Before getting into the details, I just have to say that the Canes 5-3 win over the Canadiens last night was one of the best Carolina games I've seen this year. We have seen the Canes come back from a deficit before but what made this win feel so good was the play of Eric Staal. Carolina was constantly getting into penalty trouble and was down their leading goal-scorer for most of the night but that didn't seem to phase them even when they blew a 2-0 lead in the second period. Staal took over the game in the third period and it all started with his shorthanded goal where he made former Hurricane Tomas Kaberle look like a traffic cone. After that, he played like a man possessed and ended the game with six shots on goal, 11 shot attempts and a two goal/three point night to boot.

On a night where head coach Kirk Muller was returning to the city where he once led the Habs to many victories, it was only fitting to see Staal do the same for Carolina. I know Staal's been having an off-year by his standards but I don't think you can deny that he's been Carolina's best player ever since the calendar turned 2012. While he has played better than his goal total and plus/minus indicate, Staal's performance last night was exactly what fans were hoping to see out of him all season and more. I hope he can continue to have more games like that down the stretch.

Moving onto the more technical details, last night's game was actually pretty odd. A little over 30% of the game wasn't played at even strength and we saw plenty of 4-on-4 and 4-on-3 situations, so there were bound to be a lot of strange occurrences. Five of the eight goals scored last night were on special teams situations as the Habs struck twice on the powerplay and the Canes scored twice with the man advantage and had a shorthanded tally in addition to that. Like I said, strange things happen when a good chunk of the game isn't played at five-on-five and the Canes won last night because their special teams were slightly better than Montreal's. Want proof of that? The Canes were outchanced 14-13 at even strength but had 21-18 advantage overall because of how good they were on the powerplay. Sometimes goalies steal you games and sometimes the powerplay will. This time it was the latter.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

The hockey gods giveth and they taketh away. I feel that phrase sums up tonight's game well as the Hurricanes suffered their second consecutive overtime loss and this time the game-winner goal came with less than two seconds left in overtime. To make matters worse, Carolina had a 38-28 even strength shot advantage and controlled this game for a good 40-some minutes but a few defensive breakdowns, two soft goals and a lackluster third period led to them taking the loss. The optimists will say look at how the Canes have earned points in both games of their Western Conference road trip but the way they lost both games will leave a bad taste in fans mouth for awhile. Tonight's loss probably hurts more because the Canes let a good start and solid road effort go to waste and the only ones they have to blame are themselves.

However, the Canes do have some positive things to look at despite two heart-breaking losses. This is the second game in a row they have outshot a team at even strength, and on the road nonetheless. The problem was that it wasn't a full 60-minute effort and they made some horrible defensive mistakes, Justin Faulk's turnover to Ryan O'Reilly that caused the game-winning goal being the one that everyone will remember. Faulk screwed up there and he knows it but to put the entire blame on his shoulders is wrong because what doomed the Canes in this game was their effort after the first two periods. That's all there is to it. The good news is that the Canes should win more games if they can continue to outshoot opponents on a regular basis.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

During the Hurricanes-Ducks telecast on FS-Carolina the other night, the announcers mentioned that Carolina defenseman Justin Faulk should be considered in the Calder Trophy race for the NHL's best rookie. If you watch the Hurricanes every night or follow them at all, you can certainly make a case for Faulk being one of the NHL's top rookies. He plays 20+ minutes a night, contributes on the powerplay, kills penalties and his game looks very impressive by the eye-test. For a kid that is only 19 years old, that is very impressive and it makes you wonder why he hasn't gotten much recognition around the league. Is this enough to take home the Calder, though? Unfortunately, probably not.

While I do think that Faulk's season has been overlooked by the national audience, the fact is that it is tough for defensemen to win the Calder. The only time a defenseman wins the Calder is when there is no real standouts among the forward class. Voters and fans are going to look at points before anything else and with players like Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Adam Henrique, Gabriel Landeskog, Matt Read and Cody Hodgson on pace for at least 40 points a piece, it will be tough for Faulk to stand out. He's also played fewer games than some of the other rookies so that probably hurts his Calder chances, too.

Rookie of the Year seems like a tough bet for Faulk but a good question is where does he rank among other rookie defensemen? Most coaches give their younger players easier ice-time against relatively weak competition to help them get a jump-start but we know that this hasn't been the case with Faulk. He and his partner Jay Harrison rank third and fourth respectively among Hurricanes defensemen in quality of competition, so we know that Faulk isn't getting soft minutes. What other rookie defensemen are doing this, though? We'll look into it after the jump.

It is always a bummer when a great game is decided on a horrible call and that is what happened tonight in the Canes 3-2 OT loss to the Anaheim Ducks. Both teams played a strong game and the Canes had one of their better road efforts of the year but unfortunately, they ended up walking away with only one point when it very well could have been two.

The call (or non-call I should say) in question occurred about three minutes into overtime when Jussi Jokinen was playing the puck behind the net. He was being chased by Anaheim forward Corey Perry behind the net and, in an attempt to strip the puck, Perry tripped Jokinen (and blatantly I might add) but referee Tim Peel let play continue as he saw no foul here. Perry was able to gain possession of the puck and The Ducks were quickly able to set up the play and Perry fired a one-timer past Ward to win it for Anaheim.

With how quick the game of hockey is and the human eye having it's limitations, bad calls are bound to happen but this was a non-call that directly led to a game-winning goal for Anaheim, so it's going to be awhile before Canes fans forget about this one. It's especially bad if you look at the play in question because the evidence doesn't exactly speak in Peel or Perry's favor. It was an awful call but I think it is best to be level-headed & reasonable in these situations. Humans make mistakes and this one is pretty big on Peel's part but we don't know for sure that Carolina would have won the game in OT or the shootout even if the call didn't happen. We can speculate but we don't know for sure. Either way, I think the best thing to do is to move on because this was truly a great game outside of that horrible call and I'd rather discuss that instead. Be upset. You have every right to be but in the end, you have to remember that it's only a hockey game and the outcome affects you only as much as you let it. As is the case with all sports. Letting this drag on for days, weeks & months isn't going to do much good.

Now that I have said all that I wanted to about Tim Peel and the non-call, let's talk about the other things that happened in the game because there's a lot of positive things for the Canes to build on here.

Until tonight, the Hurricanes had not beaten the Los Angeles Kings since Feburary of 2007 and it looked like that streak would continue after the Canes looked flat in the first period and were trailing 1-0. It marks the third straight game that the team has gotten off to a sluggish start and this one was probably their worst yet, but it was all uphill after that...sort of. Carolina battled back and looked a lot stronger for the rest of the game which resulted in them taking home a 2-1 win.

It was definitely an ugly win and there were a lot of things that went wrong for the Canes (awful powerplay, only one even strength scoring chance in the first period, outshot yet again) but all of that usually gets minimized with a loss. Carolina has a lot of things to feel good about with this win, as well. Jiri Tlusty had one of his better games and scored a goal on what was a fantastic individual effort and the Hurricanes played a solid defensive game so Ward did not need to completely stand on his head for them to win.

Not the full-sixty minute effort that we always look for but a win against a good team and two points to get Carolina out of last place in the conference.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

The Hurricanes finished January with a record of 5-3-4 which is the first winning record they have had in a month this season. Definitely a huge milestone for a team that has struggled as much as the Canes have this year. Things do seem to be getting better under Kirk Muller, though. They are winning slightly more games, they earned points in over half of their games in January and if they don't win, they are at least competitive. The one thing that seemingly hasn't improved is the team's underlying numbers as they are stuck on a treadmill there. Their scoring chance percentage at even strength improved by only .01% from December to 47.4%, which is still pretty bad in the grand scheme of things. No one said that climbing out of the basement of the Eastern Conference would be easy.

Cam Ward was a big reason why the Canes earned 14 points in the standings in January as he had his best month of the season. Carolina was also outchanced in half of their games which is actually not bad compared to the rest of the season but still could use some improvement. Regardless of what the underlying numbers say, I have seen some improvements with this team and hopefully they can start to outshoot and outchance their opponents on a more regular basis because that is what is going to lead to more success. As of right now, Ward is dictating most of our success which is fine but not stable with how much goalie performance can vary. Most of the time, it's all about the 18 skaters in front of the goalie.

Let's see how those skaters have performed through scoring chances after four months of hockey.

The Hurricanes continued their dominance of the Bruins this season as they shut them out 3-0 in what was one of Cam Ward's finest moments. He stopped all 47 shots thrown his way and was under fire in the first period when the Bruins were performing a shooting gallery on him. Ward's play in that period along with Eric Staal's goal proved to be huge because after that, the Bruins seemed to turn off the gas while the Canes took things to a different level. Carolina throttled Boston in the second period by clogging up the neutral zone and continuously forcing turnovers which led to Carolina outshooting Boston 15-4 and outchancing them 8-2. Boston did come back to life after that but still couldn't get anything past Ward despite outshooting Carolina 47-31.

The shot count may indicate that the Canes were horribly outplayed, and they were for the entire first period but the team really woke up after that and took it to the Bruins. All four of Carolina's wins against Boston this year have been in regulation and this is the third of fourth that has been by two goals or more. This might sound abnormal but there have been equitable reasons for the defending Cup champ's struggles against Carolina this year when you go back and look at the games. Cam Ward and Boston taking the second period off being the explanation for this game.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

Seeing how this was the first game that both teams played in about a week, it was expected that we would get a sloppy game last night and that's certainly what happened. Most of the game was a neutral zone struggle, there were tons of great chances that were fanned on and the defensive play was very loose. It did lead to some entertaining saves by Cam Ward and Kevin Poulin, though. The 5-2 final score is a tad misleading because the Islanders scored twice with the empty net but the fact of the matter is that neither team played that well, but the Hurricanes got into penalty trouble (four consecutive minors) and the Islanders burned them twice on the powerplay. Carolina's play at even strength wasn't bad, but they weren't doing enough and made some horrific mistakes at the worst times (see Tavares' first goal). Definitely not a game to remember, but not a "burn the tape" type of game either.

Scoring chances & more after the jump

Cam Ward, Jeff Skinner, a strong penalty kill and a ton of missed shots.

What are the main reasons why the Hurricanes won this game. When your team is outchanced 15-8 and only records two shots on goal in the third period and wins despite that, it's usually a case of the goalie standing on his head and Cam Ward had to do that in the Canes 2-1 win over the Jets. Although, he had a bit of luck on his side with how many times the Jets missed the net with their shots. Regardless, Ward has been simply phenomenal this month as he improved his save percentage to .955 in January and has allowed only five goals in his last five games. This win reminded me of how a lot of games went last season. The team didn't exactly outplay the opposition but they got a lead early and let Ward do the rest. Sometimes that's just enough to win, but let's not make a habit out of it, okay?

Carolina goes into the All-Star break with a win and can end January with a .500 record (currently 5-3-3 in the month) with a win over the Islanders after the break. This is a hell of a lot better than November, isn't it?

Scoring chances & more after the jump

For whatever reason, overtime and the shootout have been cruel to the Canes this year, especially on the road. Last night's, 2-1 OT loss to the Islanders was the ninth OTL for the Canes this year and they have still yet to win a road overtime game. Frustrating isn't it? This game was definitely up there as one of the more frustrating losses of the season because Carolina had their chances and lost on a very strange goal. It isn't too often that you see a player bat in his own rebound out of mid-air but that's what John Tavares did on the game-winning goal last night. They were also stoned by Islanders goalie Evgeni Nabokov who showed signs of his 2004 form tonight stopping 32 of 33 shots.

The one thing we can take away from these tough losses is that the Hurricanes are staying competitive in all of their games. Five of their six losses this month have been by only one goal and they actually outchanced their opponent in three of those games including last night. The effort is there and the wins should follow once the team gets more skill up front and tightens things down on defense. They weren't outplayed as badly as the shot total indicates, but they still gave up a lot in their own end. For now, we just have to take the results as they come and focus on the positives of each game and there were quite a few in this one.