"Jordan's better" was the chant of choice for Winnipeg fans during the Hurricanes visit to the MTS Centre on March 18, 2012 as Jet fans tried to do their best to rile up the Hurricanes captain. The chant was short lived, as Eric Staal would go on to have a three-point game that night and lead the Canes to a huge comeback win over a divisional rival. I think Winnipeg has been in the division long enough for fans to know their fan's culture and trolling opposing players is kind of their shtick. However, the whole debate of which Staal brother is the best was something that was being debated around this time last year.

Eric Staal has always been the older brother and the best of the quartet. He's the one with an 100-point season under his belt, a Stanley Cup ring and an Olympic gold medal to his name and he has been a #1 center for basically all of his career but if rewind to one year ago, Eric had arguably his worst season in the NHL. He still finished the season with 70 points in 82 games, but his goal total was its lowest since his rookie season, his plus/minus was amongst the lowest in the NHL for a good part of the year and his point-per-game rate was the lowest it had been in four years. Meanwhile, Jordan Staal had a career season offensively. He scored a career high in goals with 25 and had the highest point-per-game rate of his career with 50 points in 62 games.

Eric still had better numbers, but there were a lot of people wondering if Jordan could emerge as the superior Staal brother with Eric approaching 30 and Jordan set to enter the prime of his career and becoming more of a threat offensively. The common belief was that Jordan Staal has the talent to be a star forward but was being "confined" to a third-line center role with the Pittsburgh Penguins because of their center depth. I always felt that claim was overblown because Jordan's had plenty of chances to center one of the Penguins top-two lines with Crosby & Malkin spending much of the last two seasons injured, but still, a lot of people wondered what Jordan could do if he was put in a more offensive role and if he could emerge as the best Staal brother.

Those who were hoping to see Jordan in a more offensive role got their wish this season after he opted to not re-sign with the Penguins and was traded to the Carolina Hurricanes last summer. It was an opportunity for Jordan to take advantage of playing more minutes with better linemates and possibly have the "break-out" season that many were hoping he would have. Things didn't quite work out this way in his first season, though. In fact, when you look at how the seasons for both Staal brothers went, it's really interesting to see how much they contrasted with everyone's expectations. 

If I had to pick a series that was going to be the most lopsided, the Western Conference's 1 vs. 8 matchup between the Wild & Blackhawks would probably be at the top of my list. As I mentioned in my playoff preview, the Hawks are superior to the Wild in just about every category and should be able to handle them in at least five games. The Wild managed to push Chicago to overtime in Game One before losing in overtime thanks to a phenomenal effort in goal from Josh Harding, but Game Two went a bit differently. The Wild took a 5-2 loss and were grossly outplayed for about three-fourths of the game. I know Minnesota is playing with a couple key injuries (Jason Pominville's absence being a big one), but they looked like a team that was just plain outmatched in Game Two. They can't expect Harding to keep them in every game and they certainly can't continue to give up 40-50 shots every game if they want to have a chance in this series.

Minnesota was able to make things a little interesting in the second period on the back of a strong performance on the powerplay, but Chicago won just about every other battle and earned themselves a two-game advantage in the series.

Despite the results of Tuesday night's game and the Penguins being the top-seed in the Eastern Conference, I was expecting this series to be somewhat competitive. The first game may have been a dud, but last night delivered a little more of what I was expecting to see from this series. The Islanders have been one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference at controlling puck-possession at even strength and this was on full display last night as they really took it to the Penguins. They outshot them 36-23 during even strength play, had a huge advantage in five-on-five shot attempts and outplayed them in just about every area except for special teams.

The Isles had a territorial advantage in Game One, too but they weren't creating much offense out of any of their zone time. This changed completely last night.as the Isles were able to test Marc-Andre Fleury a lot more. They were still shooting from the outside a lot, but I noticed their transition game was much stronger and they did a much better job of getting to rebounds, which resulted in a few more chances and some lucky bounces to go with it. 

Luck is probably the main reason why the Isles were able to tie this series tonight even though they were the better even strength team. They were trailing 3-1 at the first intermission and were able to tie the game thanks to some fortuitous bounces and a couple of soft goals in their favor. Three out of the four goals they scored weren't scoring chances and the only one that did qualify came after Matt Martin banged in a puck that took a weird carom off the end boards. You could make the argument that the Islanders created their own luck and would have scored eventually with how much they were outplaying the Penguins, but it's still hard to deny that they got some breaks there. Sometimes this is all you need, though and it could help the Islanders extend this series.

Let's remember that the Islanders are not a bad team and are capable of giving the Penguins a fair run for their money in a seven-game series with the talented group of forwards they have. Pittsburgh has more top-end talent on their roster, but they still can't afford to play the Islanders lightly and get outshot as badly as they did last night. Both teams are going to need to tighten up a bit defensively, though. The Penguins are a lot better than what they showed in Game Two and Evgeni Nabokov stability in net is just as questionable as Fleury's, so I see this series as one that can go either way despite Pittsburgh's bad underlying numbers. 

Yesterday morning, Jim Rutherford addressed the media on the Hurricanes season and one of the key things discussed was the team's off-season plans and from the sound of things, the Hurricanes depth and defense could be in for a bit of an overhaul. In the presser, Rutherford mentioned that he would like to add two to three defensemen this off-season and become "tougher to play against" which could mean that changes are on the way. Terrible defending and no depth scoring were a big problem for the Canes in this past season, so it's good to see that Rutherford has identified the problem and is aiming to fix it. The question is how will he go about doing this.

The Hurricanes aren't an idea situation this off-season because they have roughly $8 mil. to spend and the free agent pool doesn't offer many solutions as far as finding a top-four defenseman goes. They also have a handful of players within their organization to re-sign and will need to keep an eye on future seasons, as well. It's easy to find one player to target and say that the team will need to pay what it takes to get him and ignore what it will do to their cap situation in future years. The Canes in particular will have to be cautious with this because they have a little under $20 mil. committed to nine players the year after next season. They also don't have a ton of prospects who they can count on to fill key roles on cheap ELC deals, although that could change after this draft class.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that the Hurricanes are in "cap hell," but with only $8 mil. to spend and quite a few holes to fill, Rutherford is going to have to make some creative moves to do what he wants while setting this team up in a good position for the future. After the jump, we will talk about what the Canes need to do this off-season and what kind of situation they will be in.

We continue our scoring chance tracking of the playoffs by moving onto the Rangers-Capitals series, which was one that many people had a split view on. One side of hockey fans see this as the Caps series to lose because they are the hotter team coming in, losing only one game in regulation in the month of April and being led by one of the NHL's best players in Alexander Ovechkin. On the other hand, some people view Washington's recent success as one that is built on a house of cards due to their poor territorial play and that their luck will run out in the playoffs. The Rangers had to claw their way into the playoffs, but their body of work for the entire season is slightly better than Washington's so it's easy to see why people would favor them in this series. However, in Game 1, it was the "hot team" that came out on top and Washington's path to victory was similar to how most of the second half of their season went.

The Caps were largely outplayed during even strength play, as they recorded only seven scoring chances when the terms were even and recorded 16 fewer shot attempts than the Rangers. It's not terribly surprising that this happened because the Caps have been a weak team at even strength for most of the season, but fortunately for them only 1/3 of this game was played at special teams and that's an advantage that works in their favor. Washington basically go to start the game on the powerplay after the Rangers were whistled for a too many men on the ice penalty and were able to establish a territorial advantage for the majority of the first period due to that. They only scored on one of their five powerplay opportunities, but I think it worked in Washington's favor that so little of this game was played at even strength because that area hasn't been their strong suit this season and the Rangers were the ones carrying most of the five-on-five play.

Needless to say, this was a very weird and sloppy game and exactly the type of game the Caps needed to win if they want to take control of this series. They got a little lucky with the Rangers missing the net so often and Jason Chimera scoring a soft goal on Henrik Lundqvist, so I would expect a slightly different result in Game 2 if the Rangers continue to control the play at even strength like they did last night.

Over the last two seasons, I have been doing my best to take a closer look at the Hurricanes performance by keeping track of their puck-possession stats. Why? Because there is a lot that goes into winning hockey games and over time, it's been noted that the teams who are best at controlling puck-possession during even-strength play are usually better set for long-term success. In most recent years, the Hurricanes have been an awful team at controlling puck-possession, ranking in the bottom-half or bottom-third in the NHL in that category. That all changed this season, though.

In close game situations, the Hurricanes were winning the battle at even strength for most of the year. There was a point where they were a top-ten team in Fenwick Close and were doing a fantastic job of controlling puck-possession. This would lead to a happier ending in a full-year but some things went terribly wrong. Both goalies got hurt, the roster was beaten up and the team went through periods where they couldn't buy an even strength goal to save their lives. In a shortened year, that will normally do you in and while I don't think this club would have made the playoffs if they were a little more lucky, all of their numbers indicate that they were better than where they ended up in the standings.

There's another side to this story, though. Puck-possession may have been one of the Hurricanes strong suits this season but scoring chances were not. They controlled the puck in the opponent's offensive zone a lot, but there were many games where it didn't result in much offense and by that, I mean scoring chances instead of just shot attempts. There has been evidence which shows that strong puck-possession leads to scoring chances in the long-run and that Fenwick (Unblocked 5v5 shot attempts) and scoring chances are strongly correlated, so good puck-possession should lead to better scoring chances in a full year, right? 

Possibly, but this obviously wasn't a full season and things worked out much differently for the Hurricanes, as their ability to control scoring chances was still a problem this year even though their play at even strength improved considerably.

Just because the Hurricanes are out of it doesn't mean my tracking days are over. I'll be doing various stat tracking for every playoff game this year and will be posting scoring chance reports here for the ones I'm able to do live. I'll have reports for the other games posted at a later date (possibly after each series is over), but scoring chances will come a day or so after I'm able to track a game live. It will be a way to follow the playoffs in-depth and take a closer look at each series for those who are interested in that.

Unfortunately, the first game I was able to track live was the most lopsided and non-competitive game of the first round. Despite being a 1 vs. 8 matchup, I was expecting the Islanders-Penguins series to be a little closer than some of the experts and causal fans were predicting and while I still hold onto that statement, Game 1 looked exactly like a top seed going against a bottom seed. The Penguins humiliated the Islanders last night in a 5-0 win and the Isles were basically out-competed and out-matched in just about every area.

That is, in every area except for puck-possession. The Islanders actually had much more shot attempts than the Penguins during five-on-five play but it ultimately didn't matter because of a few reasons. First of all, the Islanders got into early penalty trouble and Pittsburgh made them pay for it to get an early lead. Secondly, the Islanders goaltending wasn't very good and Evgeni Nabokov let in a couple goals he would probably want back and lastly, most of the Islanders shots were either blocked or came from a non-threatening area. As a result, the Penguins had a huge advantage in scoring chances despite not winning the puck-possession battle.

After doing a quick survey of Hurricanes fans, it's pretty clear that the number one concern for the team this off-season is improving the defense, and rightfully so because the Hurricanes blue-line had a ton of issues. They were one of the worst teams in the NHL at preventing shots on goal during 5v5 play, had an atrocious penalty kill and constantly gave up odd-man rushes and scoring chances on almost a nightly basis. To make things worse, their defense corps was constantly banged up throughout the year and they ended up going through 12 defensemen over 48 games. The Hurricanes came into this season with a defense that could be fine if they all stayed healthy and played to their full potential. Unfortunately, Murphy's Law was in full effect last season and just about everything awry.

So, how do the Hurricanes go about fixing their defense? Personally, I think it relates both to the team's system and their personnel since Kirk Muller runs an umtempo system where slower, stay-at-home defensemen would be less effective than they would be in a more conservative system, but I think most would agree that the Canes blue-line corps could use some shoring up. The only true "shutdown" defenseman they have is Tim Gleason and he is surrounded by guys who are either more known for their offensive skillset or are guys who would be third-pairing defensemen on contending teams. That definitely needs to change in the next few years if the Canes are going to get back to the playoffs. 

Before we go about discussing how to "fix" the Canes defense, we're going to take a look at the odds and ends of their defense corps from the past year. Observing how Muller used each player and how they performed in their minutes will give us a better idea of where everyone stands and what areas needs to be worked on specifically. It should also give us a clue of which players stand out in the defense corps and which ones need to go.

I'll be breaking down this in a few different areas. First, I'll show how Muller divvied up the ice time among his blue-liners throughout the year to see who he favored and if there were any changes over time. After that, I'll show which defensemen constantly got the tough assignments and how that changed throughout the season and then finally, we will look at how each player performed in those situations. It will a way to provide context to the numbers that I have been reviewing for most of the season and give us a better idea of the state of this defense corps.

So who is the star of the Hurricanes defense and who are the ones dragging things down? We'll find out after the jump.

We've gone over the East, so now it's time to shift our focus out to the Western Conference, where many of their games are played while you are sleeping. The West does have plenty of teams that are worth staying up late for, though and insomniacs are going to be treated to some excellent playoff action in the upcoming action with the first round featuring some very interesting matchups. Last year, everyone got to see the Kings pull off an incredible run as an eight-seed to win the Stanley Cup and they are in a good position to make another run this post-season with the strong team they have assembled. They do have a tough first round match-up, though and the West features a lot of very good teams that could stand in the way of the Kings pulling off a repeat.

After the jump, we'll take a look at the matchups and who has the best chances of advancing out of the first round.

It's depressing that this will be the fourth year in a row that the Hurricanes failed to make the playoffs, but there are still plenty of exciting matchups to talk about in this year's first round. The shortened season was going to lead to a lot of interesting outcomes for this year's post-season and it certainly delivered on that promise, as three new teams from the Eastern Conference made the playoffs, a few of which not many expected. I'm sure that most would have laughed at you four months ago if you said that Montreal would win the Northeast after being the second worst team in the NHL last year. They would have done the same thing if you went onto predict that the Islanders would make the playoffs while the New Jersey Devils, last year's Eastern Conference champs, would be on the outside looking in. At least the Southleast Division lived up to its mantra of sending in only one team. Regardless, it looks like NHL fans are in for another exciting first round this year and there are a few series that could really go either way.

I'm sure that each of the fan blogs for these respective teams are working around the clock to break down their own series, but writing playoff predictions and previews is kind of a "tradition" for hockey bloggers, so I figured that I'll post mine here anyway. Most of people's playoff predictions are often based on picking whichever team is the "hottest" coming into the post-season or which team has the most experience on their roster. As most of you know, I have a different approach when it comes to predictions. I'm going to take a look at each series and see how each team matches up in terms of even strength play, how lucky they have gotten and how they have performed on special teams. Luck has played a huge role in a lot of teams making it in since this is a shortened year, so be prepared to see plenty of interesting matchups after the jump where I'll break down each series.