible.

Anybody who thought the Islanders couldn't top the heartbreak of Game Three was proven wrong last night after they were eliminated from the playoffs last night by the Pittsburgh Penguins on the heels of an overtime goal by Brooks Orpik. The whole game was pretty similar to how Game Three went where the Islanders vastly outplayed the Penguins in just about every area but goaltending and ended up taking the loss because of that. The only difference with this game was that the Penguins didn't need the help of their power play to catapult them in front. Instead, they were able to take advantage of a few costly mistakes by the Islander defense and got a couple of generous bounces on two of their goals.

At the end of the day, the blame for this loss is probably going to be put on the shoulders of goaltender Evgeni Nabokov and he can be noted as the scapegoat this series, there were a few other factors that contributed to the Islanders demise. The biggest one being at the other end of the crease in Tomas Vokoun. The Pittsburgh netminder may have let three goals get by him, but he helped carry his team out of numerous rough spots last night and his finest moment came in the second period where he stopped six Islander power play scoring chances. The Penguins gave Vokoun four goals in support but I think this series would have been heading for seven games without him because the Islanders dominated Pittsburgh for a good portion of last night's game and outchanced them 25-12 .

Vokoun's play kept Pittsburgh in the game and made each mistake that much more costly for the Islanders, because whenever you let a team like the Pens hang around, there is a good chance that they'll find the back of the net. That's just the way they've worked this series and that, along with Nabokov's shoddy goaltending, ended up winning them the game and the series. I feel that the Islanders deserved better because they outplayed Pittsburgh in four out of six games but they sort of played with fire with the penalties in Game Three and couldn't finish last night and these types of things can doom you in playoff games. It's unfortunately, but that's the playoffs work sometimes.

The Islanders shouldn't hang their heads too low because they mostly played some very entertaining hockey and really gave the Penguins a run for their money in a series that many expected to be a laugher after Game One. I think they would have had a better shot if Nabokov played anything close to the level of an NHL goalie, even if the Penguins finishing ability made him look a little worse than he usually is, because they really were the better team and gave it all they had last night.