I managed to go 7-1 in my first round playoff predictions and now we'll see if I can keep the ball rolling in the second round. I have a feeling that it will be tough since most of the matchups have two very good even strength teams going up against one another, so things like goaltending, special teams and puck luck are going to play a role in whichever team wins. The one series I predicted incorrectly in the first round was Ottawa/Montreal and that was similar to a lot of the second round matchups here in the sense that both teams were very good possession clubs. I predicted it to be a close series with Montreal coming out on top and the Sens ended up winning in five games, blowing out Montreal in a couple of them.

My gut tells me that at least one of the second round matchups could end up like this despite how "close" they appear on paper. There's a good chance that my prediction record gets flipped completely this round, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway.

For some people, the NHL Draft is one of the most exciting times of the year because it's a chance to get a look at some of the league's future stars. It's also a beacon of hope for some teams who may have just had a bad season and are hoping to gain an elite player from a high pick. Some teams have been in this position far more often than others (see the Oilers) but for the Hurricanes, this year will be the first time they will be drafting in the top-five since 2005. As awful as it was to endure this season, the Hurricanes should be able to bolster their organizational depth this summer since picks in the top-five have a very high chance of becoming NHL-ers and the Hurricanes farm system could really use some replenishment right about now. They have plenty of good prospects in the minors and in juniors but are lacking players who can possibly fill crucial roles on the team once they break into the next level. This draft is a chance to change that since it's been reported that this is one of the deepest drafts in recent history and the Canes have a high pick. 

There isn't a ton that I know about the players in the draft since I only have so much time available and can only see so many non-NHL games I can watch, but thanks to things like the Internet and the growth of more detailed hockey analysis, everyone can get the low down on the hottest names in the draft and their appears to be a lot of promising talents this year. Who exactly should the Hurricanes target, though? It's tough to say right now because the team has a lot of options with the fifth pick and needs all across the board in terms of prospect depth so really, adding anyone with top-tier potential would be a boost for Carolina. If that last sentence sounds familiar then it's because I said a similar thing before last season's draft when they ended up trading their 8th overall pick in the Jordan Staal deal. 

The difference between this year and last year is that the Canes have a higher pick and this year's class is much deeper than last season. If I remember correctly, last year's draft class was somewhat shallow outside of the top five or so while this year's class is projected to be the deepest draft since the 2003 season. The Hurricanes will have a lot more options for who they can use this pick on and will have a higher chance of landing an NHL player since they will be selecting in the top-five. Rutherford's track record in drafting isn't great as a whole, but the team's drafting has improved in recent seasons and this year is a good chance to continue towards improving that and giving the Canes prospect pool a much needed boost.

Before we discuss some potential targets for Carolina, I thought it would be a good idea to review some strategies the team should consider when they go on the clock this June.

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.

If you're a Carolina fan still itching for some live hockey then you are in luck because the Charlotte Checkers will be playing in the AHL playoffs. It will be the second time in three years that they have qualified for the post-season and the first time that they have earned home-ice advantage in a series since moving to Charlotte. Those who followed the Checkers during the lockout know that the team was brewing something special with how well they played for the first half of the season. They have managed to continue this success even after losing so many players to injuries, NHL graduation and other means. The players they've lost include their top defense pairing, both starting goaltenders and a few of their top scorers. Head Coach and GM Jeff Daniels has managed to get it done, though and lead the Checkers to the playoffs even with all of the roster changes.

Their first round opponent will be a familiar foe in the Oklahoma City Barons, who were divisional rivals with the Checkers in the South Division this year. The Checkers were 4-4-0 head-to-head against the Barons this year but were outscored 28-25 in those eight games. They were also on the receiving end of a couple of ugly losses to Oklahoma City, one of which coming by a score of 7-4 back in November. Charlotte has had their share of success against OKC this year, as well including a 7-0 win over them on the road, so this matchup seems to be pretty even going by this. 

That being said, it's tough to go by what these two teams did against each other during the season series because their rosters are completely different from what they were in November and January, which was when most of their head-to-head games took place. This is especially true for Oklahoma City, who may have benefitted from the lockout more than any other AHL club. They are the minor league affiliate of the Edmonton Oilers and many of their top young talents played for the Barons during the lockout. Every AHL club had this benefit but the Barons had top-six caliber players such as Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Taylor Hall & Jordan Ebere playing for them so that kind of gave them a leg up on the competition. Their roster obviously looks a lot different now that the NHL is in full-swing and the Barons have managed to overcome similar roadblocks as the Checkers to make the post-season.

After the jump, we'll talk about how the two teams current rosters match up and who has the advantage.

In my recap of last night's game, I mentioned that the result and the stats of last night's game were probably an afterthought to many fans because the one thing on their mind is the health of Hurricanes star forward Jeff Skinner, who left the game after taking a huge hit from Senators defenseman Jared Cowen. No specifics of the injury have been released but it's very likely that the former Calder Trophy winner has suffered his third concussion in his career and his second one in this season alone. It's been said that Skinner brings a lot of this on himself because he puts himself in vulnerable positions very often. I don't disagree with this theory. Skinner's a very chippy player betweeen the whistles and probably isn't very popular with opposing fans. He is also pretty small and is very aggressive with the puck, so he often gets caught with his head down in an attempt to keep plays alive or when he attempts to draw penalties.

None of this seems like it is good for his long-term health because there are always a lot of players on the opposing team looking to knock the daylights out of Skinner whenever he has the puck and we've seen this happen more than a few times over his career. Many have been calling for the Hurricanes to get tougher or add an enforcer to their squad to help "protect" Skinner from players like this. They did just that this off-season by adding Kevin Westgarth but this really didn't prove to do anything. Westgarth played in both games that Skinner was injured in and the Hurricanes had another "tough guy" active last night in Nicolas Blanchard, but neither of them served as "protection" for Skinner. 

Why is that? Because it's almost impossible to protect players from dangerous it's even more difficult with a player like Skinner who often finds himself in bad situations. Skinner often puts himself into these predicaments, but this wasn't the case in the hit he took from Cowen last night.

There are only seven games left in the Hurricanes season and they are likely going to miss the playoffs for sixth time in the last seven years. Things looked promising at the beginning of the season but all hope went down the toilet a few weeks ago when the Hurricanes went on a disastrous stretch losing fourteen out of sixteen games and now they are in a race for the draft lottery instead of a playoff spot. Shortened season or not, this isn't the result that fans were hoping for. Accountability is a phrase we've heard a lot this year regarding the Hurricanes players, but my question is who is going to be held accountable for this season? We just saw a team with playoff-caliber talent go 2-13-2 in a pretty important stretch of the season. As much as I don't' want to get hung up on the results of this weird season, that is unacceptable and I'm wondering how the organization is going to respond to it. The problem is that I don't know how exactly you respond to it in terms of holding someone accountable. 

There have been a lot of critics of the coaching of Kirk Muller and while some of it is deserved, pinning all the blame on him isn't entirely fair. I really hate pointing to injuries as an excuse because just about every team has to deal with these types of struggles but let's face it, the Hurricanes have been destroyed by injuries this year, especially on defense. Muller has had to use 37 different skaters this year and has been forced to juggle the lines almost every game since it seems like a new player gets injured every game. Some teams like the Senators have been able to get by despite losing key players, but they also had some of the best goaltending in the NHL. The Hurricanes haven't had that luxury all season and it reached a new low after both Cam Ward & Dan Ellis went down. Is it Muller's fault that the team's shooting luck and save percentage bottomed out for a span of three weeks? Again, it's not an excuse for the team's struggles since there have been some games where they have looked awful (most of which coming during the time when Justin Faulk was hurt) but it certainly didn't help and it put the Canes into a hole they couldn't get out of.

Some might point to the job that Charlotte Checkers coach and GM Jeff Daniels did with his team as a way to show that injuries aren't an excuse. He has had to deal with so many roster changes this season that the team looks completely different from the one they iced on opening night. Despite this, the Checkers just clinched a playoff spot and are having a very successful season. There are going to be a lot who point to this to say "if the Checkers can get by with their injury problems then why can't the Hurricanes?" It's a fair question, but the talent gap between the AHL and the NHL is pretty large so I'm not going to write off Muller as a coach because of this. I also don't see what good firing him would do since it would give the Canes their third coach in two years. What good can come from that?

Muller likely won't be the scapegoat for this season because firing him wouldn't solve any problems. The team's General Manager Jim Rutherford, on the other hand, is a much more interesting case. The old saying is that "you can't fire the players, so you fire the coach" but a lot of fans would rather blame the guy who assembled the roster that has failed many times this year. Rutherford has been with the Hurricanes since their move to the Carolinas, which makes judging his complete body of work a tough task but as far as the "what have you done for me lately" argument is concerned, the bad has outweighed the good.

Winning the Stanley Cup in 2005-06 can earn you a lifetime pass with many fans and I am forever grateful for him bringing us that moment since it's something you'll cherish for a lifetime. However, the Canes have made the playoffs only one time in the seven years since then and have been knocked out of the race early in three of the last four years. Being a small-market team, Rutherford has had to deal with some financial restrictions and this is where good drafting comes in handy. His performance in that regard has been lacking to say the very least.

Don't get me wrong, Rutherford has delivered the Hurricanes some gems in Eric Staal, Cam Ward, Brandon Sutter and Jeff Skinner but since the year 2000, only two Carolina draft picks have played at least 100 games for the team. Adding to that, only seven Hurricanes draft picks have played at least 10 games for the team this year and includes fringe-NHLers like Drayson Bowman and Zac Dalpe. I think the Hurricanes drafting has improved in recent years, but they still haven't been able to get much out of their picks after the second round and even then that's kind of a stretch. I've talked a lot about some of the team's promising younger players such as Dalpe, Keegan Lowe, Ryan Murphy and Austin Levi but who knows how good they will be in the NHL? I remember when many were talking about the future of Jamie McBain and now he is the resident scapegoat among Canes fans.

Whether you want to blame Rutherford or the scouting staff, the Canes drafting hasn't been great but one way they have been able to make up for this is by making shrewed trades for younger talent. Players like Tim Gleason, Dennis Seidenberg, Joni Pitkanen, Tuomo Ruutu, Jussi Jokinen, Matt Cullen and Jiri Tlusty all played important roles here over the year and were obtained via trade. This has been a good way for Rutherford to make up for his poor drafting and stockpile the Hurricanes with young talent that was closer to being NHL ready. Waiting on draft picks is always tough, so these trades have helped over the years. 

Free agency and contracts, however, are a place where he has been hit-and-miss in. Rutherford was restricted by the team's spending budget in past years, but it didn't stop him from giving Eric Staal and Cam Ward top dollar. Those are the two franchise players so Rutherford was in a rock and a hard place when it came time to extending them, but having at least $15 mil. in cap space and salary locked up in two players means that you'll be strained to fill out the rest of the roster if your team is on a budget. Because of this, we've seen a lot of good players leave Carolina via free agency, the most painful departures being Ray Whitney, Dennis Seidenberg and Erik Cole. Rutherford attempted to replace them with cheaper players such as Andrew Alberts, Alexei Ponikarovsky and rookie call-ups and those didn't quite work out so well. Having an elite talent like Staal locked up is good, but it's tough to build around him when you draft poorly and strike out in free agency. This year, however, was much different.

Rutherford aimed to be much more active this off-season in an attempt to get this club back to the playoffs and while the final result wasn't what we hoped for, he was able to add much more top-tier talent to this team by acquiring both Jordan Staal and Alexander Semin. Both players have added a lot to this team and have made the Hurricanes a better club overall, but building around them is still going to be a challenge. Rutherford already extended them both and when you factor their contracts in with the deals given to Staal, Gleason, Ward, Skinner and Ruutu, you have a lot of money and cap space committed to only eight players. That doesn't leave a lot of room to build a top-tier defense like many are clamoring for and it's going to be a tough job for years to come unless they can build around younger pieces like Justin Faulk and Ryan Murphy. 

Rutherford has put this team in a tough position to improve unless he can shed some salary in the off-season but even with the Canes' defensive issues I think he built a good team this year. I keep coming back to this, but the Canes have been a good team at even strength this year and this will lead to more successful seasons than not. Even after replacing Bryan Allen with Joe Corvo, the Hurricanes have been winning the shot battle in close game situations.

The team is bad defensively and those issues became even greater when Justin Faulk, Joni Pitkanen, Cam Ward and Dan Ellis went down. How they were able to make up for it was that they produced a ton of offense. The Hurricanes produce more shots during 5v5 play than any other team and are creating more than they are giving up. The team's recent shooting percentage rut would like you to believe otherwise, but these have been the facts this year. I'm not so sure if it's a winning formula because of how much strain it puts on the goaltendiers and defensemen, but I also think that the Canes would have more of a shot in a full season than they do now.

Rutherford had a few missteps this year like failing to have a contingency plan for when Pitkanen inevitably got hurt, placing most of the faith in the defense in 20-year old Justin Faulk and trading a good player in Jussi Jokinen away for pennies on the dollar. The popular argument against him is that he "ignored the team's defensive needs," but I think it was more of an issue of him trying to find the right pieces for Muller's system and placing too much faith in the team's prospects. With that said, there have also been a lot of things that went wrong which were out of his control (injuries, terrible shooting luck and the whole nature of shortened season), so it might be wrong to label him as the scapegoat for this year. The Hurricanes had a good looking team going into the year and should next season, as well with the addition of a high draft pick and some off-season moves.

42 games isn't enough to label Rutherford's moves for this off-season as failures and fire him solely based on that. However, Rutherford hasn't exactly done enough for me to feel confident in him going forward, so if he is the one that is held accountable for this season then it may not be the worst thing in the world for Peter Karmanos and the Hurricanes ownership to start a new chapter. I don't think it's completely fair for JR to be the scapegoat here, but his performance over the last half-decade is something that the Hurricanes organization are going to have to evaluate before they begin making any other moves this summer.

Standing pat after a season like this isn't the message you want to send to fans since they are going to want someone to be held responsible for this season. At the same time, the Hurricanes have to be smart and should not overreact to what happens in a shortened season, either. Finding scapegoats is an easy job for fans, making the next moves after removing said scapegoat is what is the difficult part.

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.

The Hurricanes have signed yet another one of their junior prospects after coming to terms with Brock McGinn on a three-year entry level deal. McGinn was one of the team's 2nd round picks in last year's draft and he just finished his third season with the Guelph Storm with 26 goals and 54 points in 68 games. McGinn will be reporting to the Charlotte Checkers for the remainder of the year and should provide them with a nice boost as they march toward the playoffs.

McGinn turned only 19 two months ago, so he is one of the youngest prospects the Canes have in their system right now and could return to juniors next season if he doesn't make the Checkers roster. His season got off to a very slow start, but he began to play really well from December onward and ended up second on the team in goals and fourth in points. He also had two goals and four points in three playoff games in the Storm's first round series against the Kitchener Rangers. Unfortunately, he was suspended for two games for a head-check penalty and his team was eliminated in five games but McGinn did make his presence felt when he was in the lineup.

I considered him a reach as a second round pick because he is more of a checking line-type player, but I have liked what I've seen from him in highlights. He has good strength, has no difficultly winning board battles and isn't afraid to go to the net to score. He may need to put on some muscle for his type of game to translate to the NHL since he is only 5-11 and 172 pounds right now, but he's only 19 so I'm not concerned about that right now. He might be in for a test with his upcoming stint in the AHL since he will be going up against bigger forwards and defensemen there and his performance there should be a good barometer of his development.

McGinn is probably a good few years away from making the NHL and should have a future as a solid checking line player if all goes according to plan. I'd expect him to take part in Charlotte's training camp this fall but I would be surprised if he doesn't end up in Guelph next year since he might be better off getting first line minutes there. I am excited to see what he can do for the Checkers down the stretch, though and hope he can become a solid player for this franchise.

"I believed we had a good product. As we speak today we don't." - Jim Rutherford

This is what Carolina Hurricanes GM Jim Rutherford had to say after the trade deadline yesterday regarding the current state of his team. Things looked promising heading into the year with the team adding two top-tier forwards to their roster and the Canes were sitting at the top of the Southeast Division for a good chunk of the year. Then they went through horrible ten-game stretch, winning only one game and earning three points in the standings during that time. The Canes are now basically hanging onto dear life for a playoff spot, which is disappointing because everyone was expecting better things this year, including Rutherford.

If the Hurricanes don't pull a miracle in the last 14 games, it will be the fourth season in a row where they have missed the playoffs and the 7th time in nine years. That doesn't reflect well on Rutherford, but how much of this season is his fault? Looking at how the team has played the last three weeks, it's easy to say that he didn't do enough to improve this team over the season. The defense had problems from day one, scoring depth has been an issue all season and the special teams have been just wretched on all accounts. Some of that responsibility falls on Rutherford's shoulders, but I still think that there were plenty of things that went wrong that were out of his control. Most of it relates to how different the roster is now compared to the beginning of the season.

Here was what the Hurricanes depth chart looked like entering the season.

Personally, I was somewhat confident with this team heading into the season. The defense was going to take their lumps but it certainly looked like the Canes had enough offense to help off-set things a little. Tlusty, Semin, Skinner and the Staal brothers were going to provide most of the team's offense with Jokinen, LaRose, Dwyer and the kids from Charlotte (Dalpe, Boychuk & Bowman) providing the secondary scoring. On paper, this looks like a decent forward corps and the Canes should have had a relatively balanced lineup.

Tlusty-Staal-Semin have been one of the best scoring lines in the NHL and Jordan Staal has been good, but the rest of the group didn't pan out as well. Boychuk was benched after one game and waived about a week later, Dalpe was sent back to Charlotte after 7 games, Bowman and LaRose have only 4 combined goals on the season, Jokinen had only 10 points and Dwyer has been occupying a top-six spot for most of the year. I suppose you could fault Rutherford for putting faith in one of the Charlotte kids to take over a top-six role, but can you really blame him for that? Bowman, Dalpe and Boychuk all performed very well during the lockout and deserved a chance there. None of them ended up working out for different reasons. 

Bowman's two-way play has been very bad this year and he isn't exactly proving himself to be a capable top-nine player like I thought he could be, Boychuk ended up being waived by two other NHL clubs and is now back in the AHL while Dalpe was sent back to Charlotte after seven games and has spent most of the season on IR. The only mistake made here was sending Dalpe back to Charlotte even though he had played very well in a top-six role with the Canes. The rest of the fault can go to the players for underperforming, and the same can be said for guys like Jussi Jokinen and Chad LaRose, who produced at much lower rates than normal this season. Both of them were slotted into bottom-six roles for most of the season and given their history, they should have been able to thrive in this setting but did not for whatever reason. Some of it was due to bad puck luck (Jokinen) while others simply did not play up to their standards (Bowman & LaRose). Factor in Jordan Staal having a revolving door of linemates along with Jeff Skinner's shooting percentage slump and you have a team that's currently starving for offense outside of their first line.

Most of what went wrong with the team's forwards were beyond Rutherford's control aside from the mistake with Dalpe, but he isn't as innocent with the defense. Rutherford tried to build a team that could fit Muller's up-tempo system and that involved letting Bryan Allen walk and replacing him with Joe Corvo. While Corvo has been good and a nice surprise this season, he isn't a top-four defenseman anymore and he, along with many others, were forced into that role because of the lack of depth on Carolina's blue line. Entering the year, this defense corps was probably average in terms of puck-possession combined with the forwards in front of him. The major issue with this plan is that Rutherford was placing a ton of faith in a 20-year old defenseman in Justin Faulk and a player who was healthy for only 30 games the previous year in Joni Pitkanen. Both of them ended up getting hurt and Rutherford did not have a contingency plan for this. Injuries are injuries and it's tough to replace two top-four defenseman, but I think Rutherford should have had some kind of back-up plan for Pitkanen given his recent health.

On that note, injuries are something that has been a really big problem for the Hurricanes this season. There are other teams who have lost more man games, but Carolina certainly has had a lot of impact players go down. Both Cam Ward & Dan Ellis got hurt, Tuomo Ruutu was out before the season even started, Jeff Skinner suffered another concussion, all but one defenseman has missed considerable time and Carolina had a to make due with a depth chart that looked like this for a couple weeks. Every team has to deal with injuries, so I'm not going to say that it's the only reason for the Hurricanes struggles, but I do think it's pretty crazy that they have gone through 32 different skaters this year, 12 of which were defensemen.

The whole nature of this shortened season has played a role in Carolina's struggles, as well. It makes injuries that much more difficult to overcome and each good/bad streak ten times more important than usual. Every team goes through streaks, but this recent skid the Hurricanes have been on could put them out of the playoffs because there is less time to make up ground. A team that goes 1-8-1 through 10 games at this time of the year probably doesn't belong in the playoffs but even good teams have their struggles (see Chicago & LA last year) and Carolina's underlying numbers still speak in their favor. They are in the top-half of the league in terms of controlling possession, which is generally a good sign for a team making the playoffs but I'm not sure if it will matter this season. There are only 14 games left, the Hurricanes roster is still pretty banged up and they just dealt away one of their better puck-possession forwards for basically nothing, so the most they can do now is just play out the rest of the season and see what happens. The horrific state of the Southeast Division has kept them alive in the playoff race, so there is some hope for the playoffs but it's very small.

If the Canes end up missing the playoffs yet again, I think all three parties are to blame. Rutherford accomplished his goal of improving the team but they still had major flaws on defense that became exposed once the injuries piled up. You also have many players who underperformed and there was nothing he could do about that and the coaching staff hasn't exactly gotten the most out of this squad either. I'm not in the locker room and don't know what goes on in there, so I'm not going to question the team's effort & work ethic, but the Canes have been playing lower than their ability in a lot of games this year and that doesn't exactly reflect well on the coaching staff.

At the same time, there have been a lot of things that have gone wrong for the Hurricanes this year, too. Between the widespread injuries, inability to score on the powerplay and the poor puck luck of players like Jokinen & Skinner, you could say that the Hockey Gods have not been completely on their side this year. In a full season, there is usually time for things to normalize, but it's very different in a condensed schedule so I'm going to refrain from over-reacting to what the results are this year and I'm hoping the higher-ups in the organization do as well. Long-term, the Hurricanes appear to be in decent shape assuming Rutherford doesn't go all Scott Howson and blow everything up. The defense needs to be re-tooled a bit, obviously but the top-six should stay in-tact and acquiring better depth forwards will also be a priority. This has just been a crazy year all around, so it's going to be important to keep a level head when analyzing this season regardless of what happens the rest of the way.