I don't think any Hurricanes player or fan cares about the numbers from their 3-1 win over the Winnipeg Jets and I can't blame them for it either. When you haven't gotten into the win column for seven straight games (spanning a little over two weeks), you take any victory you can get. It doesn't matter if the team plays flawlessly or just barely eeks out an ugly win because each one is very important at this stage of the year. The Hurricanes certainly pulled out an ugly win today over Winnipeg but they got the job done in the end, which is all that matters right now. 

The team's confidence was beginning to reach a new low during this losing streak so if anything, the Hurricanes being able to get a win could help give the team a bit of a spark going down the stretch and get back to the brand of hockey they were playing for the majority of the season. With only 15 games remaining, every bounce you get is going to have a much bigger impact than it would in a full-year, so the Canes being able to win despite not playing their best game is pretty huge.

With that being said, the Hurricanes certainly played better than they have in a couple of weeks and at least showed signs of progress. That's not exactly saying much since the bar was set low coming into today, but it's still a step forward and hopefully the Canes can build off it for the rest of the season. Now that we got that out of the way, let's take a closer look at the Hurricanes first win in over two weeks.

Last night, the Hurricanes nearly won a game that they had no business being in. They may have shown some "character" by battling back to tie the game in the second period and taking the lead in the third, but the Leafs were more deserving of the win. Toronto held Carolina to only six even strength scoring chances to the entire game and took 14 more shot attempts than them at even strength. There were only two Carolina players who were not outchanced at even strength in this game, most it being due to the Hurricanes being unable to produce offense while not on the powerplay. This goes down as a "heartbreaking loss" to some, but the only "heartbreaking" thing is whatever happened to this team over the last two weeks.

There was a time when the Hurricanes were a great team at even strength, outchanced their opponents regularly and generally were the better team even if they didn't pick up the win. It's pretty easy to remember this time because it was only a month ago and that really makes the last two weeks even more frustrating. We know that this team is what they've shown lately, and seeing them play at a level such lower than their ability is both frustrating and depressing. It's a mystery as to when this team will put the pieces back together but it might be too late by the time they do.

Yesterday marked the Hurricanes sixth loss in a row and the third time they lost by a score of 4-1 during this stretch. No matter how many times we hear from the coaches or the players that the "playoffs" are right now, fans keep getting treated to the same performances night in and night out. Last night's performance against Winnipeg was very disheartening because it had come after the team had four days off and had a chance to gain some ground in the playoff race against a divisional rival. They ended up falling flat on their faces yet again and just seem to be getting worse every game.

The blame for this loss seems to be circulated around one player, but a look at the underlying numbers shows that there are more who deserve it, mostly the guys who are supposed to be leading this team.

If you're willing to dig deep and find out what is wrong with the Carolina Hurricanes right now then I commend you because I've tried to break things down several times and have yet to come to an answer.  I was willing to write off the Tampa Bay game as a bad night but in the last three games, we've seen this team play well for maybe one period and then let the opponents dictate the play for the rest of the game. The most frustrating thing about it is that the Hurricanes haven't just "lost a step" after first periods, they get completely run over. This was the case against the Rangers on Monday night and last night in their 4-1 loss to the Devils. 

The Hurricanes started off strong despite falling behind 1-0 on a fluke goal and then went on a complete free fall after the first period. Recording only seven total shots in four minutes of play and only three scoring chances isn't going to win you a ton of games and neither is playing only 20 minutes of good hockey.

There are a few games which we can point to as the low point of the Hurricanes season and last night's game where they lost 4-1 to Florida might be at the top of the list. Not only did they get blown out at home, but they also gave up 25 scoring chances to a team that was missing a few key players and has been sitting at the bottom of the Eastern Conference for the majority of the season. Chalk it up to tired players, lack of effort or whatever you want to call it, but in the words of Homer Simpson, the Hurricanes "just plain sucked' last night and there isn't much else to say.

I'm going to make this brief because I'm sure many people want to forget about this game as soon as possible.

Hurricanes head coach Kirk Muller opted to shake things up a bit after the team's bad loss to Tampa Bay on Saturday night by jumbling the lines a little bit. He took Jeff Skinner off the second line with Jordan Staal and placed him with Riley Nash & Jussi Jokinen while Patrick Dwyer and Drayson Bowman were moved up to the second line with J. Staal. The Canes got barely anything out of their third and fourth lines during the Tampa Bay game, so moving an offensive stalwart like Skinner to a lower line could help them expose some bad matchups for the Rangers. Meanwhile, Staal and Dwyer have played well together in the past and could possibly carry the water against one of their top lines.

The plan did not completely backfire but it sure as hell did not work out in the Hurricanes favor. Once again, their first line was forced to carry the bulk of their offense while the rest of the lineup did very little to contribute at even strength. All this did was reduce Skinner's ice-time and limit how much of an impact Jordan Staal could have by placing him with weaker linemates. People might be satisfied with the Hurricanes getting a point out of last night, but they were very lucky to get to overtime with how badly the Rangers swarmed them after the first period.

I"m not going to place the blame on Muller for switching up the lines but to say that I don't understand the moves would be an understatement.

A 4-1 loss where the losing team manages to create only 11 total scoring chances is pretty bad and that's what happened to the Hurricanes last night against Tampa Bay. It's easy to write off this game as a poor effort by the entire team, but I think that's just a lazy way of analyzing the game. There were several players on the Hurricanes who worked hard and had good games last night, so I don't want to throw the entire team under the bus. The problem was that they didn't get enough out of them, they weren't scoring and the bottom-half of the roster didn't give the team any production at all.

Of the 22 shots on goal the Hurricanes produced last night, only two of them came from their bottom-six and they only got one scoring chance out of those players, too. When you are leaning on two lines to do almost everything, it has an adverse effect on the rest of the team. Notice how three of Tampa Bay's four goals came from their depth players. Those guys were winning their battles all night long against the Hurricanes bottom-six and ended up getting rewarded for it while the Hurricanes were counting on the top of their roster to do just about everything. The Canes top-six is normally good enough to carry the team through a tough game but it wasn't the case last night and their depth problems came back to haunt them.

Sometimes the most frustrating losses come after your teams plays a relatively good game but makes a few mistakes that end up costing them dearly. This was the case with the Hurricanes loss to the Washington Capitals last night. Save for a weak start to the second period, I don't think anyone is going to be questioning this team's effort last night since they were the better team for most of the game and did just about everything they could to tie things up at the end. They put up 38 shots against Washington, over 20 of them being scoring chances and got a great performance out of their top line which should have been enough to win the game.

I've talked a lot about how the Canes have some room for mistakes with their lead in the Southeast Division and they had plenty of breathing room heading into the first intermission with a 2-0 lead last night. However, the more mistakes you make, the slimmer the margin of error becomes and everything gets magnified. This is what happened when the Hurricanes came out flat for the first five minutes of the second period and allowed the Caps to get back into the game. Now any error has a chance of resulting in a tie game and that's exactly what followed Eric Staal's high-sticking penalty at the end of the second period as Alex Ovechkin scored on the ensuing Caps powerplay. Caps goaltender Michal Neuvirth was also playing at the top of his game, which meant that the margin of error was now at zero and the next mistake could end up costing the Hurricanes the game.

One bad line change later and the Hurricanes found themselves down 3-2 and getting no points out of a game that they could have easily gotten one in. This loss can mean very little if the Hurricanes beat Tampa Bay, but they are going to look at this game and see it as a missed opportunity to pad their lead in the Southeast Division. Whether or not it really hurts them at the end of the year remains to be seen, but it can easily be pointed to as one of those games the team let slip away from them if they do finish out of the race.

I think most would agree that the Hurricanes dominated last night's game in just about every area. They shutout the Caps 4-0, had a huge advantage in even strength shots were most of the game and outworked them for most of the game. The only area that the Canes did not have a distinct advantage in was scoring chances. While they did crush Washington territorially, the Canes defense was still a bit leaky and gave up quite a few transition chances to the Caps. Most of these were one-and-done and the Canes ended up with a 20-17 advantage overall, but the defense gave up a lot of dangerous shots to Washington and had trouble dealing with the speed of some of their forwards.

The Hurricanes gave Justin Peters plenty of support last night with a three (eventually four) goal cushion, but he had to do a lot of work to earn his second career shutout and earned the first star honors. In addition to Peters' excellent performance in net, there were plenty of other things for Hurricanes fans to be happy about last night and the play of their second line should be near the top of the list.

The Hurricanes managed to close out their three-game homestand in style with a 6-3 win over the New Jersey Devils, even though the team and some fans probably have a bit of a sour taste in their mouth from how the third period was played. Don't get me wrong, the Hurricanes outplayed New Jersey and deserved this win, but they allowed the Devils to get back into the game by sitting back and playing conservative for the entire third period. This is expected from most teams who enter a third period leading by four goals, but giving up nine scoring chance in one frame isn't exactly what I would call "defending a lead." The final score may have ended up being even closer had it not been for Dan Ellis coming up big a few times in that third period.

That being said, one bad period fueled by score effects does not undo a terrific previous 40 minutes played by the Hurricanes. For the most part, the team was excellent last night and had control of this game when the score was close. I wouldn't expect them to score six times on 22 shots many times this year, but the team was probably due for a few bounces after the Montreal game where they scored only twice on 43 shots. The hockey gods giveth and the hockey gods taketh away, and it wouldn't surprise me if we see more occurrences like that for the remainder of the season, especially with how the Canes top line has been playing.