If you're a Carolina fan still itching for some live hockey then you are in luck because the Charlotte Checkers will be playing in the AHL playoffs. It will be the second time in three years that they have qualified for the post-season and the first time that they have earned home-ice advantage in a series since moving to Charlotte. Those who followed the Checkers during the lockout know that the team was brewing something special with how well they played for the first half of the season. They have managed to continue this success even after losing so many players to injuries, NHL graduation and other means. The players they've lost include their top defense pairing, both starting goaltenders and a few of their top scorers. Head Coach and GM Jeff Daniels has managed to get it done, though and lead the Checkers to the playoffs even with all of the roster changes.

Their first round opponent will be a familiar foe in the Oklahoma City Barons, who were divisional rivals with the Checkers in the South Division this year. The Checkers were 4-4-0 head-to-head against the Barons this year but were outscored 28-25 in those eight games. They were also on the receiving end of a couple of ugly losses to Oklahoma City, one of which coming by a score of 7-4 back in November. Charlotte has had their share of success against OKC this year, as well including a 7-0 win over them on the road, so this matchup seems to be pretty even going by this. 

That being said, it's tough to go by what these two teams did against each other during the season series because their rosters are completely different from what they were in November and January, which was when most of their head-to-head games took place. This is especially true for Oklahoma City, who may have benefitted from the lockout more than any other AHL club. They are the minor league affiliate of the Edmonton Oilers and many of their top young talents played for the Barons during the lockout. Every AHL club had this benefit but the Barons had top-six caliber players such as Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Taylor Hall & Jordan Ebere playing for them so that kind of gave them a leg up on the competition. Their roster obviously looks a lot different now that the NHL is in full-swing and the Barons have managed to overcome similar roadblocks as the Checkers to make the post-season.

After the jump, we'll talk about how the two teams current rosters match up and who has the advantage.

If there was anything the Hurricanes were long overdue for, it was an ugly win. During this brutal 20-game stretch, the Canes have lost in just about every way imaginable and it didn't matter how good or bad they played. They were plenty of games where the Canes were just awful and deserved to lose (including last night's stinker against the Flyers), but there were also a lot of games where the Canes played well but either couldn't score or received terrible goaltending, which put them behind. Nothing was going right for this team during that period and it seemed like the Canes were stuck in a rut that would last for the rest of the season. Until last night, that is. 

Their 3-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning was a nice change from the status quo of the last month or and it was good to see the team get a win even though they arguably didn't "deserve" it. Carolina ended up getting outshot 37-28 (31-21 at even strength) and looked like the better team for a good portion of this contest. Part of the reason for this was because the Canes had a three-goal lead after the first intermission and were content with sitting back, but the Lightning definitely gave the Canes a lot of trouble tonight and Dan Ellis had to come up big plenty of times to preserve the victory for Carolina. It was basically what you would consider an "ugly win" by most standards since the Canes werea ble to get two points despite not playing their best hockey.

Carolina hasn't played their best hockey in about a month, so what made this game so different? Goaltending and a few lucky bounces. As I previously noted, Ellis gave the Hurricanes a terrific performance in goal tonight with 35 saves, their first line produced goals on three of the seven even strength shots they produced and they also got lucky a few times with some of Tampa Bay's chances going off the post or being cleared away at the last minute. In other words, basically everything that didn't go right for Carolina over the last month or so. 

Had the Canes gotten a few more ugly wins like this under their belt earlier in the season then we might be singing a different tune right now regarding their playoff chances, but there is nothing that can be done about that now and all this win impacts is where they select in the draft. Adding to that, two Carolina players also got injured tonight, so spirits aren't as high as they normally are in Raleigh after a victory. Only one week of regular season play left..let's hope the Hurricanes can continue to close things out on a positive note.

The wave of injuries that the Hurricanes have experienced has been pointed to as a reason why their season has gone down the drain over the last few weeks. Injuries are always tough to deal with and it's usually the teams with strong organizational depth who can persevere through them. This is where building a strong farm system comes in handy. Whenever a spell of injuries occurs, it presents an opportunity for the guys in the AHL to step in and make an impression at the next level. There are always a lot of players who perform well at the minor leagues but never get a chance to do much in the NHL due to there not being a enough roster space or not getting sufficient ice time whenever they are called up.

The Hurricanes have been in this situation for a few years now since they've had a ton of fringe-NHL players who we didn't know a lot about other than their potential and what they had done in the AHL. It all changed this season, as the injuries have allowed the Canes to get a look at just about every eligible player in the AHL. They have used 17 different players from the AHL and only two of them have spent the entire year of the team. Each one of them seems to have left an impression on the fans, but the only call-up who has managed to stay on the team for a prolonged period is Riley Nash. The rest have kind of drifted back-and-forth without making much of a buzz.

I talked about some of these players a couple weeks ago and how some of them may have deserved more of a shot, but I think it's fair to say that the Canes haven't gotten a lot from the guys called up from Charlotte. They aren't the only team that's had to deal with injuries and have had to rely on AHL call-ups, but how much have they relied on them compared to the rest of the league and how does their production match up?
 

25 even strengths on goal. That is all the Carolina Hurricanes could muster up tonight against the Flyers in what felt like a grueling loss even though the final score ended up only 5-3. Both teams had been officially eliminated from playoff contention last night, so a win or loss doesn't mean a whole lot tonight right now but the team's compete level and play at even strength is still something I'm keeping an eye on and it was very poor tonight. Carolina hasn't had much luck against the Flyers ever since they moved to Raleigh (they've won 30 out of 117 games against Philly), but I'm not going to hang onto that as an excuse, especially when you look at the year the Flyers are having.

This is a Flyers team that has been very poor this year and has been destroyed by injuries. Half of their defense corps tonight had a combined 56 games of NHL experience, and the Hurricanes could barely put a dent in them during even strength play. Adding to that, they were guilty of multiple defensive breakdowns and allowed the Flyers top-nine to have a field day. We could have seen a repeat of the Buffalo-New York game last night were the Rangers put up eight goals if it wasn't for Justin Peters doing his best to keep the Hurricanes in it during the first period. He can only do so much, though and the Hurricanes certainly aren't going to win many games where they rely on him to bail them out of their troubles. They found this out the hard way a few times over the last month and tonight was no different.

I've been saying for awhile that the Hurricanes are a better team than what their record shows but tonight, they looked more like a team that has won only two games in the span of a month and belongs at the bottom of the Eastern Conference. Just a bad game by the entire team with very few exceptions.

Neither the Hurricanes or the fans got the results they wanted last night. Those who got their hopes up for a win were let down and those who wanted see the team continue to "tank" also came away disappointed because the Hurricanes earned a point in the standings from the overtime loss. Kirk Muller and the team felt differently, though. In his post-game conference, Muller was very happy about the resiliency this team showed last night and how they battled back from a two-goal deficit to force overtime. The Hurricanes have been itching to find something positive to hang onto since the season is now officially lost and I guess last night's comeback is something for them to feel good about even if they didn't win. Managing to do it without Jeff Skinner in the lineup was impressive and if anything, it's a sign that the team hasn't given up despite there being no hope in this season. 

For the past month or so, the Canes have had to dig themselves out of bad situations that they put themselves into and last night was no different. The difference between last night's game and the rest of the season was that they actually managed to come back and force overtime, which was encouraging but the Canes need to do something to prevent themselves from even getting into these situations in the first place. I know the team is playing shorthanded now, but these mistakes were happening even with Skinner & Pitkanen in the lineup. Last night, it was a bad first period and penalties that got the Canes into early trouble and while they managed to battle back, they still had a lot of ugly moments. Not that it matters at this point of the season, but the team is still playing for pride so I'm sure we'll see more strong efforts the rest of the way.

The Southeast Division has really gone through some twists and turns in its final year of existence. At the beginning, it looked like the Tampa Bay Lightning had control of things, then the Carolina Hurricanes soon took over their spot. After these two teams drifted out of the picture, the Winnipeg Jets then swooped in and appeared to take hold of the division after getting hot for two weeks. Now that they have cooled down, the Washington Capitals have stepped up and are now sitting at the top of the division with a four point lead after winning nine out of their last ten games, earning points in all of them.

We all know what happened to the Hurricanes and how their season quickly fell apart, but what's the story for the rest of the division? Some crazy things were bound to happen this year with there being a condensed schedule, but I can't remember the last time the division was this shifting. That's probably because I'm so used to the Caps sitting at the top while the rest of the division fights to even stay alive for the playoffs, sans last season, but it seems like the Southeast this year will be decided by whichever team gets hot at the right time and that team currently appears to be Washington. The Jets are also still in the mix and they have a bit of an "easier" schedule down the stretch, so it's very likely that this race could come down to the last day. Still, the Caps look like they are in the driver's seat right now since they are the "hot" team and have four points on Winnipeg with the same number of games remaining. 

A reason why the Caps have been able to claw their way up the ladder is that they have gotten the best of their divisional counterparts. It's also a reason why the Canes have fallen so hard over the last month.

In my recap of last night's game, I mentioned that the result and the stats of last night's game were probably an afterthought to many fans because the one thing on their mind is the health of Hurricanes star forward Jeff Skinner, who left the game after taking a huge hit from Senators defenseman Jared Cowen. No specifics of the injury have been released but it's very likely that the former Calder Trophy winner has suffered his third concussion in his career and his second one in this season alone. It's been said that Skinner brings a lot of this on himself because he puts himself in vulnerable positions very often. I don't disagree with this theory. Skinner's a very chippy player betweeen the whistles and probably isn't very popular with opposing fans. He is also pretty small and is very aggressive with the puck, so he often gets caught with his head down in an attempt to keep plays alive or when he attempts to draw penalties.

None of this seems like it is good for his long-term health because there are always a lot of players on the opposing team looking to knock the daylights out of Skinner whenever he has the puck and we've seen this happen more than a few times over his career. Many have been calling for the Hurricanes to get tougher or add an enforcer to their squad to help "protect" Skinner from players like this. They did just that this off-season by adding Kevin Westgarth but this really didn't prove to do anything. Westgarth played in both games that Skinner was injured in and the Hurricanes had another "tough guy" active last night in Nicolas Blanchard, but neither of them served as "protection" for Skinner. 

Why is that? Because it's almost impossible to protect players from dangerous it's even more difficult with a player like Skinner who often finds himself in bad situations. Skinner often puts himself into these predicaments, but this wasn't the case in the hit he took from Cowen last night.

As much as I hate to say it, the Hurricanes statistical performance is kind of an afterthought at this point of the season. I think we all know by now that this team is better than their record indicates, but they are still out of the playoff hunt and are basically playing for next year. Whether or not they outchance an opponent or earn the best of the territorial play seems kind of irrelevant when all a win or loss does is affect where they will end up in the draft. The numbers would even out in an 82-game season but not when you are down to seven games with a beaten up roster. Thus, the stats are probably the last thing on everyone's mind right now and that's especially true regarding last night's 3-2 loss to the Senators.

This was basically a typical 2013 Hurricanes game where they had a slight territorial edge and didn't play a poor road game, but they had a few defensive mistakes that ended up in their own net which cost them. That along with a lack of finishing ability is what doomed them tonight, which has been the ongoing story for the last year. I think we are all programmed to expect a loss at this point, so the final score isn't a big deal. What has more fans despondent is that the Canes young star Jeff Skinner was knocked out of the game after taking a hit to the head from Senators defenseman Jared Cowen in the first period. In a lost season, the last thing you want to happen is for your best players to get hurt and that's what happened tonight. It's even worse in the case of Skinner because this could be his third head injury in the span of a three year career. I'm sure most would agree that his health is more important than the result of tonight's game, so here is to hoping that he is okay. 

When an injury on a borderline hit occurs, you would expect the play of the victim's team to drop off. The Hurricanes had other things in mind. The Senators were able to get two unanswered goals on Carolina after Skinner left the game, but I didn't notice much of a sag in Carolina's play after that incident. In fact, they were a little more fired up and seemed to be more interested in physically punishing the Senators and making them pay for injuring one of their best players. Not counting Chad LaRose's retaliation scrap, the Hurricanes instigated four fights tonight (one of which involved the intimidating Marc-Andre Bergeron) and started plenty of other scrums between plays in an attempt to avenge their fallen teammate. This isn't to say that they were more interested in fighting than winning the game, because Carolina made a good comeback attempt but you could tell that Skinner's injury changed some of their intentions tonight, and understandably so.

This was a good display of "team toughness" and comradery, but it hasn't been proven that this kind of stuff can win you games. At the end of the day, Skinner is still injured and the Hurricanes took yet another loss and there isn't anything that can be changed about that now.

There are only seven games left in the Hurricanes season and they are likely going to miss the playoffs for sixth time in the last seven years. Things looked promising at the beginning of the season but all hope went down the toilet a few weeks ago when the Hurricanes went on a disastrous stretch losing fourteen out of sixteen games and now they are in a race for the draft lottery instead of a playoff spot. Shortened season or not, this isn't the result that fans were hoping for. Accountability is a phrase we've heard a lot this year regarding the Hurricanes players, but my question is who is going to be held accountable for this season? We just saw a team with playoff-caliber talent go 2-13-2 in a pretty important stretch of the season. As much as I don't' want to get hung up on the results of this weird season, that is unacceptable and I'm wondering how the organization is going to respond to it. The problem is that I don't know how exactly you respond to it in terms of holding someone accountable. 

There have been a lot of critics of the coaching of Kirk Muller and while some of it is deserved, pinning all the blame on him isn't entirely fair. I really hate pointing to injuries as an excuse because just about every team has to deal with these types of struggles but let's face it, the Hurricanes have been destroyed by injuries this year, especially on defense. Muller has had to use 37 different skaters this year and has been forced to juggle the lines almost every game since it seems like a new player gets injured every game. Some teams like the Senators have been able to get by despite losing key players, but they also had some of the best goaltending in the NHL. The Hurricanes haven't had that luxury all season and it reached a new low after both Cam Ward & Dan Ellis went down. Is it Muller's fault that the team's shooting luck and save percentage bottomed out for a span of three weeks? Again, it's not an excuse for the team's struggles since there have been some games where they have looked awful (most of which coming during the time when Justin Faulk was hurt) but it certainly didn't help and it put the Canes into a hole they couldn't get out of.

Some might point to the job that Charlotte Checkers coach and GM Jeff Daniels did with his team as a way to show that injuries aren't an excuse. He has had to deal with so many roster changes this season that the team looks completely different from the one they iced on opening night. Despite this, the Checkers just clinched a playoff spot and are having a very successful season. There are going to be a lot who point to this to say "if the Checkers can get by with their injury problems then why can't the Hurricanes?" It's a fair question, but the talent gap between the AHL and the NHL is pretty large so I'm not going to write off Muller as a coach because of this. I also don't see what good firing him would do since it would give the Canes their third coach in two years. What good can come from that?

Muller likely won't be the scapegoat for this season because firing him wouldn't solve any problems. The team's General Manager Jim Rutherford, on the other hand, is a much more interesting case. The old saying is that "you can't fire the players, so you fire the coach" but a lot of fans would rather blame the guy who assembled the roster that has failed many times this year. Rutherford has been with the Hurricanes since their move to the Carolinas, which makes judging his complete body of work a tough task but as far as the "what have you done for me lately" argument is concerned, the bad has outweighed the good.

Winning the Stanley Cup in 2005-06 can earn you a lifetime pass with many fans and I am forever grateful for him bringing us that moment since it's something you'll cherish for a lifetime. However, the Canes have made the playoffs only one time in the seven years since then and have been knocked out of the race early in three of the last four years. Being a small-market team, Rutherford has had to deal with some financial restrictions and this is where good drafting comes in handy. His performance in that regard has been lacking to say the very least.

Don't get me wrong, Rutherford has delivered the Hurricanes some gems in Eric Staal, Cam Ward, Brandon Sutter and Jeff Skinner but since the year 2000, only two Carolina draft picks have played at least 100 games for the team. Adding to that, only seven Hurricanes draft picks have played at least 10 games for the team this year and includes fringe-NHLers like Drayson Bowman and Zac Dalpe. I think the Hurricanes drafting has improved in recent years, but they still haven't been able to get much out of their picks after the second round and even then that's kind of a stretch. I've talked a lot about some of the team's promising younger players such as Dalpe, Keegan Lowe, Ryan Murphy and Austin Levi but who knows how good they will be in the NHL? I remember when many were talking about the future of Jamie McBain and now he is the resident scapegoat among Canes fans.

Whether you want to blame Rutherford or the scouting staff, the Canes drafting hasn't been great but one way they have been able to make up for this is by making shrewed trades for younger talent. Players like Tim Gleason, Dennis Seidenberg, Joni Pitkanen, Tuomo Ruutu, Jussi Jokinen, Matt Cullen and Jiri Tlusty all played important roles here over the year and were obtained via trade. This has been a good way for Rutherford to make up for his poor drafting and stockpile the Hurricanes with young talent that was closer to being NHL ready. Waiting on draft picks is always tough, so these trades have helped over the years. 

Free agency and contracts, however, are a place where he has been hit-and-miss in. Rutherford was restricted by the team's spending budget in past years, but it didn't stop him from giving Eric Staal and Cam Ward top dollar. Those are the two franchise players so Rutherford was in a rock and a hard place when it came time to extending them, but having at least $15 mil. in cap space and salary locked up in two players means that you'll be strained to fill out the rest of the roster if your team is on a budget. Because of this, we've seen a lot of good players leave Carolina via free agency, the most painful departures being Ray Whitney, Dennis Seidenberg and Erik Cole. Rutherford attempted to replace them with cheaper players such as Andrew Alberts, Alexei Ponikarovsky and rookie call-ups and those didn't quite work out so well. Having an elite talent like Staal locked up is good, but it's tough to build around him when you draft poorly and strike out in free agency. This year, however, was much different.

Rutherford aimed to be much more active this off-season in an attempt to get this club back to the playoffs and while the final result wasn't what we hoped for, he was able to add much more top-tier talent to this team by acquiring both Jordan Staal and Alexander Semin. Both players have added a lot to this team and have made the Hurricanes a better club overall, but building around them is still going to be a challenge. Rutherford already extended them both and when you factor their contracts in with the deals given to Staal, Gleason, Ward, Skinner and Ruutu, you have a lot of money and cap space committed to only eight players. That doesn't leave a lot of room to build a top-tier defense like many are clamoring for and it's going to be a tough job for years to come unless they can build around younger pieces like Justin Faulk and Ryan Murphy. 

Rutherford has put this team in a tough position to improve unless he can shed some salary in the off-season but even with the Canes' defensive issues I think he built a good team this year. I keep coming back to this, but the Canes have been a good team at even strength this year and this will lead to more successful seasons than not. Even after replacing Bryan Allen with Joe Corvo, the Hurricanes have been winning the shot battle in close game situations.

The team is bad defensively and those issues became even greater when Justin Faulk, Joni Pitkanen, Cam Ward and Dan Ellis went down. How they were able to make up for it was that they produced a ton of offense. The Hurricanes produce more shots during 5v5 play than any other team and are creating more than they are giving up. The team's recent shooting percentage rut would like you to believe otherwise, but these have been the facts this year. I'm not so sure if it's a winning formula because of how much strain it puts on the goaltendiers and defensemen, but I also think that the Canes would have more of a shot in a full season than they do now.

Rutherford had a few missteps this year like failing to have a contingency plan for when Pitkanen inevitably got hurt, placing most of the faith in the defense in 20-year old Justin Faulk and trading a good player in Jussi Jokinen away for pennies on the dollar. The popular argument against him is that he "ignored the team's defensive needs," but I think it was more of an issue of him trying to find the right pieces for Muller's system and placing too much faith in the team's prospects. With that said, there have also been a lot of things that went wrong which were out of his control (injuries, terrible shooting luck and the whole nature of shortened season), so it might be wrong to label him as the scapegoat for this year. The Hurricanes had a good looking team going into the year and should next season, as well with the addition of a high draft pick and some off-season moves.

42 games isn't enough to label Rutherford's moves for this off-season as failures and fire him solely based on that. However, Rutherford hasn't exactly done enough for me to feel confident in him going forward, so if he is the one that is held accountable for this season then it may not be the worst thing in the world for Peter Karmanos and the Hurricanes ownership to start a new chapter. I don't think it's completely fair for JR to be the scapegoat here, but his performance over the last half-decade is something that the Hurricanes organization are going to have to evaluate before they begin making any other moves this summer.

Standing pat after a season like this isn't the message you want to send to fans since they are going to want someone to be held responsible for this season. At the same time, the Hurricanes have to be smart and should not overreact to what happens in a shortened season, either. Finding scapegoats is an easy job for fans, making the next moves after removing said scapegoat is what is the difficult part.

After Thursday night's game where the Hurricanes outplayed the Capitals only to end up taking a 3-1 loss, many got the feeling that this team was due for a few bounces. That's probably fair to say because they had lost 14 of their last 15 heading into this game, but the Hurricanes were also playing to well to continue this losing streak. They had a lot of games where they put forth a good effort and had it derailed by terrible goaltending, mental mistakes or not being able to score no matter how many chances they produced. No one has questioned their efforts from the past week, but the team's execution and mental toughness has been put to the test plenty of times and they didn't respond well.

This all changed last night, as the Canes were able to get their first win at home in over a month. Their performance wasn't much better or worse from what it has been over the last week, but what changed for them was that they had a few more bounces go their way. That isn't to say the Hurricanes won based on luck alone because they outplayed Boston for a good portion of this game, but sometimes you need a few bounces to go your way even when your team plays well and the Canes finally got that. They got a great performance in goal from Justin Peters, a bit of a fluky goal from Jeff Skinner to tie the game in the first period and a couple of well-timed misses on what would have been scoring chances for the Bruins.

After how far the Hurricanes PDO had fallen in recent weeks, the Hockey Gods were eventually going to reward them for their strong play, so it was nice to see that happen last night. We have seen plenty of times this year how big of a role good goaltending and special teams can play in winning and losing. The Canes have normally been on the wrong end of this battle, but last night was a different story and quite frankily, it was nice to see.