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.

One of the many things that I like about Kirk Muller is that he has been willing to give many young players a chance to succeed. Since his arrival, Muller has been the "Anti-Paul Murice" of sort where he has given most of the Hurricanes younger players top-nine minutes during their call-ups instead of just plugging them into checking line roles. He sort of did this out of necessity when he took over last season since the Hurricanes were starved for top-six forwards and one of the younger players was going to have to step in sooner or later. Guys like Drayson Bowman, Jerome Samson, Zach Boychuk and Zac Dalpe all got a shot under Muller and while Bowman was the only one who stuck, all of them were given an opportunity to succeed after Muller took over.

The Hurricane's don't have any A-level forward prospects in their system right now, so asking one of these players to fill a top-line role would be unreasonable. This season was a different story. The Hurricanes had only spot open in their top-six, which was on the second line and every spot in the bottom-six was basically up for grabs. Brandon Sutter's absence obviously left a big hole to fill as the third line center, but with Jordan Staal taking over his role as the tough-minutes center, all the Canes needed to do was build a third line that could drive possession in soft minutes. Considering that they spent most of last season over-slotting third-liners in the top-six, one would think that assembling a competent third line shouldn't have been an issue for the Canes. Between Drayson Bowman, Patrick Dwyer, Chad LaRose, Riley Nash, Chris Terry, Brett Sutter, Tim Brent, Zac Dalpe, Jeremy Welsh, Andreas Nodl, Tim Wallace, Zach Boychuk and many others, the Canes had enough players that should have been able to succeed in a soft-minutes role.

The third line has gone through a ton of changes this year and hasn't been able to provide any secondary scoring, so this strategy didn't work out, but the plan wasn't terrible going in. Look around the league and you'll see other teams employ similar strategies. Both the St. Louis Blues and Ottawa Senators have gotten decent production out of their bottom-six while composing them of mostly younger players or grinders who didn't fit into scoring roles. The Hurricanes strategy wasn't terribly different from their's but the execution wasn't as good. Some of it relates to players under-performing, but some of it also relates to Muller and Rutherford not utilizing all of the forward options that they had at their disposal.

So it's finally come to this. After going 1-13-1 in their last 15 games, the Hurricanes have gone from first place in the Southeast to in the bottom-five in the NHL and have all but removed themselves from playoff contention. It's a situation that nobody wanted to happen after how active Jim Rutherford was this off-season, but a run like this will doom any team and it's even more crippling when you are dealing with a condensed schedule. Weather any players, coaches or management is held accountable for how this disaster of a season turned out remains to be seen, but there isn't much the Hurricanes can do about it for their last eight games. The most they can do is just play out the remainder of a year and see what happens, and a lot of fans are hoping that the losing continues for draft purposes.

As someone who hates losing, the idea of "tanking" annoys me and as a former athlete, it makes me even more mad because I'm not a fan of being rewarded for being terrible. It's also something that isn't on the player's minds right now because I'm sure the last thing they care about right now, especially a team like the Hurricanes who are in need of a confidence boost. Draft picks in general are also a craps hoot since there is always a chance that a "great" prospect will bust and the Hurricanes don't exactly have a great track record when it comes to drafting. When I see fans cheer for their team's to "tank" the rest of the season, I get the idea that they think one good pick is going to solve their problems when that isn't the case at all.

People forget that most draft picks are not going to be NHL-ready and that's especially true for defensemen who take years to develop. Developing young players is a long process and while the Hurricanes need to replenish their farm system, one pick isn't going to solve their problems. With that being said, this draft has a lot of top-end talent available and the Hurricanes could benefit from adding one of those players to their system. They also have a good corps in place and have gotten incredibly unlucky on several occasions this season, which makes losing not the worst thing in the world right now. Would I like to see the team win more often? Obviously, but it really doesn't matter at this point of the season.

The Hurricanes currently sit two points out of the bottom spot in the NHL right now, so they appear to be in good position for a lottery pick if they continue to stay the course. However, something hit me when I was looking over the scores of Thursday & Friday night's games: There are a lot of bad teams in the league this year, most of which are in a similar position to the Hurricanes.

The Avalanche, Panthers and Flames might be the only teams standing in the way of the Hurricanes right now, but if you compare their underlying numbers to the rest of the pack here, the Canes seem a bit out of place. Why? Because they are better than most of these clubs.

The Canes have been a better team at even strength than the rest of these clubs, but injuries, terrible recent shooting luck and god-awful special teams have kept them down. I've talked about the club's recent PDO slide and that has played a huge role in their skid over the last 15 games. Is it enough to keep them in draft lottery position, though? If they continue to not score, get replacement level goaltending and get shelled on the penalty kill then absolutely. That might give fans some confidence because the Canes could add an elite talent this draft to what is a pretty good, but very unlucky, corps. Odds aren't in their favor, though. I mean, the Canes can't realistically shoot at 3.9% at even strength for the rest of the season if they continue to win the shot battle by this much. It's possible with only eight games left, but comparing their numbers to the rest of the pack here shows that they are more likely to rattle off a few wins and possible take themselves out of the bottom-five.

Buffalo, Edmonton, Tampa Bay, Colorado and Nashville are all legitimately awful teams who seem much more prone to tank the rest of the year than the Canes. Calgary and Florida are also in bad shape although they are getting zero puck luck on top of their bad play. The Flyers underlying numbers also look pretty brutal by most measures, so there's going to be some competition for the bottom-five. The one thing Carolina has going for them is that nothing is going their way and they can't seem to catch a break no matter how good or bad they play.

So, if you are a Canes fan and want to see them land a top-five pick, then you better keep hoping that they continue to run cold at even strength and get terrible goaltending because that might be what keeps them in this range. Most of their remaining games are also against teams gunning for the playoffs, so that might give some encouragement for those who are hoping for a tank-job. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing a couple more wins because I want the team to end the year on a good note but losing isn't the worst thing in the world right now.

The Frozen Four is currently ongoing and unfortunately, no Carolina prospect's respective teams made the finals. They had a couple of players go pretty far into the tournament, though and now that their season is over, we're going to take a look at how they've performed this season. With the exception of Danny Biega, all of Carolina's NCAA prospects are underclassmen who weren't playing big roles on the team, so their production might seem a little underwhelming, but keep in mind that these players are also very young. It's also worth noting that the Canes have signed two of these four players, the most recent being Wisconsin sophomore and 2013 fifth round pick Brendan Woods.

Woods' Wisconsin Badgers had themselves a very good season in winning the WCHA tournament before getting eliminated in the first round of the NCAA tourney by UMass-Lowell. The run that Wisconsin pulled off is pretty impressive after they started off the season on a rough note. The Badgers won 11 out of their last 15 games and Woods played an important role in their resurgence, recording nine points in Wisconsin's last 16 games. He also had two assists in the Badgers win over Minnesota-Duluth in the WCHA semi-finals. Woods' team had a great season, what about the rest of Carolina's NCAA pool?

Di Giuseppe is the player here with the most potential and he had a bit of a disappointing season, along with most of Michigan's team. He spent most of the season on the first line and didn't put up terribly good boxcar numbers for his ice-time, although he finished fifth on his team in points. Di Giuseppe didn't have much trouble when it came to creating offense since he was third on the team in shots on goal and averaged nearly three shots per game, so poor shooting luck could have contributed to his low goal total. He is also only 19 years old and didn't sign his ELC, so next year should be something to look forward to for him. Di Giuseppe has good size and can be an effective winger at the next lf he continues to improve. His team actually made quite a resurgence in the final part of the season after playing so poorly for most of the year, making it all the way to the CCHA finals.

While Di Giuseppe will probably return to school next season, the other two players will be in the pros as both Danny Biega and Brendan Woods have signed their entry-level contracts. Biega did so a couple weeks ago and has already played one game with the Charlotte Checkers. Unfortunately, he was also injured in that game and hasn't played since. Biega also had a bit of an underwhelming senior year at Harvard after being a point-per-game player the year before. As a team, Harvard struggled a lot this season so Biega wasn't the only one who had a down year. He was also able to get a lot of shots on goal for a defenseman, ranking third on his team. Biega had a down season but still has a lot of talent, so I'm looking forward to what he can do with the Hurricanes in the coming years. He should be able to get some decent minutes on Charlotte's blue-line next season.

Woods also signed his entry-level deal and I was a little surprised that he did it so early because he was only a sophomore and is a very recent draft pick. He also spent most of this season as a 2nd and 3rd line center for the Badgers and would have had a chance to get more ice-time next year if he stayed in school. We will likely be seeing him in Charlotte next year, too as that team continues to be younger but I still think he is a ways away from being in the NHL. If he manages to get that far, he probably has a future as a bottom-six player more than anything else. Woods spent a fair bit of time on the Badgers penalty kill last year, has good defensive instincts and is very good at faceoffs, so he could parlay that skillset into a professional career in the right situation. Woods is also the son of Anaheim Ducks assistant head coach Bob Woods and you can never go wrong with drafting a coach's kid. 

Not listed above is goaltender Collin Olson, who was the Hurricanes sixth round pick from this year. Olson played in only nine games this season, so there isn't much that is known about him other than his .901 save percentage in those games. Ohio State was in a battle for the post-season for most of the second-half of the year and they gave most of the starts to senior Brady Hjelle, who had one of the best save percentages in the CCHA so he likely wasn't going to steal the job away from him. He should be getting more starts for the Buckeyes next year and there will be more known about him then. Goaltenders in general take a long time to develop and the Hurricanes took two in their most recent draft, so it will probably be a long process with them.

With Woods and Biega signing, there aren't going to be many Carolina prospects in the college rankings next year but hopefully that changes in this coming draft. it's looking like the Canes will have a high pick, so that will be a chance to add some more young talent into the system.

We are at the point of the season where the Hurricanes are playing for draft position and all winning will do is impact that negatively. The fact that it got to this point is sad, but this is what happens when you manage to win only one out of fifteen games during the most important time of the year. I'm not the type of person who roots for a team to tank the rest of the season but wins and losses are all but meaningless right now, so all I am going to be looking from here on out is for the Canes to play well and try to salvage anything from a dismal season. No one wanted it to end up this way, but getting an elite talent out of this year's draft could make the frustration from this season meaningless in the long-run.

With all of that in mind, you couldn't help but want to see the Hurricanes pull one out against Washington last night because it was a game that they played well enough to win. They obviously didn't play a flawless game, but they produced over 25 scoring chances and got a great performance in net from Justin Peters, so this was a good opportunity for the Canes to get out of this funk. The one thing that kept them from winning this game was the play of Washington goaltender Braden Holtby, who stopped 43 of the 44 shots he saw to steal this game for the Caps. I know the excuse of "running into a hot goalie" is getting old, but what else can you say about last night's game? The Canes played a solid game, put forth a great effort and probably deserved better than the result they got. That's just how things have been working out for them this season, though. Either the goaltending takes them out of games early and when they actually do get good goaltending, they can't buy a goal at the other end. 

Losing isn't the worst thing in the world at this point in the year, but when you have only one win in your last 15 games, it's really frustrating to watch defeats like this from a fan's perspective and the players are likely even more frustrated right now.

A few days ago, I wrote on the subject of PDO and how it has gone downhill for the Hurricanes over these last few weeks. It basically showed that the Hurricanes have been going through a stretch of awful luck lately and that the team is better than what they have showed during this losing streak. In a full season, PDO regresses toward the mean of 1.000 for most teams, but this is obviously not a normal season and there was bound to be some fluky things happening. Take the Toronto Maple Leafs for instance, they are currently shooting at over 10% at even strength and while that will probably crash back down to Earth in a full year, it's enough to propel them into the playoffs now. Same with the Ottawa Senators, who have a team save percentage of over .930 and are in good position to make the playoffs despite losing their two best players. If not for their unreal goaltending, they probably wouldn't be in this situation. Luck is going to play a huge factor this year, which is why I'm hestiant to overreact to whatever the results are.

That being said, the Hurricanes recent skid is something that would get them into trouble even during a full-season. Every team has 8-9 game stretches where they can't buy a goal or go through a bad losing streak, but when you win only one game out of 13, that's going to put you in a hole no matter what. The Hurricanes underlying numbers from this season might show that they are a good team, but it's hard to call what we are seeing right now a "good team that's just unlucky." There has to be more to it than this.

Since this is a little delayed, I figured that I should try out a new experiment with my statistical recaps instead of just going over the scoring chances. I usually track those every game and present them here to show who had the edge in the territorial battle, but that's only one part of what I've been tracking all season. One goal that hockey statisticians have aimed to accomplish for years is to quantify every part of the game and while doing that here is feasibly impossible (only so much work one person can do), there's a lot of information that I chart down during games but I don't share a lot of in my recaps because there is a lot of stuff I can't track live. School reasons kept me from watching this game, so I was able to get everything tracked for this game and will share it with you all after the jump.

As for the game itself, it was yet another loss and the Hurricanes were overpowered by a superior Penguins team. They actually managed to hang tough with them for most of the game and took the lead in the third period, but the Pens were able to get a couple of quick goals and coast away with the win. This was far from the Hurricanes worst performance of the losing streak but they were clearly not the better team and deserved the loss. Not much else to say about this one, but I'll let the numbers do the talking.

Once again, the Canes were facing a team that did not bring their best game but were on the receiving end of another blowout loss because they could get a timely save from either of their goalies or buy a goal at the other end. This is the same thing that has happened to them over the last four weeks or so and the whole process is getting tiring because the outcome of most of their games is becoming too predictable. It doesn't matter how well the Canes played in terms of territorial domination or scoring chances because the fact that they can't score and are getting below-replacement level goaltending completely nullifies that, which is exactly what went wrong last night.

The Hurricanes actually started this game on a very strong note. Their game-plan was to forecheck strong, make it difficult for Boston to exit their zone and create chances off forcing turnovers & winning board battles. They did a fine job of this to start the game by getting five consecutive scoring chances in the first three and a half minutes. Then the Bruins were able to generate a transition chance the other way and scored on their second shot of the game after Justin Peters lost track of a rebound that Rich Peverley deposited underneath him. This didn't seem to phase Carolina that much, though as they continued to tran Boston in their own zone for the next few minutes of the game. Then the Bruins got another transition chance and Brad Marchand scored after Peters failed to control another rebound in the crease.

When you have a good start but can't score and end up trailing 2-0 or 3-0 thanks to terrible goaltending, it deflates the entire team and the Hurricanes obviously didn't recover from it last night. Add in Tuukka Rask giving the Bruins the early saves they needed and the team's confidence was shot heading into the first intermission. They continued to battle for the rest of the game, but it was an uphill climb and the game was far out of reach by the time the Hurricanes finally put home their first goal of the game. It's been the same old story for the past two weeks and I'm at a loss for words at what needs to be done about this.

The Hurricanes are basically a PDO nightmare right now and have been for the last couple of weeks. The goaltending has fallen apart since Dan Ellis injured his leg and rushed back from it and they aren't scoring right now either. The team is getting chances, but not finishing and I'm not sure what else they can do about that. They are stuck with Ellis/Peters for the time being and the goals just aren't coming no matter who they are facing in net. It's made every recent game look like a disaster scene and how to fix it is anyone's guess.

After going most of the season without a collective scapegoat, Hurricanes fans seemed to have found one in defenseman Jamie McBain. The entire team is struggling right now, but he has been taking a lot of heat from the fans ever since Carolina went on their brutal losing streak. The hate reached a new high after his brutal showing against the Winnipeg Jets two weeks ago where he was on-ice for two goals against, one of which he put in his own net. Most of the criticism he has been taking lately has been deserved since his mistakes are costing the team a lot more right now and he has the tendency to get caught in no-man's land more than others. He has also been on-ice for seven even strength goals in his last nine games after being on-ice for only seven in his first 20.

Like I said earlier, the entire team is struggling right now but McBain seems to be a step behind the entire team right now for whatever reason. Some say that he has never been good, but it wasn't too long ago when people were talking about how he had the highest plus-minus rating among the defense corps and how he has become better defensively than in year's past. His underlying numbers also show that he hasn't been terribly better or worse than he was last season, so why is it now that everyone wants him run out of town? Personally, I think it all relates back to Justin Faulk's injury and how McBain's role has changed since then.

It was only a month ago when the Hurricanes were in the driver's seat in the Southeast Division and basically all they needed to do was gain points in a little under 60% of their games to make it in. Since that point, the Canes have gone 3-11-1 and are now in the running for a top-five pick rather than a playoff spot. This free fall was something that even I didn't see coming because, as I have often reiterated here, the Hurricanes have been one of the better teams in the NHL at controlling puck-possession this season. This is usually what leads to success in the NHL, but not all the time. Goaltending, shooting luck and injuries are going to keep some good teams out of the playoffs this year because there are fewer games to make up for lost ground. The Hurricanes have been hit especially hard by the injury bug this year, but they've also seen a lot of other things go wrong for them as of late. This is evidenced by taking a look at their PDO over the season. 

For those who don't know what PDO is, it's the sum of a team's even strength shooting and save percentages and shows how lucky or unlucky a team has gotten. A PDO over 1.000 shows that a team has gotten very fortunate while a team with a PDO under 1.00 shows that they may have gotten a few bounces that have gone against them. Carolina's PDO has stayed stagnant for most of the year, but recently it has taken a nose dive. Looking at it over five-game segments shows this team's fall from grace pretty well.