One of the bright spots for the Hurricanes this year has been Brandon Sutter's emergance as a shutdown defensive center but I still hear hockey pundits talk about how he has been a "disappointment." Whenever I hear that, I can't help but feel that these "experts" aren't watching the Hurricanes and are only looking at Sutter's 22 points in 54 games to judge his performance. What they don't see is all of the other contributions he makes to the team.

If you go by simple raw data, Sutter doesn't appear to be that impressive. He has only 12 goals, 22 points and a 44.6% scoring chance rate, but the truth is that Sutter has been one of the Canes most important players this year. Sutter's defensive game and responsibility has improved by a lot and you have to look deep into certain stats to see this.

We'll explore this more after the jump.

One of the fun things you can do when your team changes coaches about a quarter way through the season is compare how the new guy is performing compared to who is replacing. The general consensus among Carolina fans is that new coach Kirk Muller is doing a fantastic job and is more suited for this team than Paul Maurice. Despite those claims, the Hurricanes performance under Muller hasn't changed much compared to how they played under Maurice. They are controlling possession at about the same rate and are only roughly a win better under Muller, and that extra win likely came from Cam Ward standing on his head for all of January.

However, I think it is safe to say that the Hurricanes main issue is talent and not coaching because you can only do so much with players like Jiri Tlusty and Alexei Ponikarovsky in your top-six and a defense corps where Tim Gleason is your best player. Muller can't control who he has on the team but what he can do is control how he uses them. With the help of Time On Ice's "team faceoff" option, we can look at how the Hurricanes two coaches this year have been using their players by seeing how often they deploy them in the offensive and defensive zone respectively. You will see some huge differences between Muller and Maurice's strategies.

This was certainly a strange week for the Canes when you compare their shot data to scoring chances because while they were heavily outshot this past week, they actually outchanced their opponents overall. A large reason for this is because of the 47-save shutout they had against the Bruins last Thursday. That was a game where they were outshot by a wide-margin but a lot of the Bruins' shots weren't high quality chances and the scoring chance numbers looked much closer. The same thing goes for the game against the Kings. Either way, Carolina went 2-1-0 this past week and owned 51% of the scoring chances...and only 43.6% of the shots. Like I said, it was a strange week but the Canes started February off on a strong note either way. Let's take a closer look at the past week for Carolina and single out some people.

For the last few years, the Southeast Division has been one dominated by the Washington Capitals with the rest of the teams fighting for wild card spots but things are very different this year. The Capitals haven't been their usual selves and the division appears to be up for grabs with the top three teams being separated by only five points and even the Hurricanes are only 10 points out at the bottom of the division.

The Southeast has been the weakest division in the NHL by far and it is looking like they will be producing only one playoff team this year. The question is which one will it be? The general consensus is that the Washington Capitals will get their acts together, get hot at the end of the year and take the division but the underlying numbers tell a completely different story. In fact, the underlying numbers for every team tell an interesting story and it isn't pretty for any of them. Only one team has a Fenwick close rate above 50%, every team has a negative goal differential and the clubs fighting for the division title would be bubble playoff teams at best if they weren't granted the automatic bid. The term "Southleast" has never been more true than it is this season. 

Find out what they say after the jump

An injury to Chad LaRose back on January 10th caused Kirk Muller to shake things up once again and he did so by placing everyone's favorite waiver claim Andreas Nodl on the third line with Brandon Sutter and Patrick Dwyer. This is the usual "defensive unit" for the Hurricanes that starts a lot of their shifts in their own zone and is matched up against other teams top lines. Nodl's specialty is defense so he seems like a natural fit on this line and ever since he has been placed on it, they have seen a fair amount of success.

In the 11 games they've played together, this line has been on ice for only two goals against, have a scoring chance percentage of 53.4% and are doing this while starting at least 64% of their draws in their own zone.That is extremely impressive for a line that gets this kind of workload. We know that Sutter and Dwyer have been doing this all and their success has been on-and-off, so is Nodl the secret behind this line or is he just riding a hot streak?

I don't think it is fair to say that Nodl is the complete reason for this line's success because he's been invisible on just about every other line and we've seen guys like LaRose and Tlusty play well with Sutter & Dwyer before. However, I do think that Nodl's defensive play is a big factor behind this line's success. Whenever you are on ice for 27 scoring chances against in 11 games, you are doing something right.

Every team needs a unit like this to be successful and it looks like the Canes are on the way to finding there's but the one thing that worries me is their lack of offense. Brandon Sutter is becoming a great two-way player but Dwyer and Nodl aren't exactly offensive stalwarts. Dwyer has nine points all season and Nodl has only five. I know Nodl has 22 with the Flyers last year but I'm willing to bet that most of it was due to playing with Mike Richards and James Van Riemsdyk. Sutter isn't Richards and Dwyer is obviously not JVR so Nodl's point total probably isn't getting over 15.

Either way, I can appreciate this line's great play in their own end for now since their success appears to be legit and not just luck-driven. Although, the PDO Crystal Ball isn't projecting good things for this line as all three members have PDO's above 1000 and it's due to high save percentages. I would keep a sharp eye on that because a small downturn could be just around the corner. The low amount of scoring chances they are giving up makes me confident in them for now, though.

With Carolina in sell mode this year, one guy who appears to be a on a lot of teams wish lists is our rugged blue-liner Tim Gleason, and why wouldn't a playoff contender want someone like Gleason? He plays over 20 minutes a night against the toughest competition, isn't afraid to get physical with the opposition and has a cap hit of only $2.75 million. Gleason brings a lot to the table for not much money and is a pending unrestricted free agent so he could be a great addition to any team that's looking to add some blue-line depth but one guy who I feel is getting overlooked is his frequent defense partner Bryan Allen. In fact, you could make a case that Allen has, in fact, outperformed Gleason in some areas and would be also be a great addition to a team looking to make a final push towards the playoffs. The question is how much better is Allen than Gleason and what is he worth to the Canes?

Find out after the jump

The Hurricanes 2-1 overtime loss to the New York Islanders last Saturday marked game number 25 for Kirk Muller as the Hurricanes new coach. Why is that important? Because Paul Maurice was fired after game 25 (4-3 loss to Ottawa in late Nov.) and we can now reasonably compare what the two have done as the Canes bench boss. The consensus among fans is that the team is playing better under Muller and that he should be the coach of the future. The question is, just how much better are the Canes playing under Muller than Maurice. Studies show that teams who fire coaches mid-season will improve by only one win for the rest of the year. Is Muller an exception? Find out after the jump.

I was not able to live-track the Hurricanes-Capitals game on January 15th because I was at the game and it's taken me longer than usual to get the scoring chances posted for this game because I was planning on doing something special with this. Remember my post where I tracked zone exits for certain shifts to see how effective certain defensemen were at completing breakout passes? Well, I decided to expand on it and track zone exits for an entire game and add it to my scoring chance reports to get an even deeper idea of how the game went. That's not the only addition I made. Broad Street Hockey has been tracking zone entries for the Flyers all season and I have finally decided to start tracking them for the Hurricanes. Thanks to Eric Tulsky and his awesome script, tracking zone entries is made simple. All you need is Microsoft Excel, a game to watch and some time to kill. This will give us an idea of who is winning the battles in the neutral zone and, when combining them with stats like corsi, which players are driving the play better than others.

We will have a better picture of the entire team once we get more games tracked, but I wanted to get this project off and running and figured the All-Star break gives me some extra time to get it done. This is still a bit of an experiment, so let me know if you have any suggestions with the method that I'm using here. Advanced stats in hockey are growing by the day and tracking zone entries/exits will give us an even closer look at the Canes. 

We'll get started after the jump

Yesterday it was announced that Zac Dalpe will be called up from Charlotte and that he could be playing on the second line in Alexei Ponikarovsky's spot. This has gotten many fans excited because Dalpe is known as the type of player "who needs top-six minutes to be effective" and a big reason why his point total in the NHL is so underwhelming is because he's usually plugged in on the fourth line for most of his call-ups. What prevents me from being advocate for giving Dalpe top-six minutes is that his possession numbers have been horrible at the NHL level and he hasn't exactly been scoring either. Players like Drayson Bowman and Zach Boychuk were at least making the most of his ice time and creating scoring chances during his time here but I can't say the same for Dalpe. My thought is that he should be in Charlotte to work on his all-around game and have the team call him up when he is ready.

The argument against that is that Dalpe hasn't really been given a chance in Carolina because former head coach Paul Maurice regularly gave him only 4-9 minutes of ice-time. Over his 28 game NHL career, Dalpe has only played more than 10 minutes in eight games, so I consider that argument to be valid. Eight games is an incredibly small sample size, but to play Devil's advocate, I went through those games and looked how Dalpe performed to see if he does play better with top-six minutes. The results were pretty disappointing.

CF/15 = Carolina chances per 15 mins., CA/15 = Chances allowed per 15 mins.

This is Zac Dalpe's scoring chance data over his short career in Carolina and it isn't very promising. It is true that he plays better when given more ice-time but he is still underwater in scoring chances, which isn't good. Although, that is covering only eight games worth of data so making conclusions based off this would be silly. One thing we can say from the 28 total games worth of data is that fourth line minutes haven't done Dalpe much good in terms of development. Putting someone like him in a checking role is pretty much useless and he would likely be better off in Charlotte. It is also worth remembering that Dalpe was playing through an injury at the start of the year and that could have been one of the reasons why his ice-time was cut back earlier in the season. It seems that we won't have to worry about that this time because he's healthy and there aren't that many better options in the top-six. Ponikarovsky is controlling possession but not scoring, Tlusty has been on a huge decline for the past two months, LaRose is injuried and so is Samson. There is definitely room for Dalpe now.

I know that Dalpe is at the age where most high-ceiling players break into the league but it's not like this HAS to be the year for him or he'll be a bust. There is still plenty of time for him and I am excited to see how he performs during this next call-up. Bowman and Samson have all gotten their chances under Muller, now I guess it's time for Dalpe to get a "non-emergency call-up" audition.

One of the more frustrating players on the team has been young defenseman Jamie McBain. He originally didn't make the opening night roster and has been scratched a few times this year but his usual role on the team is a top-four defenseman who sees a lot of time on the first powerplay unit. He was very efficient in that role last season with a seven-goal, thirty-point campaign and wasn't a complete liability in his own zone. Therefore, my expectation for him this year was to improve his defensive play so he could turn into more of an all-around/Joni Pitkanen type player. That hasn't quite happened and McBain has looked just plain ugly and confused in his own end at times, which has led people to throw around the "sophomore slump" narrative for him.

Here's the thing, I hate the term "sophomore slump" in hockey because it usually means that a player had an insane rookie season that is hard to replicate or undergoes a string of bad luck during his second year and has worse counting stats. McBain's rookie year wasn't anything monstrous and he is on pace to have around the same point total so this doesn't look like a "sophomore slump" at all. What about his inconsistent play in the defensive zone? Well, in my post where I logged every defensive error last season, I wrote this about McBain:

"Jamie McBain had a good rookie season and looks like he can be a solid puck-mover but he definitely had a lot of ugly gaffes in his own zone and at the blue line. He mishandled a lot of pucks which led to breakaway chances for the opposing team and a good few of his errors were from failed clears, which might be why he did not get a lot of time on the penalty kill."

That sounds a lot like this year, doesn't it? Further research into his underlying numbers show that McBain's play is about the same as it was last season and he only seems worse this year because he is playing in a slightly tougher role. Follow me after the jump to find out what I'm talking about.