Whenever you are a team that is out of playoff contention near the trade deadline, most people consider said team to be in "sell mode" and the "logical" thing to do is to trade all of their players with expiring contracts for pieces they can use to rebuild with. Being last place in the Eastern Conference, the Hurricanes are one of these teams in "sell mode" and have a few players with deals that expire at the end of the season but the one everyone is talking about is the physical forward Tuomo Ruutu.

GM Jim Rutherford has already re-signed defenseman Tim Gleason for four more years at a moderately high cost and has said that he wants to re-sign Ruutu, as well. We know where Rutherford stands on this issue but there are a still a few things standing in the way. How much money does Ruutu want and will Rutherford be willing to give him that much? Another factor is how much are other GM's be willing to give up to acquire Ruutu. Most teams are going to want at least two solid scoring lines for a playoff push and Ruutu can help them with that. You have to weigh both sides of the situation with issues like this, so we're going to look at both the positives and negatives that come with either re-signing or trading Ruutu. I think JR has to do one or the other here because the worst thing he can do is let Ruutu walk away for nothing like he did with Erik Cole and Ray Whitney.

When Jim Rutherford traded Philippe Paradis for Jiri Tlusty back in 2009, not that much was made of it. Tlusty was known as one of the many "busts" of the Toronto Maple Leafs during the John Ferguson Jr. Era and it didn't look like he would be more than a fringe-NHL player. Fast forward to 2012 and Tlusty is on-pace for a career high 17 goals and has shown some of his first-round skill at times. What a lot of people are wondering is if Tlusty is finally coming to his own or if this year is a complete fluke. As of right now, things are still unclear.

It is easy to forget that Tlusty is only 23 and isn't near the prime of his career, so this season could be him continuing to progress as a player but he's been given a lot more opportunities to succeed this year than he has in the past. Tlusty's always had offensive talent but he's never been given a chance to show it during his tenure with Carolina. Before this year, he was usually put on the fourth line and used in defensive situations. Now, he is playing a lot more minutes and is currently slotted at left wing on the first line with Eric Staal and Tuomo Ruutu. It makes you wonder how much of Tlusty's success this year is related to him playing with stronger linemates because that usually helps a lot of players. If you look at Tlusty's most frequent linemates, you'll see that Staal is at the top of the list so Tlusty's breakout season could be a product of playing with the captain. However, we've also seen him make some fantastic individual efforts this year, so it's unfair to say that Staal is the only reason for Tlusty's success.

After the jump, we'll take a closer look at Tlusty's season and see what the reason is for his emergence. He's a RFA at the end of the year so finding out if this year is a complete fluke or not will be important when it comes time to re-sign him.

The hockey gods giveth and they taketh away. I feel that phrase sums up tonight's game well as the Hurricanes suffered their second consecutive overtime loss and this time the game-winner goal came with less than two seconds left in overtime. To make matters worse, Carolina had a 38-28 even strength shot advantage and controlled this game for a good 40-some minutes but a few defensive breakdowns, two soft goals and a lackluster third period led to them taking the loss. The optimists will say look at how the Canes have earned points in both games of their Western Conference road trip but the way they lost both games will leave a bad taste in fans mouth for awhile. Tonight's loss probably hurts more because the Canes let a good start and solid road effort go to waste and the only ones they have to blame are themselves.

However, the Canes do have some positive things to look at despite two heart-breaking losses. This is the second game in a row they have outshot a team at even strength, and on the road nonetheless. The problem was that it wasn't a full 60-minute effort and they made some horrible defensive mistakes, Justin Faulk's turnover to Ryan O'Reilly that caused the game-winning goal being the one that everyone will remember. Faulk screwed up there and he knows it but to put the entire blame on his shoulders is wrong because what doomed the Canes in this game was their effort after the first two periods. That's all there is to it. The good news is that the Canes should win more games if they can continue to outshoot opponents on a regular basis.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

Carolina Hurricanes (20-25-10) at Colorado Avalanche (27-25-3)
Pepsi Center, 9 p.m.
TV: FS-Carolinas, Altitude

The Hurricanes have faced the Western Conference only 10 times this year and have a middling record of 4-4-2 against those teams. Out of who they have faced in the Western Conference, the division they have had the most success against it he Northwest as they are 2-1-0 against them with wins over the Vancouver Canucks and Edmonton Oilers. What this means is....well nothing really in the grand scheme of things. It's only three games and making conclusions based off that is just silly, but figured that the fans could use a confidence boost after that tough OT loss against Anaheim the other night.

If you want a real jolt of confidence for tonight's game, it's worth mentioning that the Canes are coming off one of their better road efforts of the season. They may have ended up taking the loss, but they played a solid game overall and will hopefully carry over that effort into tonight's game against the Avalanche.

The Avalanche are a better team than the Ducks so this will be a more difficult test for Carolina but they are coming off three strong games in a row, so their confidence has to be pretty high right now. There's only two games left to go in the road trip, so accumulating points now will be important. 

Lines & game notes after the jump

During the Hurricanes-Ducks telecast on FS-Carolina the other night, the announcers mentioned that Carolina defenseman Justin Faulk should be considered in the Calder Trophy race for the NHL's best rookie. If you watch the Hurricanes every night or follow them at all, you can certainly make a case for Faulk being one of the NHL's top rookies. He plays 20+ minutes a night, contributes on the powerplay, kills penalties and his game looks very impressive by the eye-test. For a kid that is only 19 years old, that is very impressive and it makes you wonder why he hasn't gotten much recognition around the league. Is this enough to take home the Calder, though? Unfortunately, probably not.

While I do think that Faulk's season has been overlooked by the national audience, the fact is that it is tough for defensemen to win the Calder. The only time a defenseman wins the Calder is when there is no real standouts among the forward class. Voters and fans are going to look at points before anything else and with players like Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Adam Henrique, Gabriel Landeskog, Matt Read and Cody Hodgson on pace for at least 40 points a piece, it will be tough for Faulk to stand out. He's also played fewer games than some of the other rookies so that probably hurts his Calder chances, too.

Rookie of the Year seems like a tough bet for Faulk but a good question is where does he rank among other rookie defensemen? Most coaches give their younger players easier ice-time against relatively weak competition to help them get a jump-start but we know that this hasn't been the case with Faulk. He and his partner Jay Harrison rank third and fourth respectively among Hurricanes defensemen in quality of competition, so we know that Faulk isn't getting soft minutes. What other rookie defensemen are doing this, though? We'll look into it after the jump.

It is always a bummer when a great game is decided on a horrible call and that is what happened tonight in the Canes 3-2 OT loss to the Anaheim Ducks. Both teams played a strong game and the Canes had one of their better road efforts of the year but unfortunately, they ended up walking away with only one point when it very well could have been two.

The call (or non-call I should say) in question occurred about three minutes into overtime when Jussi Jokinen was playing the puck behind the net. He was being chased by Anaheim forward Corey Perry behind the net and, in an attempt to strip the puck, Perry tripped Jokinen (and blatantly I might add) but referee Tim Peel let play continue as he saw no foul here. Perry was able to gain possession of the puck and The Ducks were quickly able to set up the play and Perry fired a one-timer past Ward to win it for Anaheim.

With how quick the game of hockey is and the human eye having it's limitations, bad calls are bound to happen but this was a non-call that directly led to a game-winning goal for Anaheim, so it's going to be awhile before Canes fans forget about this one. It's especially bad if you look at the play in question because the evidence doesn't exactly speak in Peel or Perry's favor. It was an awful call but I think it is best to be level-headed & reasonable in these situations. Humans make mistakes and this one is pretty big on Peel's part but we don't know for sure that Carolina would have won the game in OT or the shootout even if the call didn't happen. We can speculate but we don't know for sure. Either way, I think the best thing to do is to move on because this was truly a great game outside of that horrible call and I'd rather discuss that instead. Be upset. You have every right to be but in the end, you have to remember that it's only a hockey game and the outcome affects you only as much as you let it. As is the case with all sports. Letting this drag on for days, weeks & months isn't going to do much good.

Now that I have said all that I wanted to about Tim Peel and the non-call, let's talk about the other things that happened in the game because there's a lot of positive things for the Canes to build on here.

One of the bright spots for the Hurricanes this year has been Brandon Sutter's emergance as a shutdown defensive center but I still hear hockey pundits talk about how he has been a "disappointment." Whenever I hear that, I can't help but feel that these "experts" aren't watching the Hurricanes and are only looking at Sutter's 22 points in 54 games to judge his performance. What they don't see is all of the other contributions he makes to the team.

If you go by simple raw data, Sutter doesn't appear to be that impressive. He has only 12 goals, 22 points and a 44.6% scoring chance rate, but the truth is that Sutter has been one of the Canes most important players this year. Sutter's defensive game and responsibility has improved by a lot and you have to look deep into certain stats to see this.

We'll explore this more after the jump.

One of the fun things you can do when your team changes coaches about a quarter way through the season is compare how the new guy is performing compared to who is replacing. The general consensus among Carolina fans is that new coach Kirk Muller is doing a fantastic job and is more suited for this team than Paul Maurice. Despite those claims, the Hurricanes performance under Muller hasn't changed much compared to how they played under Maurice. They are controlling possession at about the same rate and are only roughly a win better under Muller, and that extra win likely came from Cam Ward standing on his head for all of January.

However, I think it is safe to say that the Hurricanes main issue is talent and not coaching because you can only do so much with players like Jiri Tlusty and Alexei Ponikarovsky in your top-six and a defense corps where Tim Gleason is your best player. Muller can't control who he has on the team but what he can do is control how he uses them. With the help of Time On Ice's "team faceoff" option, we can look at how the Hurricanes two coaches this year have been using their players by seeing how often they deploy them in the offensive and defensive zone respectively. You will see some huge differences between Muller and Maurice's strategies.

This was certainly a strange week for the Canes when you compare their shot data to scoring chances because while they were heavily outshot this past week, they actually outchanced their opponents overall. A large reason for this is because of the 47-save shutout they had against the Bruins last Thursday. That was a game where they were outshot by a wide-margin but a lot of the Bruins' shots weren't high quality chances and the scoring chance numbers looked much closer. The same thing goes for the game against the Kings. Either way, Carolina went 2-1-0 this past week and owned 51% of the scoring chances...and only 43.6% of the shots. Like I said, it was a strange week but the Canes started February off on a strong note either way. Let's take a closer look at the past week for Carolina and single out some people.

For the last few years, the Southeast Division has been one dominated by the Washington Capitals with the rest of the teams fighting for wild card spots but things are very different this year. The Capitals haven't been their usual selves and the division appears to be up for grabs with the top three teams being separated by only five points and even the Hurricanes are only 10 points out at the bottom of the division.

The Southeast has been the weakest division in the NHL by far and it is looking like they will be producing only one playoff team this year. The question is which one will it be? The general consensus is that the Washington Capitals will get their acts together, get hot at the end of the year and take the division but the underlying numbers tell a completely different story. In fact, the underlying numbers for every team tell an interesting story and it isn't pretty for any of them. Only one team has a Fenwick close rate above 50%, every team has a negative goal differential and the clubs fighting for the division title would be bubble playoff teams at best if they weren't granted the automatic bid. The term "Southleast" has never been more true than it is this season. 

Find out what they say after the jump