Buffalo Sabers (18-17-4) vs. Carolina Hurricanes (13-21-7)
RBC Center, 7 p.m.
TV: MSG-Buffalo

I said earlier that you have to take risks to be a successful franchise and head coach Kirk Muller is doing that tonight by putting Tuomo Ruutu and Jussi Jokinen on the first line with Eric Staal. Why is this risky you ask? Because these three are our best offensive players currently in the lineup and if they get shut down, there isn't much behind them and it's going to hurt the team's offense a lot. However, this line has three of Carolina's leaders in scoring chance percentage and present a threat whenever they are on the ice, something the team has lacked all season. Jokinen & Ruutu's line with Jeff Skinner was the closest thing to a big offensive threat we had all season and I guess Muller is tired of these wing experiments with Eric Staal and wants to put him with two proven goal-scoreres instead. Ruutu and Jokinen are the most proven wingers we have right now and have worked with Staal in the past, so this works. 

If you remember Jokinen's 30 goal season, he was attached at the hip to Eric Staal for most of the year so maybe tonight is the night where he finally snaps his goal drought. We just need to hope that this line produces because after them there isn't much. Our second line tonight will probably be our usual third line of Bowman-Sutter-LaRose and while they are a solid unit, none of them are proven top-six commodities so I'm going into tonight with a lot of skepticism.The Sabers defense is banged up right now so that may have influenced Muller to load up the top line.

Lines & more after the jump

One thing that doomed Carolina in their 4-3 shootout loss to the Islanders was the team giving up two powerplay goals on three opportunities and this has been a weak area for the team all season. The Canes penalty kill is in the bottom-ten in shots prevented and have killed off only 78.2% of their penalties this year. The good news is that Carolina has taken the ninth least amount of penalties this year so they haven't been in this opportunity much, but when they are shorthanded, they aren't doing a spectacular job at preventing shots and goals so what we're going to do here is find out who is taking the most penalties on the Hurricanes. This doesn't matter too much in terms of how effective the penalty kill is, but it will be nice to get a look at who is putting the Canes at a disadvantage by constantly taking penalties.

We'll dig deeper after the jump

With the Anaheim Ducks in complete freefall mode, GM Bob Murray made a shocking announcement that everyone with the exception of Teemu Selanne and Saku Koivu are "fair game" in regards to a trade. Yes, that includes star forwards Ryan Getzlaf, Bobby Ryan and Hart Trophy winner Corey Perry along with defenseman Lubomir Visnovsky and goaltender Jonas Hiller. No, this doesn't mean that all of these guys are going to be traded, it just means that Murray is wiling to listen to offers for them. Despite that, the news of this breaking out has caused hockey fans all over the Internet to go into a frenzy because they think that their team can somehow land Perry, Ryan, Getzlaf, etc. without remembering that big trades like that do not happen very often during the season. I can't recall the number of times I have heard proposed deals for a big-time player not happen so I take trade rumors with a huge grain of salt.

That said, the Ducks are a mess right now. They are sitting at 14th in the Western Conference, have a very unimpressive prospect pool and do not exactly have a lot when it comes to depth or cap room. They haven't been good for years (playoff appearance last year was due to a ton of good fortune) so this is a perfect time to rebuild if they wish to go that path since Perry, Ryan and Getzlaf could fetch a decent return that might help them rebuild. Does this mean that they will be traded this year? No, but there is a good possibility that they might.

Now, I have heard some people make a case for the Hurricanes making a trade with the Ducks for one of the aforementioned players and I honestly don't see it working out. Yes, having an elite winger like Perry or Ryan would be fantastic but in order to get one of those players, we would need to give up a lot (i.e. one of our top prospects) and the Canes just aren't in position to do that right now. I know that Ryan is still very young, signed for four more years and can reasonably fit into the Canes rebuilding plan but I still don't know if giving up prospects is the right thing to do right now. Also, three of Carolina's best prospects are offensive defensemen (Faulk, Murphy, Dumoulin) and Anaheim already has one of those in Cam Fowler so this is why I do not see the Ducks and Canes working out as trade partners.

Carolina is more likely to be a seller this deadline with the team being out of contention and having a few expiring contracts on hand, but let's say there is a deal like the Erik Johnson/Chris Stewart trade from last year and the Canes do get some kind of offer. Who would be on the team's "untouchable" list?The Ducks have made it clear who they aren't going to deal (although their choices are a bit odd), so who should Carolina hold onto as the deadline approaches?

Fortunately for the Canes, they are in better shape than the Ducks when it comes to organizational depth and future plans, so they can afford to hold onto a lot more players. Here is my list of guys that I would not deal.

One of the biggest problem with the Hurricanes under Kirk Muller (among many other things) is that most of their wins have come by only one goal or have been decided in overtime. This is a bad thing because one-goal and overtime wins are more of an indication of luck than team skill and will likely not sustain in the long-run. Three of Carolina's last four wins have been by one goal and two of them were in overtime and they had a chance to win another last night against the Islanders but instead, they lost 4-3 in the shootout. The Canes have been poor in OT and the shootout this year (3-7), so you could also make the argument that they haven't been getting lucky in close games which is completely accurate but that's just how luck works. It would be a lot better if the Canes could learn to finish their opponents early in games so they won't be decided by luck-driven factors like overtime and the shootout. They had a couple opportunities to put away the Islanders last night but, just as we've seen many times this year, they let them hang around and tie the game multiple times and took home only one out of two points in the standings.

Aside from that, Carolina had a strong overall effort against the Isles but penalties and defensive lapses got them into trouble and that is why they are now sitting alone at the bottom of the Eastern Conference.

More details after the jump

New York Islanders (13-17-16) vs. Carolina Hurricanes (13-21-6)
7 p.m. RBC Center
TV: MSG+

It's a battle for the bottom of the Eastern Conference as the Hurricanes take on the New York Islanders. Both of these teams are in the "Fail for Nail" sweepstakes and if there is one team that's shown the dangers of using "tanking for a high draft pick" as a silver lining, it's the Islanders. This team has not made the playoffs in four (soon to be five) years and finished at the bottom of the Atlantic division in all of those year. During that time (and before that) they accumulated high draft picks like Josh Bailey, John Tavares, Calvin De Hann, Kyle Okposo and Jesse Joensuu and despite that, they are still stuck at the bottom of the conference even though they should be improving on paper. The Islanders are the exact reason why I am worried for the Canes if they choose to completely blow up their core and rebuild from scratch again. Sure, it's worked for the Capitals, Blackhawks and Penguins but people need to remember that high draft picks are not always a sure thing when it comes to turning franchises around so there is a ton of risk involved with tanking. A high draft pick would help the Canes a lot but let's not pretend like that will fix all of our problems immediately.

As for the actual game tonight, we'll discuss that after the jump

At the end of November, I came up with a narrative called "The March Towards .500" where the Hurricanes corsi, fenwick and scoring chance rates were slowly improving and that there was a realistic chance of the Canes getting over 50% in both of those categories even if the team wasn't winning. Well, the team was ".500" with a 5-5-2 record in the month of December but their scoring chance percentages actually regressed. It wasn't anything extreme (Scoring chances are sitting at 47.3% at even strength right now) there wasn't much progress being shown from the end of November. However, the shot charts that Gabe Desjardins cooked up show that the team's underlying numbers are slightly better compared to what they were under Paul Maurice. They are still a long ways away from reaching that .500 mark.

With that in mind, let's take a look at the individual scoring chances after three months. We'll be looking at both raw data and scoring chance numbers adjusted for zone starts. We will do that starting after the jump

Happy New Year, Caniacs and what better way to bring in 2012 than to recap the Canes performance from the final week? They closed out 2011 with a 2-2-0 record which included a thrilling overtime win and two stinkers against Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay, although the latter was not as bad as the score indicates. The only time they got shellacked was against Pittsburgh where they were outchanced 21-9 at even strength and it led to them having a 47.6% scoring chacne ratio at even strength for the week. The Canes did not have one "full 60-minute" effort this week and that's a problem which has been plaguing them all season long, but there were some good performances this week. Their effort against the Devils was very good and so was their game against the Leafs and we'll see them win more games if they can put together more performances like that. The problem is that they seem to make one mistake that leads to them giving up consecutive goals. I expect things like that to happen with a rebuilding team, though and hopefully they will grow out of it soon.

Still, a 2-2-0 record is not too bad of a note to close out the year even if they are struggling against good teams (i.e. Pittsburgh). Seven out of their 12 games in January are at home so that should help things a little bit.

More after the jump

As of last Monday, the Canes have a new goal-scoring leader and his name is Tuomo Ruutu. With 14 goals and 22 points in 40 games, Ruutu is having a very good season and is on-pace to break a personal record for goals in a season. Ruutu is also set to become an unrestricted free agent once the season is over and with the Hurricanes out of the playoff race, it has many wondering if we should deal the 28-year old Finn. I'm not a huge fan of the whole "the team sucks, trade everyone for peanuts" mindset because if the team is going to give up Ruutu, then they better make damn sure that we get something of value back in return.

Ruutu is one of six regular forwards on the team with a positive scoring chance rating, is playing on (arguably) the team's only scoring line and has been a key part to the team's offense. If we do lose him then it will have a negative effect on the rest of the team this year. There are plenty of good reasons for dealing Ruutu, though. For one, he is on pace for his highest goal total since he is pushing 30, his value right now might be higher than it ever will be. He could fetch a solid return at the deadline for the Hurricanes to work with and it is better than letting him walk for nothing this summer.

In my opinion, the only time you should trade a player is in the following circumstances:

1. He is a pending unrestricted free agent and the team he plays for is in rebuild mode.
2. The potential free agent market is very thin and said team will have to overpay to sign him.
3. This player is at the point where his value is at its peak.

The first two are true, but is Ruutu's value at its highest point right now? When it comes to re-signing players, Jonathan Willis of Oilers Nation looks for things called "red flags" which are reasons why committing years and money to a free agent might not be worth the risk. Are there any "red flags" with Ruutu? We'll look into that after the jump.

Carolina's last game of 2011 was strikingly similar to their last game of the 2010-11 season as they gave up four unanswered goals to the Tampa Bay Lightning and took home a 5-2 loss. This game felt a lot more lopsided than the underlying numbers indicate but that's probably just a hangover from the three goals they gave up in the third period and the awful defensive play exhibited during then. Keep in mind that Carolina was only outshot 26-23 at even strength, had a 2-1 lead during the second period and looked pretty good for most of that time. Then Chad LaRose took a penalty late in the second period which carried over into the next frame and Carolina was Stamkos'd* shortly after. The inevitable third period meltdown, similar to what happened in the season opener, followed. Definitely a horrible sight to witness because it's never fun to blow a lead and it's even less fun to give up a hat trick but I don't think this was a terribly played game by the Hurricanes. It was just a horrible stretch of play in the third period along with some bad decisions that ended up sinking the team. Again.

We'll explore the ups and downs of this game after the jump

*Stamkos'd is my new word for a goal that comes off a slapshot from inside the face-off circle. It's happened to us and so many other teams that I figured it should get its own phrase.

Carolina Hurricanes (13-20-6) at Tampa Bay Lightning (17-16-3)
5:00 p.m., St. Pete Times Forum
TV: FS-Carolinas, Sun Sports

Assuming that realignment gets approved by the NHLPA, this will be the final year that the Canes and Bolts will be divisional "rivals" and will no longer have to play them six times a year. Part of me will miss that because I always look forward to our divisional tilts with the Lightning (although two out of the last three I'd like to forget) and it will feel weird not playing them as often. The realignment is going to have a bigger effect on the Bolts, though as they move to a "conference" that features Boston, Ottawa, Montreal, Buffalo, Toronto and....the Florida Panthers. It's basically a way for the NHL to sell tickets in the Florida teams because of all the snowbirds. I'll miss the Bolts as our Southeastern adversaries, though. When you play in the Southeast for so long you eventually get attached to the teams here, which is why the Thrashers moving also bummed me out.

Anyway, back to some real hockey talk now. If you've been reading my recaps, you'll remember that Justin Faulk and Jay Harrison are being used as the team's shutdown pair and, much to my suprise, they have been very successful. They had a rough outing against Evgeni Malkin and James Neal on Tuesday but they effectively neutralized Phil Kessel, Ilya Kovalchuk and Zach Parise in previous games. Brandon Sutter has also played a big role in this as the team's main defensive forward with Patrick Dwyer out of the lineup. I am not banking on this to sustain because neither have blown away their competition this year but if it does, then I won't be complaining. Tonight's going ot be another tough test for them as they have the duty of keeping Steven Stamkos off the score sheet. Challenge accepted? Let's hope so.

Lines, analysis & notes after the jump