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.

On the stat sheet, last night's 4-2 loss to the Montreal Canadiens looks like a game that the Hurricanes could/should have won but ended up losing thanks to running into a hot goaltender. They put up 43 shots against Carey Price but came away with only two goals while Montreal had only 28 shots and were outchanced 21-15. It's true that the Hurricanes had a huge advantage in shots and looked dominant at times last night, but Price was not their only problem. They may have had a chance at getting at least a point in this game if Price didn't play as well as he did but it would be a stretch to consider it anything more than that.

I mentioned in my recap last night that this game resembled the Hurricanes season because it came with many highs and lows and the scoring chance summary agrees with that sentiment.

Yesterday, I wrote about my concerns of the Hurricanes first line experiencing some regression because they are currently producing at a ridiculous rate that is boosted by a high on-ice shooting percentage. these three continued to laugh in the face of even strength shooting regression last night by producing three goals en route to a 4-3 win over the Buffalo Sabre. To make me look even more foolish, all three goals they scored came at even strength which gives Eric Staal a share of the league lead in even strength points this season with 24. While I do believe the Law of Averages will kick in for these three eventually, it's hard not to enjoy what they are doing right now because it's been a long time sice the Hurricanes had a first line this powerful. It's not only just that they are producing a lot of chances on a nightly basis, but more of the fact that they seem to be a threat to score whenever they're out there. Part of that is due to high shooting percentages, but they are still a threat regardless.

As for tonight's game, the first line certainly came to play as Staal & Semin were on-ice for six of Carolina's 10 even strength chances, but the rest of the team wasn't at their best. Part of the reason for this is because the team had a two goal lead for most of the game and opted to sit back while the Sabres tried to mount a comeback. They ended up getting outshot 40-28 and outchanced 21-16, but the Sabres did most of their damage in the third period while playing catch-up. I thought the Hurricanes had control of the game while it was close and whenever the Sabres did get to within a goal, the Canes responded with one of their own.

This is the second game in a row where Carolina has been involved in a score-effects driven contest and ended up on the wrong end of the chance/shot ledger, but they were also playing with a big lead so it's nothing worth worrying about yet. Obviously I would rather have the Hurricanes play stronger with a lead rather than just sit back and simply try not to lose, but they managed to get the job done in the end. Let's see if their strategy changes if they get off to a similar start against Montreal or New Jersey in the next couple of games.

After Carolina put on a show against Florida at home on Saturday night, fans were treated to a slightly less-thrilling affair the following night in the rematch between the two teams. The pattern of the game was a bit similar with the Canes getting a 3-0 lead and the Panthers playing catchup for the rest of the game, but this was was much less eventful and Carolina didn't even come close to dominating Florida like they did in the previous matchup. In fact, the Panthers were the ones who had the edge in even strength play last night, as they outshot the Canes 33-19 at even strength and outchanced them 16-12 overall. Part of the reason was because of Carolina having a 3-0 lead for 30+ minutes, but the Hurricanes weren't exactly controlling the play at even strength for most of the game and the goaltending tandem of Cam Ward & Dan Ellis bail them out a couple times in the first and third periods respectively. 

Getting a three goal cushion early in the game is always a good thing but both goaltenders had to do their share of work to make sure that the Panthers didn't pull off a comeback.

The Hurricanes were able to follow up a strong performance on Thursday night with another one last night against the Panthers, defeating them 6-2. After the win over Pittsburgh, I mentioned that one of the only bad things about that game was that the Hurricanes scoring chance production only came from their top-six players and nobody else. This wasn't the case in their win last night, as the Hurricanes got production from all four lines with their third line alone producing three goals. The Canes put together easily their strongest performance offensively last night, recording 21 scoring chances at even strength alone and 24 overall, both of which were season highs.

Florida is a bad team and they certainly showed that tonight, but it was still impressive to see the Hurricanes do such a good job of dominating the territorial game while playing with a big lead. Last night was the first time in awhile that I've seen the Hurricanes control the shot clock that much and get rewarded for it. This game was basically what the Washington Capitals did to them on Tuesday night, only with more scoring. Let's see if they can perform at a similar level tomorrow for the re-match.