If you look at the rosters for every team in the NHL, most of them will have a player like Patrick Dwyer in their bottom-six. Dwyer is a prototypical defensive forward who specializes in killing penalties, blocking shots and preventing chances and he does all three of those tasks very well for the Hurricanes. You could say that he's a "dime a dozen" player but what makes Dwyer more valuable than other defensive forwards is how big of a workload he (and Sutter) take on.

For most of the year, these two and Andreas Nodl made up the team's shutdown line and they started almost 70% of their shifts in the defensive zone. Dywer and Sutter alone were in the bottom quarter of the league in offensive zone start percentage and were always matched up against opposing team's top lines. The Hurricanes also yielded fewer scoring chances whenever Dwyer was on the ice, which shows that he's above other standard defensive forwards when you consider the situations that he plays in. That is what makes Dwyer a valuable member to the Hurricanes.

What keeps Dwyer from being more than just a defensive or a bottom-sixer is his offensive skill-set, which is almost non-existent. He can skate well and his hands aren't made out of stone, but he doesn't have much of a scoring upside at all. That's the reason why he appears as a replacement level player in both boxcar and underlying numbers but he plays a very important role on the Hurricanes and does a solid job at it.

We will look at said underlying numbers after the jump

There are a lot of phrases you can use to sum up the Capitals 4-3 overtime loss to the Bruins in Game 6 this afternoon. I've heard most people call it an "opportunity missed" for the Caps because they could have closed out the series with a win, but failed in overtime. Personally, I see this as a wasted effort for Washington. The Caps played arguably their best game of the series but ended up taking the loss because of a few miscues and a poorly played overtime period. Now they have to play one more game to advance. 

The Bruins are still winning the overall battle at even strength so they should be confident going into game 7, but they dodged a bullet in today's game.

Scoring chance breakdown after the jump

The Washington Capitals are one win away from pulling off an upset that not many predicted after defeating the Bruins 4-3 in game 5 earlier today. Just about all of their success in this series has been attributed to goaltender Braden Holtby, who has been absolutely phenomenal with a .946 save percentage. However, one thing that has been slightly overlooked is the defensive play of the Capitals as they have been able to limit the Bruins scoring chances.

They've been giving up a lot of shots but they've been forcing the Bruins to settle for soft wristers from the point with no traffic in front countless times. Washington has also done a good job of clogging up the neutral zone and not allowing the Bruins to genera much momentum at even strength. That has been the story for games 1-4, but today's game was slightly different.

The Capitals had one of their better offensive performances today with four goals and 16 scoring chances but their defense unraveled a bit once they took a 2-0 lead and Holtby had to do his best to prevent Boston from taking the lead. He kept them in it long enough for the Caps to draw a penalty which led to Tim Thomas giving up a soft goal that ended up being the game winner.

Washington now has Boston on the ropes but they had a bit of luck on their side with this win today and will need to play a lot better than they did in the final 25 minutes. We will breakdown the rest of this game after the jump.

When I look at the Hurricanes' scoring chance numbers that I have been tracking since the beginning of the season, there is a lot of emphasis placed on even strength play. This is because most of the game is played at five-on-five and it is generally better to use even strength data as a way to find out a player's talent level. With that being said, special teams are very important, too and Carolina had a lot of trouble on both the powerplay and penalty kill this season. Their powerplay was not nearly as bad as their 19th ranking suggests, as they were getting shots on net with the man advantage but their PK gave up a lot of shots and chances.

There were a lot of different players used on both special teams units this year, so finding out who was the most and least effective will give us a better idea of what holes the Hurricanes have to fill next season. The PK appears to have quite a few holes judging by how many shots they surrender on a nightly basis.

Other than going by goal and points, one effective way to find out who is the most effective on special teams is to look at how many scoring chances the team surrenders when a certain player is on the ice. After the jump, we will look at those numbers from the Hurricanes last season.

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.