Once again, there aren't many notable individual performances to speak of among the Carolina Hurricanes NCAA prospect pool, but still plenty of things to talk about regarding their teams. It was also one of those weekends where there was a lot of good news mixed in with bad, so we're going to follow the same format as last week and break things down by those two topics. There's only so much that can happen over the span of two games, so I'm expecting for there to be more weekends like this over the course of the season but hope that we start to see one of these players break out relatively soon. 

Until that day, we'll continue to discuss the happenings of NCAA hockey and what is happening with the teams currently housing Carolina prospects.

Michigan Wolverines (Phil Di Giuseppe)

Good News

The Wolverines took down their in-state rivals Michigan State 5-1 in the first game of their weekend series on Friday. This was a pretty close game for the most part but Michigan exploded in the third period with three unanswered goals included a bomb on the powerplay from Winnipeg Jets prospect Jacob Trouba. Di Giuseppe did not record a point in either game but he was definitely involved with five shots on goal and he had one really good scoring chance in Saturday night's game but was robbed by the Spartan goaltender.

Bad News

On that note, the Wolverines were blown out 7-2 in Saturday night's game and were pretty over-matched by Michigan State in all phases of the game. They fell into a 3-0 hole early and just seem to keep digging themselves deeper as the game went on. Di Giuseppe didn't commit any critical errors in this game from my view point but he ended up getting tagged with a -2 after being on-ice for two Spartan goals.

The Wolverines are still ranked but they are under .500 in conference play and have a tough series against #7 ranked Notre Dame coming up this weekend followed by a home game against Bowling Green the following Wednesday.

Harvard Crimson (Danny Biega)

Good News

Biega recorded 5 shots on goal this weekend and Harvard won their second conference game of the year by shutting out RPI 4-0. We are also going to get a chance to see Biega first-hand next week when the Crimson take on Cornell on a game that will be televised on the NBC Sports Network. Remember to set your calendars for that.

Bad News

While the shutout over RPI was nice, Harvard also dropped a 6-2 decision to Union College in a rematch of last year's ECAC championship game. The Crimson still have a winning record on the season at 3-2 but their two losses were both very, very ugly and it doesn't help that they both came at home. Biega also had a rough night by taking two penalties and ending up a -3. Here's to hoping that he'll play better with the NBC Sports cameras rolling next week.

Harvard will be on the road for the next few weeks when they take on Cornell, Colgate and Merrimack Colleg.e

Minnesota Golden Gophers (Mark Alt)

Good News

Alt was the only Carolina NCAA prospect to record a point this weekend, as he recorded an assist on Eric Haula's goal in Minnesota's game against Alaska-Anchorage. The Gophers were also the only team in this group to not lose any of their games this weekend, picking up a 4-0 win in their first game against UAA and tying them 2-2 in the second game. A little fun fact from the first game is that all of their goals came on the powerplay.

Regardless, Minnesota appears to be in good shape for now with a 6-2-1 record and a 3-2-1 record in conference play. They will have a struggling Wisconsin club at home next week in what should be a good WCHA matchup.

Bad News

The one blemish from Alt's stat-line this weekend was his four penalty minutes from the 4-0 win on Friday night. Two of them came after elbowed an Anchorage player in the head and from the sound of things, it wasn't pretty. Discipline hasn't been that much fo a problem for Alt this year, but let's just hope we don't see him deliver a hit like that again.

Ohio State Buckeyes (Collin Olson)

I'll keep things short here. The good news is that Olson had the best game of his college career on Saturday night against Alaska-Fairbanks, stopping 42 of 45 shots and keeping the Buckeyes in the game for the entire way. The bad news is that the Buckeyes lost that game 3-1 as their offensive issues this year continue. They have yet to score more than three goals in a game and have been stuck playing for the shootout in a lot of cases because of it. They have only two regulation wins on the year and three OT/shootout decisions. This has to be frustrating for Ohio State fans but Canes fans should be happy that Olson has performed well in limited action. He has allowed only 11 goals on 140 shots, good for a save percentage of .921.

The Buckeyes have a CCHA matchup with Northern Michigan on the schedule for next week.

The Charlotte Checkers domination of the Peoria Rivermen continued this weekend as they took both games against them in two-game series this weekend. These two wins did not come as easily as they did a couple weeks ago, though as the Rivermen put up a much stronger fight and responded well after getting shutout in back-to-back games. Still, in the end it was the Checkers who came out on top and the two wins improve their record to 9-3-0-1 on the season and give them a six-point lead in the South Division over the Houston Aeros and Oklahoma City Barons. 

Charlotte struggled a bit during the first game of the series on Thursday night, falling behind 1-0 early and having to fight an uphill battle during the early stages. This was a problem for them early in the year, but this team always seemed to be able to battle back and reclaim control of the game and that's exactly what they did against Peoria. Shortly after Anthony Nigro scored the opening goal, Zach Boychuk answered for the Checkers to tie the game and Zac Dalpe added a powerplay goal later in the period to give the Checkers the lead. Peoria would respond in the second period with a pair of goals including a powerplay strike from Ian Cole to reclaim the lead for the Rivermen. Once again, though, the Checkers just continued to fight back and their hard work payed off in the third period with Jeremy Welsh tying the game. Drayson Bowman would then give the Checkers the lead off a rebound chance to score his 10th goal of the season and give the Checkers a 4-3 lead with less than 10 minutes remaining.

This would be a lead that didn't last long for the Checkers as the Rivermen were able to tie the game via a late goal by Derek Nesbitt, who scored twice in this series. The late goal did not demoralize Charlotte, though and they were able to get the win in overtime after Zach Boychuk made a terrific individual effort in the neutral zone to force a turnover and score on a breakaway. Some may say that the Checkers made this win a lot harder than it needed to be, but Peoria put forth a great effort and made the Checkers work for this win. The next night would be a little different.

The opening script was a bit similar with the Rivermen jumping on top early with a 1-0 lead in the first period with a powerplay goal by Taylor Chorney, but things changed dramatically after that. The Checkers would go on to outshoot Peoria 32-12 in the final two periods and outscore the Rivermen 3-1 in the second period. Zach Boychuk played a big role in the comeback as he scored the initial game-tying goal and recorded a secondary assist on Chris Terry powerplay goal. Speaking of which, Terry himself had a big game with a two-goal night and he now has three tallies in as many games since returning from his suspension. Justin Faulk would add another goal in the third period to put this one away for the Checkers, who coasted to a 4-1 victory.

That goal was Faulk's only mark on the scoresheet this weekend, but he is still maintaining an impressive scoring rate with 14 points in 11 games. That puts him tied for third in the AHL scoring race and when you add in his 31 shots in 14 games, it's hard not to be impressed with the season he has had thus far. Also tied for third in the AHL's scoring race is Zach Boychuk, who added four points to his total this weekend and is still registering over three shots per game. With Drayson Bowman inevitably cooling down, I was curious about who would replace his goal production but it looks like Boychuk has done just that, at least this weekend. The return of Chris Terry obviously helps that cause, too since he has been one of the team's top-scorers for the last few years.

One player who has rebounded after a bit of an off-week is Zac Dalpe, who had a goal and a pair of assists this weekend. Dalpe's season got off to a tough start with him missing the first game with an illness and he hasn't exactly been putting up the numbers like Boychuk and Bowman have this year. What he has done, though, is turn in a pretty good season with 10 points in 12 games.  Dalpe is also registering nearly three shots per game and has been getting some bad shooting luck (8.8% shooting percentage), so I think we could see him get some more goals relatively soon. Also in this category is poor Jerome Samson, who was held off the scoresheet completely despite registering eight shots on goal.

Riley Nash also had a very productive weekend with three assists in two games and so did Jeremy Welsh, who picked up a pair of points. These two aren't producing as much offense as some of the other guys on the team both in terms of shots and boxcar stats, but I think they could be players who may begin to emerge once the big guns start to slump. Secondary scoring is always critical and these two along with Brett Sutter will play a big role in it as the year goes on.

Even with the Hurricanes currently locked out, there is a lot of excitement in the air for hockey in the Carolinas right now and most of it surrounding the club's AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers. Heading into this weekend, Charlotte was riding high with a 6-2-0-1 record before even playing a game at home and were getting some absurd production from a few players who many thought would have a shot at making the NHL this year. No club in the AHL had scored more goals than the Charlotte Checkres and only the Abbotsford Heat had a higher goal differential than them. Charlotte was pictured to have a strong team this year, but not many thought they would be this good so early in the year.

In my recap last week, I mentioned that while the Checkers appear to be legimiately a good team, they are getting very lucky in a few areas, namely shooting percentage and powerplay production. The Checkers have a couple players with absurdly high shooting percentage, the most notable player being Drayson Bowman, who was seeing over 30% of his shots turn into goals at one point this year, and those weren't a safe bet to continue in the long run. Just like the Checkers powerplay couldn't continue to click at over a 35% success rate over the course of a whole season. I'm pretty sure that everyone knows this, though and when those percentages eventually do come back down to earth, we will see what this Checkers team is fully made of. Any team can ride off high percentages, but depth and strong even strength production is what ultimately prospers in the long-run.

The Checkers don't have much of a problem as far as depth is concerned, but can they still win games if their powerplay goes through a dry spell? We will find out soon enough, and we got a brief taste of it over the last week when the Checkers endured what was, arguably, their toughest three-game stretch of the year. They ended up dropping two of three games and saw their powerplay go 1/11 over three games. This is only three games and the Checkers still scored nine goals, so there offense didn't completely fizzle out and there isn't much to be pessimistic about but it's always disappointing to end the week on a losing note.

After the jump, we'll go into the details of the week that was for the Checkers. 

When analyzing the performance of a group of players, there are usually at least one or two guys who have a big performance in a given week, which has been the case so far in the Hurricanes NCAA prospect pool. It’s been a nice start to a young NCAA hockey year, but it’s important to remember that there are going to be weeks where these players don’t do much of anything that is noteworthy. Some may think this is a discouraging sign but  keep in mind that most NCAA teams play, at most, two games per week and since we are only looking at five players, there are going to be times where they don’t make much of an impact. That’s just how things work in small sample sizes, and it was the case for all of the Hurricanes NCAA prospects this weekend.

There may not be much to talk about regarding the players themselves, but there is still plenty of news relating to their respective teams and their games this weekend. Unfortunately, it is of both the good and bad variety. After the jump, we’ll look at what went wrong and what went right for the NCAA schools currently housing Carolina prospects.

It was a good week for the Carolina Hurricanes 2012 draft class as their three picks playing in the OHL this season had a very solid set of games. Leading the way was defenseman Trevor Carrick with three points in two games as Carolina's 115th overall pick this year continues to improve on his rookie season in the OHL. Carick has been trusted with playing some important minutes on the Mississauga Steelheads this year and he has responded to the challenge well at both ends of the rink by being solid defensively and on-pace for his best offensive season in junior hockey. Carrick's three points over the weekend gives him 9 on the season, which is half of what he had last year with Mississauga and the previous year in the OHJL.

Coming out of the draft, Carrick was billed as a very safe pick for the Hurricanes in the fourth round and he seems to be developing nicely with the Steelheads this year. I still don't think we have a future star here, but I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that Carrick might be a player that get some NHL action in the not-so-distant future. I really like his game and think Carrick can turn into a useful NHL-er somewhere down the line, even if he has a ways to go before we can talk about this kind of thing. It's probably too early to proclaim anything because he is only 18 and in his second year of junior hockey and we'll probably find out more about Carrick as the year goes on, but it's worth noting that he has been good so far.

After the jump, we will talk more about Carrick's weekend and how the rest of Carolina's CHL prospect pool performed.

Another Hurricanes player will be taking his talents to Europe as it was announced yesterday that defenseman Jamie McBain has signed with the Lahti Pelicans of Finland's SM-Liiga. McBain will not be in Finland for too long, though as he said that he only plays to stay there about a week to play in a few games in order to stay fresh for the upcoming season, whenever that happens. It seems that McBain is a bit more optimistic that the NHL season will begin relatively soon since he isn't planning to stay in Finland for an extended period of time, but that's probably more of a gut feeling than anything.

The Lahti Pelicans (or just Pelicans as they are referred to) are currently the third lowest ranked team in the SM-Liiga with a record of 7-9-0, and do not appear to have much NHL talent playing on their squad right now. The only regular NHL-er on their roster right now is San Jose Sharks goaltender Antti Niemi and the rest of their roster either consists of guys who were mostly known as fringe NHL-ers for the most part. Among them are Angelo Esposito, who was one of the players the Penguins sent to the Trashers in the Marian Hossa trade, Ilkka Pikkarainen, former New Jersey Devil and Carolina's second round pick from 2003, Danny Richmond.

The Pelicans appear to have some offensive problems right now because aside from their leading scorer, Radek Smolenak (10-8-10 in 19 GP), they don't have too many players that are producing at a high level. With SM-Liiga being stronger than usual this year, not having a lot of offense will lead to problems down the road and this appears to be the case for the Pelicans. We know that McBain can provide a decent amount of offense from the blue-line, so here's hoping that he can help out while he is there. Even if he isn't there for a long time, he should play significant minutes there given what the rest of their blue-line looks like.

McBain's stint with the Pelicans probably won't be long and it will mainly just serve as a way for him to stay in playing shape until the lockout is over, but keeping in touch with what Carolina players are up to during this down time is never a bad thing. We'll have more updates on McBain and the progress of his stint in Finland relatively soon.

How good were the Checkers this weekend? Let's see, they won all three of their games (on the road nonetheless), outscored their opponents 16-4, outshot them 101-70, went 8/16 on the powerplay and were perfect on the penalty kill. I should also mention that all but five players who suited up for the Checkers this weekend recorded at least one point and have four players who are scoring more than a point-per-game. Now if that isn't an impressive performance then I don't know what is and the funniest thing about this is that no one would have predicted this after watching the first half of their Friday night game against Grand Rapids.

The Checkers got into quite a hole early in that game, falling behind 4-1 in the second period and it looked like things were going to get ugly and they did...for Grand Rapids. The Griffins took five consecutive penalties and the Checkers eventually made them pay with powerplay goals from Jerome Samson, Justin Faulk and Zach Boychuk. The Checkers just seemed to build off that as Chris Terry would tack on a shorthanded goal in the third period to give Charlotte the lead and an empty netter to ice it.

This onslaught would continue the next two nights against the Peoria Rivermen as they shut them out 4-0 and 6-0 respectively and pretty much dominated the Rivermen in all phases of the game. The first game was very notable as Jeremy Welsh scored two goals that game, the first two of his professional career, and he definitely got a little bit lucky on the second one as the puck took a couple of odd bounces before getting into the net. This was a recurring theme for the Checkers this entire weekend as just about everything seemed to go there way in all three games. When you're converting on 50% of your powerplay opportunities then you know that the dice are rolling in your favor just a little bit.

I usually don't pay much attention to shooting percentages in an eight game sample size because randomness is usually at an all-time high, but I just can't help but point out the conversion rates for some of the Charlotte players. For instance, let's take a look at the hottest Charlotte forward right now, Drayson Bowman, who scored three goals this weekend (one in each game) and is now tied for the AHL lead in goals with seven. His shooting percentage right now is 31.7%. There is no way we can expect him to sustain that for the entire year because very few players possess that much shooting talent and I'm going to guess that Bowman isn't one of them. While there is no doubt he has played well, he has definitely got a bit lucky this year too. His first goal in the Peoria goal where he scored on a long-shot from the boards is a good example of that. This is pretty ironic when you consider that Bowman had little to no shooting luck in the NHL last year.

Chris Terry, Brett Sutter and Zach Boychuk are other players who have very high shooting percentages for the Checkers this year (Sutter's spiked to 27.8% thanks to his hatty on Sunday night) and while I doubt any of the will continue to shoot this will, it's hard to not love the way they have played to start the year, especially Boychuk. Next to Bowaman, Boychuk has been the Checkers most impressive forward and I would argue that he has been a little more impressive than Bowman when you look at how much offense he is generating.

Boychuk has generated at least 3.5 shots per game this year and had 12 shots on goal in last weekend alone. His shooting percentage is subject to decline, but I have a feeling that he will still manage to be a very effective offensive player even when that crashes back down to earth. I'm also noticing him playing much stronger in all three zones than he did last season. He's done a great job at forcing turnovers and being the one guy on his line that is keeping the wheels going. I considered him an outside shot at most to make the NHL out of camp this year, but he has been nothing but impressive so far this year.

Something else I want to point out is Jerome Samson and how he hasn't been receiving the good fortune that the majority of the Checkers forward corps has thus far. It was only this weekend when he scored his first non-empty net goal and he's seen less than 7% of his shots find the back of the net so far this year. The good news is that he has been the team's best forward at generating shots on goal and has been a key player in the Checkers offense even if the goals aren't coming to him, which they will eventually if he continues to shoot at this rate.

Other Notes

• Marc-Andre Gragnani had a four-point performance for the Checkers on Friday night, all four of which came on the powerplay
• Chris Terry has been suspended three games for elbowing a Grand Rapids player on Friday night. The suspension was effective starting Sunday. Tough loss for the Checkers but it opens up the possibility for Victor Rask to be in the lineup every night until then.
• Justin Faulk did not play in Sunday night's game. I'm not sure why other than to possibly give Justin Krueger some action. I'm not sure why Faulk was the one to sit since he has been terrific so far.
• While there is no denying how well the Checkers played this weekend, I think it's worth mentioning that Peoria has scored a total of 10 goals in 7 games this year. In other words, they haven't been playing good at all.
• Justin Peters gave up four goals on nine shots before being pulled in favor of Dan Ellis, who went on to stop all 15 shots he faced and earn a 27-save shutout the next night. I don't want to say that this is a goaltending controversy since the Checkers usually rotate goalies but Ellis appears to have the hot-hand as the starter for now.
• Michal Jordan, Rasmus Rissanen and Justin Krueger quietly picked up two assists each this weekend.
• The Checkers are second to only Rochester in the Western Conference in goals for and are tied for third with Hamilton and Milwaukee in goals allowed.

Charlotte has one more game on the road this week when they take on the Milwaukee Admirals on Halloween night, then they finally have their first home series on November 4th & 5th against the Chicago Wolves. The series against the Wolves should be a good test for the Checkers, as they currently lead the Midwest Division.

The NCAA men's hockey season is still only a couple weeks old but there were plenty of interesting match-ups going on over the weekend, the biggest of which regarding the Carolina Hurricanes being the #6 ranked Michigan Wolverines taking on the #3 ranked Miami Redhawks. The Wolverines had a convincing win over Bentley University last week, but this game was going to be much more of a test for them and the Hurricanes second round pick Phil Di Giuseppe. Aside from an opening-night loss against RIT, Michigan and PdG have been very impressive this year but this two-game series against the Redhawks was going to be one of their toughest tests of the season and I was a little curious about how they would respond to it.

The Wolverines definitely stepped up to the challenge on Friday night as they defeated Miami 4-2 in game 1 of the series. The win certainly wasn't pretty as Michigan looked very sloppy in their own zone and had some a few very ugly turnovers, two of which resulted in Miami goals. I don't know if this was Miami's forecheck overpowering them or if Michigan's defensive play is an issue this year but regardless, they managed to overcome it and get the win.

After falling down 1-0, Michigan got a powerplay late in the first period, and they took full advantage of it with captain AJ Treais scoring on a bomb from the point. Di Giuseppe picked up a primary assist on the goal as he made the initial set up pass to Treais. The play wasn't anything fancy but it definitely got the job done here. Treais would add another goal in the second period and Michigan would add on two more goals in the third to put the game away. Di Giuseppe's assist gives him five points in five games on the year.

There is no doubt that Di Giuseppe has been the most impressive player in the Canes' system among the college ranks but one player who may challenge him for that is Harvard's senior defenseman and team captain Danny Biega, who kicked off his season with a bang on Saturday night. Harvard made quick work of Bentley that night by defeating them 5-0 and Biega recorded two assists to boot, one of which coming on the powerplay. Biega is billed as more of a powerplay quarterback at the NHL level but he appears to be more of an all-around d-man on Harvard's blue-line, so I'm interested to see how he develops this year and what he can do in addition to putting up impressive boxcar stats. He is certainly off to a great start. They start ECAC play next week.

Moving onto teams who are currently in conference play, Brendan Woods and the Wisconsin Badgers picked their first win of the season against WCHA foe Minnesota-Duluth on Friday night. The unranked Badgers came into this game as pretty big underdogs as UMD is ranked #14 in the nation and has a pretty strong roster on top of that, but the Badgers managed to shut them out in their own barn. A lot of credit should go to defenseman Jake McCabe and goaltender Joel Rumpel as they were two of the biggest factors in the Badgers winning that game. As for Woods, he didn't make too much of an impact from the looks of things. He was held off the scoresheet and was 2/5 on faceoffs. He did have three shots on goal, though. Wisconsin would tie Minnesota-Duluth the next night 2-2.

In other inter-conference action, Collin Olson & the Ohio State Buckeyes took on the Bowling Green Falcons in a CCHA series this weekend. The Buckeyes would shutout the Falcons in the first game, but would lose in the shootout the next night when Olson got the start. Olson had a terrific performance in this game, stopping a career high 36 of 39 shots and definitely played well enough to win. Unfortunately, it's hard to win when your team gets outshot 24-39 like the Buckeyes did on Saturday night and Olson also let in two early goals before the Buckeyes went on to score three unanswered in the second period. It's hard to blame Olson too much for that, though since he was under fire for the first two periods and had to face 26 total shots in the first 40 minutes. Despite losing in the shootout, Olson took home second star honors.

Last but certainly not least, we have Mark Alt and the #2 ranked Minnesota Golden Gophers who defeated Canisus University 1-0 in an early Sunday afternoon matchup. Minnesota's Kyle Rau (Florida prospect) scored 12 seconds into the game and the Gophers pretty much took it from there. They outshot Canisus 42-20 and coasted their way to a 1-0 shutout. Alt had two shots on goal and also blocked a shot in this game, so it appeared to be an uneventful afternoon for him. The Gophers defense definitely did their job in limiting Canisus' chances, though as they couldn't produce much offense at all. Minnesota also had an exhibition match on Friday night against the USA U-18 Developmental Team which ended in a 1-1 tie. Alt sat the game out because of an injury.

Next week, we have a couple of in-state matchups as the Wolverines will take on Northern Michigan and the Gophers will play Minnesota State. Meanwhile, Harvard begins ECAC conference play against Brown and Yale, the Badgers return home for a series against Colorado College and Ohio State will take on the Nanooks of Alaska-Fairbanks.

Just about every Hurricanes CHL prospect had an offensive explosion last week and I was very excited and cautiously optimistic to see how they would build off their performances? Why cautiously optimistic you ask? Because while they definitely showed how good they could be last week, the majority of them had been struggling up until that point and this could have been just a flash in the pan. Obviously I don't expect them to have multi-point performances every week, but I do have fairly high expectations for some of these players and they haven't exactly lived up to their billing thus far. I'm not going to drop names but if you have been following any of these prospects, you probably know which players I'm talking about.

Anyway, it turns out that being cautiously optimistic was the best way to go as the six Carolina CHL non-goalie prospects combined to score a total of zero goals and three points over 14 total games. This isn't that big of a deal when you consider that most of these prospects are defensemen, but it is a little concerning to see that not many of them are making as big of an impact as they could be. The good news is that even with some players struggling to make an impact, there were a few bright spots in the Canes CHL pool this week, one of which being Plymouth Whalers goaltender Matt Mahalak.

Mahalak's season started off in the worst way possible as he had a save percentage below .890 for most of the year and lost his starting job as the Whaelrs goaltender for a few games. He would get another chance when Riley Corbin was pulled in a game against Owen Sound and performed lights out in relief. He has managed to take control of the starting job since then and it doesn't seem like he is going to lose it anytime in the near future. This past week was arguably his best stretch of games this season as he stopped 93 of 98 shots, earned wins in two out of three games and looked very poised and confident in net. His save percentage has gone from below replacement level to a much more respectable mark of .914. I'm always weary of goaltending hot streaks because just about every goalie has a good 10-15 set of games in the year, but it would be nice to see Mahalak hold down the starting job for the rest of the year and perform well while doing so.

After the jump, we will discuss Mahalak's performance in greater detail and talk about the week that was for some of the other players in the Canes CHL pool.

There has been a lot of focus put on how good some of Carolina's roster hopefuls are playing for the Charlotte Checkers during the lockout, but the AHL isn't the only league where players on the Hurricanes roster are making some noise. The Canes have five players who are currently playing overseas and the most impressive has been Jiri Tlusty. This may come as a surprise when you consider that Alexander Semin is one of the players in this group, but Tlusty has really made a lasting impression with the Klando HC of the Czech Republic League.

Through the first 14 games, Tlusty has recorded 14 points and is tied for the team lead in goals with 9. Some may write off his performance as Tlusty taking advantage of weaker competition and while no league can compare to how competitive the NHL is, being a point-per-game player in the Czech League is an impressive feat. According to Gabe Desjardins' NHL equivalency translations, the  Czech League ranks third among international leagues going by level of difficulty. Tlusty's 14 points in 14 game would translate to about 10 points in that same time span in the NHL, which is definitely nothing to scoff at.

The level of competition in the Czech league is also higher this year than in previous seasons thanks to the lockout since many NHLers are currently playing in this league while the NHLPA & NHL owners settle their differences. Some notable names playing in the Czech League now are Ales Hemsky, Michael Frolik, Roman Polak, Jakub Kindl, David Krejci and Martin Hanzal. However, Kladno HC possesses a slight talent advantage over the rest of the league because in addition to Tlusty, they also have Tomas Plekanec and Jaromir Jagr on their roster. It's also worth mentioning that these three play on the same line regularly and have produced a combined 49 points in 14 games. NHL-er Marek Zidlicky is also on this team. So, while Tlusty is playing well against legitimate professional competition, he is also playing on one of the more talented teams in the league.

Is that a bad thing, though? I can see why someone might write off Tlusty's hot start because he's playing on a good team in a league that is inferior to the NHL but you could also see this as Tlusty gaining some valuable experience by playing with guys like Jagr and Plekanec. Obviously, his numbers are going to drop when he returns to the NHL and isn't given all-star caliber linemates and first-line minutes I think it's a promising sign that Tlusty is thriving against the competition of the Czech league rather than just simply holding his own ground. Remember, Tlusty was on the top-line with Eric Staal for most of last year and is going to be in the running for top-six minutes whenever the NHL resumes.

I think it will be hard for Tlusty to continue this pace for the rest of the year and I doubt he will post numbers like this in the NHL, but it is still good to hear that he is performing well against NHL competition and showing some good chemistry with veterans like Plekanec and Jagr. Tlusty is obviously going to be looking to keep his spot in the top-six in this upcoming season and the experience he is getting from playing overseas in a very competitive league will definitely help him improve as a player. Tlusty is still very young and has a bit of a way to go before he reaches his peak years, so any experience and guidance he gets now will go a long way in helping him develop.

Tlusty's performance in the Czech League should give Hurricanes fans yet another thing to be excited about once the lockout ends.