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.

Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to take a player-by-player look at the Hurricanes' scoring chances to review their season's. There will be two parts done for each player, a scoring chance recap which will consist mostly of numbers and a more thorough review which will talk about the player's season as a whole, the roles he played on the team and what kind of outlook I have for the player next season. It'll be a long process since going through the data takes time, but I think it will be worth while in the end. Going by memories and boxcar stats can tell you one thing about a player, but going deeper into the data tells you a lot more, which is why I am doing this project.

To kick things off, we are going to take a look at one of the Hurricanes more interesting players in Bryan Allen. He was acquired from the Florida Panthers near the end of the 2011 trade deadline for Sergei Samsonov and has played a bigger role than a lot of people expected him to. Most thought that he would be a third pairing defenseman for most of the year but he ended up getting top-four minutes on a lot of nights and was part of the team's main shutdown defense pairing for most of the season.

He played some of the toughest minutes on the team and was considered a reliable shutdown guy for most of the year. Allen is a free agent come July and the general consensus is that most Carolina fans want to keep him around because of how good he played this season. Was he as everyone perceived him, though? Going by scoring chances he was, but not for the entire year. A closer look at this is coming after the jump.

This past season wasn't quite what the Hurricanes fans were hoping for. In fact, it was a lot worse than most of us were expecting and now the finger pointing game has begun with a lot of fans criticisms directed towards General Manager Jim Rutherford. There's definitely a lot of reasons to be upset right now. The Hurricanes have failed to make the playoffs the last three seasons and have finished in the bottom-10 of the league in two of the last three seasons.

How much heat does Rutherford deserve for the Hurricanes problems, though? He's been with the organization for almost 20 years so it's tough to rate his whole body of work, but what we can do is look at some of his recent moves to see how much of Carolina's struggles are on him. Over the last few years, Rutherford has done a mix of both good and bad things for the Hurricanes so it's tough to place the blame solely on him. After the jump, we will take a look at some of those moves and talk about what JR has to do to make the Hurricanes a winning team again.

The Hurricanes might be out of the playoffs but they did release some very good news earlier in the week as the team has signed Brian Dumoulin to an entry-level contract. Dumoulin is rated the team's fourth best prospect and numerous scouts have said that he is NHL ready as of right now so it is very possible that he could be playing in Raleigh next season.

What does this mean for the rest of the defense corps, though? Carolina has five defensemen under contract next season with Jaroslav Spacek and Bryan Allen becoming unrestricted free agents and Jamie McBain being a restricted free agent. McBain will likely be retained but there is also talk that Allen might be re-signed, as well. Should that happen, that means Carolina will have essentially the same defense next season as they did last year but things could easily be very different if both Dumoulin, Ryan Murphy and even Bobby Sanguinetti are impressive enough in training camp to make the team. 

That's when you realize that there's a lot to be excited about with Carolina's defense even though it's in pretty bad shape right now. With Justin Faulk leading the way this year, the Canes could be seeing a massive youth movement on their blue-line as soon as next season. Is letting the kids play the right way to go or should the Canes let Dumoulin & Murphy ease their way in? After the jump, we'll talk about that and look into how different the Hurricanes defense might be come October.

The Coyotes really have bad luck with drawing the worst possible first round opponents possible as their first round matchup is the Chicago Blackhawks, a team that a lot of people think are good enough to go to the Stanley Cup Finals. That's not to say that Phoenix will be a complete pushover but the matchup doesn't look very good for them at all. There are a couple playoff teams who I think Phoenix can defeat, but I'm not sure if the Blackhawks are one of those teams.

That said, the 'Yotes have their advantages over the Blackhawks and could possibly win this series. We'll look into those more after the jump.

Much like the Vancouver-Los Angeles series, the #2 vs. #7 matchup between the San Jose Sharks and St. Louis Blues looks to be a lot closer than the team's seedings indicate. In one corner, we have the Blues who have quietly assembled a great foundation over the last few years and are now seeing it pay off as they are sitting pretty at #2 in the Western Conference. In the other corner, we have the hard-luck kids known as the San Jose Sharks who were expected to contend for the Cup (yet again) but ended up not earning a playoff spot until the last week of the season.

I am willing to bet that if you asked almost any fan at the beginning of the season which one of these teams would be one of the best in the Western Conference and which one would be battling for one of the final playoff spots, they would probably guess the Sharks for the former and the Blues for the latter. It hasn't quite worked out that way, obviously and it's actually been more of the opposite. Most pundits are impressed with what Ken Hitchcock has done with the Blues this season and have them winning in a short series, but I think it'll be much more difficult for them. Find out why after the jump.

I enjoyed being part of the scoring chance project so much this season that I decided to take the liberty to track a few playoff series. While most of the teams in the playoffs have people tracking for them already, there are still many who are not tracked and two of them are the Detroit Red Wings and the Nashville Predators. To fill that void, I will be tracking chances for this series and possibly a few more if I have time. The Predators are one of the teams this year that has managed to stay near the top of their conference despite being a weak team by standard puck possession metrics like Corsi & Fenwick. Tracking scoring chances will help us find out how much "shot quality" comes into play for them and if it's one of the reasons why they have been so successful this season.

Unfortunately, tonight's game didn't really explain much at all because of how unorthodox it was. A little under 40% of the game was played at special teams because the refs were calling pretty much anything that resembled a penalty and it led to special teams dictating the pace of play. Whichever team had the most powerplays in a given period had the advantage in chances and there isn't much that can be said about either team's play at even strength because not many chances were recording during five-on-five play.

What I can tell you is that 15 of the 34 the scoring chances that were recorded tonight were at even strength, so this was basically a special teams battle for most of the game. To make things even stranger, the Preds ended up winning 3-2, outscored the Wings 3-0 at even strength, two of which were very fluky goals, and weren't very efficient on the powerplay despite having 10 minutes with the man advantage. 

Like I said, it was an odd game so there's not much that can be determined from this other than Pekka Rinne was probably the best player on the ice tonight and that the Preds did a nice job of preventing the Wings from doing much of anything on their last minute rush.

After the jump, we'll take a look at some of the raw numbers from this game.

The Nashville Predtaors are a team that has been driving stat nerds crazy all season. They are 4th in the West with 104 points despite having the second worst Fenwick close percentage in the league and getting outshot in almost every single game they've played. How can a team that spends so much time in their own zone be good enough to earn the 4th seed in the playoffs? Goaltending and special teams, or at least that's been the case for the Preds this year.

Even though the Red Wings are the lower seeded team, I don't think them winning this series will be surprising to a lot of people. The Wings are easily one of the best teams in the league when it comes to controlling the play and they were lucky enough to draw one of the worst teams in that category in the first round. Does this mean that this series will be easy for them? Not quite. The overall numbers for both team speak for themselves but anything can happen in a seven game series, which should be the Preds motto going into this because a lot of the data doesn't speak in their favor.

In last year's playoffs, the Canucks drew one of the toughest first round opponents they could have asked for in the Chicago Blackhawks and barely made it out of that series alive. Unfortunately, the same thing happened to them this season as they will be taking on the Los Angeles Kings in what should be one of the most anticipated matchups of the first round.

Now, the Kings have had a lot of trouble scoring this season but they have been playing some terrific hockey all year and it's really picked up since the trade deadline. They might actually be one of the most dangerous teams this postseason and I think Vancouver is about to find out the hard way. Is history going to repeat itself or will the Canucks make this an easy series? We'll talk about that after the jump.