Giving a "full 60-minute effort" is something you'll hear a lot of analysts preach and it's something that the Hurricanes have been struggling with for the past few games and last night's contest against Ottawa was no different. Just like the last two games, the Canes outchanced Ottawa by a wide margin in the first period (7-2), but the difference this time is that they were unable to score. They came out flat in the second which is where Ottawa took full advantage, grabbed a 2-0 lead and then "trapped" the Canes into their own zone for most of the night. It was beginning to look like the same old story for Carolina but thanks to a little bit of luck in the form of a poor defensive play by Ottawa defenseman Sergei Gonchar, the Canes were able to muster up a comeback and force overtime. They would only walk away with one point due to the overtime heroics of Ottawa goalie Craig Anderson and three consecutive misses in the shootout but there's a lot of positives to take out of this game. We'll examine those more and the scoring chances more closely after the jump.

Ottawa Senators (3-5-0) at Carolina Hurricanes (3-3-2)
RBC Center, 7 p.m.
TV: FS - Carolinas, TSN

The road trip is finally over the Canes are back home at the RBC Center for a showdown with the Ottawa Senators. Ottawa was projected to be one of the worst teams in the league this year but they are coming off two strong wins while the Canes have lost two straight including an ugly 5-3 loss at the hands of the Winnipeg Jets. Carolina has also blown two consecutive 2-0 leads in those losses and it can be traced back to them not giving a full 60 minute effort. Whether it was due to them sitting on a lead or committing one stupid penalty after another, the team has had trouble with keeping leads this season and this Ottawa team's most recent win came in a last minute comeback. If the Canes gameplan is anything similar to the last two, then a repeat of that may occur. *knocks on wood*

Some notes for tonight's game is that Anthony Stewart will not play tonight and Zach Boychuk was recalled in his place. I don't know where Boychuk will be in the lineup but I'm hoping he will see more than fourth line minutes because that will do little to benefit the team. This team is struggling to find wingers on the first line and I think Boychuk deserves a shot there. I mean, what does the team got to lose at this point? Ruutu, Ponikarovsky, Skinner and LaRose all struggled there and Staal seemed to work well with Boychuk when he was up with the big club last year. It makes sense to give him another chance there. Also, it will be a good chance to see if Boychuk will ever be a top six winger on this team or not. We already have Brett Sutter on the team to play fourth line minutes, someone who can play those minutes in Tlusty and a two-way forward in LaRose who can take over on the third line. Let's give Boychuk a chance.

On the Senators side of things, they are going to be without Daniel Alfredsson and Petr Regin tonight. Making what is a pretty weak forward corps even more depleted. Kaspars Daugavins was recalled to take Alfredsson's place on the second line. He isn't one of Ottawa's best prospects but he did play for Team Latvia in the Olympics. I'm sure the announcers on whichever feed you watch the game on will remind you of that.

Lines and analysis after the jump

The Canes were an even 1-1-1 last week as they ended their road trip and were able to earn five out of a possible eight points. Some would say they are lucky to come away with more than two points this week because they were outplayed in almost every game. In Boston, it took a huge first period effort from Cam Ward and some incredibly stupid penalties from the Bruins for the Canes to come away with a 4-1 win. Then in St. Louis, the Canes came to play for the first 20 or some minutes and then completely turned off the jets and lost 3-2 in overtime. After that was the disaster in Winnipeg where the Canes had another 2-0 lead and then allowed Winnipeg to score five unanswered goals thanks to some bad penalties, shaky goaltending and a bad bounce or two. What was funny is that was the only game this week where they weren't outshot. Either way, the Hurricanes special teams are what won and cost them a couple points in the standings this week but this team is still getting shelled at even strength and it's going to be a big problem soon if things aren't fixed. With that said, let's take a look at some of the top performers and underachievers for Carolina over the past week.

Read more after the jump

Eric Staal might be tied for the team lead in goals (all three of them) but I'm sure many Hurricanes fans would agree that the captain hasn't quite looked like himself this year. He has been known as one of the game's elite centers for some time now and I believe that he'll turn things around, but his start to the year has been pretty rough no matter which way you look at it. He has a scoring chance percentage of 36.5%, which is 9th among forwards on the team. Only Tuomo Ruutu, Anthony Stewart, Zac Dalpe and Brett Sutter have lower ratings. To add salt the the wound, he is also ranked 9th in corsi percentage out of 13 so the underlying numbers aren't working in his favor right now either.

A lot of a player's struggles and misfortunes in the early stages of the year are due to small sample sizes but let's take a look at what exactly has been going wrong for Eric Staal this year.

Normally I try to avoid being critical of what other organizations do, but I figured I should chime in on Florida Panthers GM Dale Tallon's latest trade where he sent 26-year old winger David Booth to Vancouver along with Steven Reinprecht and a third round pick in exchange for Marco Sturm and Mikael Samuelsson. At first glance, this appears to be a steal for Vancouver because they get a solid addition to their top-six and a draft pick in exchange for two injury-prone players in their thirties. All they had to do was take on Reinprecht's $2,175,000 salary which comes off the books next year. After further examination, this trade still makes a hell of a lot more sense for Vancouver than it does for Florida. Trading Booth is not a bad move for the Panthers but what makes this a bad deal for them is what they got in return compared to what they could have gotten.

Florida is in a position where they need to save money and Booth is due $18.25 mil over the next four seasons. Tallon did not give him that contract it also includes a No Trade Clause which kicks in next year. On top of that, Florida has one of the deepest forward prospect pools in the league and needs to make room for some of those players next season when they are ready to be called up. That's where Sturm and Samuelsson fit in; they are both UFA's come July and probably won't be retained. It makes sense for a team in that position to trade an underperforming player with a long-term deal for expiring contracts, right? Of course, but there's just one problem with that.

Here's all of the contracts Tallon gave to forwards from this summer alone:

Tomas Fleischmann - $18 mil for 4 years (NTC)
Scottie Upshall - $14 mil for 4 years (NTC)
Tomas Kopecky - $12 mil for 4 years
Sean Bergenheim - $11 mil for 4 years
Marcel Goc - $5.1 mil for 3 years
Kris Versteeg - $3,083,333 for 1 year (RFA)
Matt Bradley - $1.9 mil for 2 years

Total over 1 year: $19,583,333 (7 forwards)
Total over 2 years: $16,450,000 (6 forwards)
Total over 3 years: $15,450,000 (5 forwards)
Total over 4 years: $15,280,000 (4 forwards)

Tallon will only save about $3 mil by dumping Booth's contract and it will probably end up being an net loss for him when you factor in him trading for Brian Campbell's ludicrous contract and signing Ed Jovanovski for 4 years at $4.125 per year. A cap hit and salary he will have to pay even if Jovanovski retires before the end of it. If Tallon was so concerned with freeing up roster space and saving money then why the hell did he give four long-term contracts to players who are all inferior to Booth? I know he needed to get to the cap floor but if I were running the Panthers, I would rather trade for a front-loaded contract and sign free agents to only one or two year deals, especially with the new CBA kicking in next season. What Tallon did this summer caused him to unnecessarily add $15+ mil for the next four years. Florida already 10 forwards under contract for next season so there isn't exactly a lot of room for their prospects to make the team out of camp next year anyway.

I can understand that Tallon may have been frustrated with Booth's production and wanted him traded but why was he so urgent with pulling the trigger on this deal? Booth hasn't been the same player ever since he suffered a concussion two years ago but has always been a guy who can at least get 3-5 shots on net per game, be a key source of offense and a welcomed addition to a lot of team's top sixes. With his NTC kicking in next season, I do not understand why Tallon felt the need to deal him now instead of at the deadline where some team would likely be willing to overpay for him. Booth had 23 goals last season on Florida's first line and was putting up very strong possession numbers but a terrible on-ice shooting percentage of 6.92. That's usually a sign that he is likely to have a better year and even if he doesn't, he's still proven to be good for at least 20 goals. You're telling me that someone wouldn't at least give up a decent prospect for that?

On the Canucks end of the deal, they get what will probably be an upgrade over Sturm, Samuelsson and Higgins on their second line with Ryan Kesler and I could see Booth working out well there. As for Reinprecht, I don't think he will be playing in Vancouver unless Vancouver has serious injury problems. The third rounder doesn't mean much to me but you can never have too many draft picks/prospects. The only negative I see out of this for Vancouver is if Booth continues to struggle and they are stuck with his contract. The 'Nucks don't exactly have a ton of cap space as it stands right now. I don't think the Panthers really care about how Sturm or Samuelsson will perform for them but I can't really say that these two make Florida a better team than they were with Booth. Florida has plenty of forward prospects already but I think they missed a huge opportunity to strengthen that pool by using David Booth as a salary dump.

For the second night in a row, Carolina had an early 2-0 lead and then gave it away within the span of one period. There were a few different things that happened tonight, though. In yesterday's game, they blew a 2-0 lead because the team got careless and decided to sit on a lead and let the Blues take it to them. They were careless tonight as well but in an undisciplined way. Carolina committed four penalties in the first period which allowed the Jets to tie the game. After that, things just imploded and the Jets scored three unanswered goals and Carolina could barely do anything to create offense in the second period. Despite Winnipeg's best efforts to get the Hurricanes back into the game, they came up short and were handed their second straight loss.

I said a few things about the Jets before the game; 1) I said a lot of their players were falling victim to poor percentages right now and two of those players were Andrew Ladd and Evander Kane. They each had a goal tonight. 2) I said their powerplay and penalty kill looked mediocre but they weren't as bad as their conversion rates stated. They scored twice on the powerplay and killed off seven Carolina penalties. 3) Their goaltending was very bad. Ondrej Pavelec was chased in the first period and Chris Mason stood on his head in the third. Half right there. On the other end, Boucher was not at his best tonight as he allowed five goals on 24 shots but I think only two of the goals he let in were soft. The team in front of him certainly was not helping with the penalties and putting up zero offense for about 30 minutes.

More after the jump

Carolina Hurricanes (3-3-2) at Winnipeg Jets (1-4-1)
MTS Centre, 7:00 p.m.
TV: CBC, FS-Carolinas
Opposing Viewpoints: Arctic Ice Hockey

Winnipeg has not been a good team this year but despite that, my confidence in the Hurricanes winning this game isn't too high right now. Why? Oh, it's no big reason. It's just that Carolina had an overtime game last night, were outplayed for over 40 minutes and had to travel 846 miles to get ready for another game in less than 24 hours. The last time Carolina had a back-to-back it was against Washington in the second game of the season and they managed to at least get a point out of it thanks to a strong powerplay. Tonight, they have a weaker opponent in the Winnipeg Jets but that doesn't mean the Canes should take them lightly. The Blues haven't exactly been a good team and look what happened when Carolina decided to ease up on them. If you're looking for a silver lining in yesterday's debacle, the Hurricanes have "earned" five points in their first three games on this road trip. I'm hoping we see a more full effort from Carolina tonight, especially at even strength where they've been getting shelled all year. Winnipeg actually hasn't been a terrible team when playing 5-on-5 this year (29.9 SF vs. 28.6 SA) but they haven't been scoring at all and their special teams are performing very poorly right now. With how Carolina's been playing lately, we may know what this game comes down to.

There isn't much news concerning tonight's game other than Brian Boucher will likely get the start in net for the Canes because Cam Ward had to face 42 shots in yesterday's game and it only makes sense to put the back-up in now.

More after the jump.

This was a very frustrating game to watch if you are a Hurricanes fan because for the first 21 minutes, the Hurricanes had complete control of the game and were playing what could have potentially been their strongest effort of the season. They had a 2-0 lead, were outchancing the Blues 9-5 and were keeping most of the Blues shots to the outside. After Brandon Sutter scored to give the Canes a two-goal lead with 18:27 left in the second period, things fell apart. The Blues recorded nine consecutive chances (all at even strength) including two goals and the Canes could not come up with any response at all. They were outchanced 16-8 at even strength for the rest of the game and found themselves playing for OT instead of trying to win. They say a team needs to have "killer instinct" to win games and the Canes certainly did not show any of that last night.

More after the jump

Carolina's powerplay has been decent these first few games. They are getting plenty of shots on net, have an 18.2 conversion rate (tied for 12th in the league) and are at least averaging one chance per two minutes with the man advantage. That isn't great but it's an improvement over last season. Carolina's first powerplay unit was shaken up a bit with the addition of Tomas Kaberle but the second unit also has a new member in the form of Jay Harrison. Offense is not something that I expect out of Harrison but he has been used frequently on the second powerplay unit this season. He's already played more minutes on the powerplay in six games than he did all of last year. Harrison has stated before that he has worked on his shot over the summer but how much does using him on the second PP unit benefit the team? Let's examine his performance a ltitle closer to find out.

More after the jump

Once again, special teams were a key factor in the Hurricanes winning this game only in a different way than the last two. Carolina spent 11:35 of this game on the powerplay thanks to some incredibly undisciplined play by Boston and were extend their 2-1 lead in the third period thanks to a couple of 5-on-3's. As a result, Carolina outchanced Boston in this game 17-16 but lost the battle at even strength 12-11. They were not dominated by Boston in this game at even strength like they were in Buffalo but Boston playing 1/6 of the game with a man down certainly had a big factor in Carolina winning this game. It also helped that guys like Zdeno Chara, Milan Lucic, Nathan Horton and Dennis Seidenberg were the ones who were being penalized the most for Boston.

More after the jump