Happy New Year, Caniacs and what better way to bring in 2012 than to recap the Canes performance from the final week? They closed out 2011 with a 2-2-0 record which included a thrilling overtime win and two stinkers against Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay, although the latter was not as bad as the score indicates. The only time they got shellacked was against Pittsburgh where they were outchanced 21-9 at even strength and it led to them having a 47.6% scoring chacne ratio at even strength for the week. The Canes did not have one "full 60-minute" effort this week and that's a problem which has been plaguing them all season long, but there were some good performances this week. Their effort against the Devils was very good and so was their game against the Leafs and we'll see them win more games if they can put together more performances like that. The problem is that they seem to make one mistake that leads to them giving up consecutive goals. I expect things like that to happen with a rebuilding team, though and hopefully they will grow out of it soon.

Still, a 2-2-0 record is not too bad of a note to close out the year even if they are struggling against good teams (i.e. Pittsburgh). Seven out of their 12 games in January are at home so that should help things a little bit.

More after the jump

As of last Monday, the Canes have a new goal-scoring leader and his name is Tuomo Ruutu. With 14 goals and 22 points in 40 games, Ruutu is having a very good season and is on-pace to break a personal record for goals in a season. Ruutu is also set to become an unrestricted free agent once the season is over and with the Hurricanes out of the playoff race, it has many wondering if we should deal the 28-year old Finn. I'm not a huge fan of the whole "the team sucks, trade everyone for peanuts" mindset because if the team is going to give up Ruutu, then they better make damn sure that we get something of value back in return.

Ruutu is one of six regular forwards on the team with a positive scoring chance rating, is playing on (arguably) the team's only scoring line and has been a key part to the team's offense. If we do lose him then it will have a negative effect on the rest of the team this year. There are plenty of good reasons for dealing Ruutu, though. For one, he is on pace for his highest goal total since he is pushing 30, his value right now might be higher than it ever will be. He could fetch a solid return at the deadline for the Hurricanes to work with and it is better than letting him walk for nothing this summer.

In my opinion, the only time you should trade a player is in the following circumstances:

1. He is a pending unrestricted free agent and the team he plays for is in rebuild mode.
2. The potential free agent market is very thin and said team will have to overpay to sign him.
3. This player is at the point where his value is at its peak.

The first two are true, but is Ruutu's value at its highest point right now? When it comes to re-signing players, Jonathan Willis of Oilers Nation looks for things called "red flags" which are reasons why committing years and money to a free agent might not be worth the risk. Are there any "red flags" with Ruutu? We'll look into that after the jump.

Derek Zona of Copper and Blue recently looked at the Oilers blocked shot leaders in a new way, which shows how many shots a player blocked relative to how many he was on ice for. Why is there a need for this? Because while blocking shots is a skill, it also shows that a player has been on ice long enough for the opposing team to have a shot attempt, which does not speak well of their defensive abilities. A better skill would be the ability to suppress shots and prevent chances because that allows possession to go more in favor of their team. Blocking shots is also a necessary skill but it does not always indicate that a player is good defensively because it shows that they are also spending too much time in their zone and have to resort to desperation plays. So yes, shot blocking is a necessary attribute but there are a lot of players who are blocking a lot of shots because they are getting pinned in their zone too much and need to make plays like that.

Players on the Canes who are lauded for blocking shots include Tim Gleason, Patrick Dwyer and Brandon Sutter...but neither of them are blocking the most shots relative to the amount they give up. Who leads Carolina in that category? Find out after the jump.

The phrase "we were playing good until the third period meltdown" has become a common fixture around these parts with the Hurricanes being unable to close out games in a respectable fashion this year. Not including empty net goals, they have been outscored 45-33 in the third period this year. If that wasn't bad enough, they've also been outchanced by 22 in the third period alone and have a scoring chance percentage of 46.1%. If you're a regular on this blog (or have been following the Canes) then you probably know that the team's been getting plastered at even strength all year. How much worse can they be playing in the third period? Brutal goal differential aside, they are actually playing only a tad worse in the third period than the first two (about a percent lower) and believe it or not, they have been playing slightly better in the final frame than they were earlier in the year.

An idea recently cooked up by Gabe Desjardins at Arctic Ice Hockey were game-by-game shot charts showing a team's shot and goal rate over the course of the season. Teams with low shot rates but high goal rates can expect their good fortune to fizzle out in due time and vice versa, so tables like this provide an easy-to-use chart for seeing how good a team really is. Going off the same idea, I decided to make a similar chart for the Hurricanes, only using their third period data instead to see how terrible they've really been in that frame.

First, a little decoding. The blue line is the Canes scoring chance percentage, the red line is their shot percentage and the green line is their goal percentage. You can see that they have been sub-.500 in scoring chances and shots in the third period for the entire year, which shows that Carolina's third period woes have been a yearly problem. It reached a new low around game 11 or so (I am pretty sure that's the game at Philadelphia where they coughed up 4 in the third) and a collapse like that was just waiting to happen when you look at their other rates here. They were consistently bad at creating scoring chances and shots in the third period, but they got some good luck and were scoring more. Then our old friend regression kicked in and they were stuck in a chasm of third period meltdowns for the next few weeks. That's what happens when you can't control possession, sadly. 

The good news is that the Hurricanes appear to be getting more shots on net in the third period and while their scoring chance rate hasn't picked up that much, it's shown a slight improvement and the team's goal rate has gone up along with it. If the team can continue to out shoot their opponents in the third period then we should begin to see less meltdowns and more comeback wins. The shot rate is getting close to hitting 50% so that's always a good thing. Just have to hope that more of those shots are scoring chances so they will eventually turn into more goals and, soon enough, more wins. 

One positive thing the Canes have (or "had" I should say at this point) was the emergence of Bryan Allen and Tim Gleason as a shutdown defense pairing. When these two were paired together, they took over 60% of their draws in their own zone, were constantly matched up against the opposing team's top lines and had 50% of the team's scoring chances go in the Canes favor. That pairing has since been split up with Allen being regulated to third pairing minutes (for whatever reason) but the Canes are going to have a big decision coming up within the next year as both players contracts are expiring and they might be forced to keep one or the other. Both are having great seasons and could have solid trade value in a few months for a team looking for a shutdown defenseman but the idea of losing these two is very troubling when you consider how big of a role they play.

That's when it hit me. Just how much is the going rate for a shutdown defenseman in this league? Even better, just how hard is it to replace a shutdown defenseman? I'm talking about guys who are more one-dimensional because guys like Drew Doughty, Nicklas Lidstrom, Shea Weber and Zdeno Chara are signed to large contracts due to their great play at both ends, but what about a guy who is more of a defensive stud who contributes little offense? That description fits Allen and Gleason to a T and it made me think that replacing these two may not be as big of a hassle.

Whenever I think of the Gleason/Allen situation, I'm reminded of when Mike Komisarek was set to become a free agent after the 2008-09 season and appeared to have suitors all over the league looking to ink him to a big deal. However, a hockey mind that respect mentioned that he would not pay Komisarek big money because he believed that a stay-at-home defenseman like him could be found in other places for half the cost. An alternative option was Greg Zanon. Komisarek was a stud that year with -1.1 corsi rel. with a 39.8% OZone rate while Zanon had a worse -11.7 corsi rel with 42% of his draws coming in the offensive zone. Komisarek signed with the Leafs to a contract worth $4.5 mil per season while Zanon signed with the Minnesota Wild for about half that. Since then, Zanon has continued to play in a shutdown role for the Wild while Komisarek was hurt for the majority of the first year of his contract and was used in a lesser role in the second year. The Wild signed Zanon to play the same role as Komisarek was supposed to play on the Leafs for half of the cost. What is even more interesting is that the Leafs had guys on cheap contracts like Keith Aulie, Luke Schenn and Carl Gunnarsson play the shutdown role and make Komisarek expandable, making his contract look like an albatross.

Is this just a one time thing or are other teams replacing their highly-touted shutdown defensemen for less money? What does this mean concerning the future of Allen and Gleason? We'll explore things further after the jump.

One of the most misleading stats in hockey is powerplay and penalty kill percentages because they are driven by variable stats like save and shooting percentage, which regress over time. For instance, a team might have a powerplay that's generates only 1-2 scoring chances per game total, but they are clicking at a 25% efficiency because most of the shots they take end up being goals. That last sentence should tell you that they are getting lucky and how that plays a big role into how "good" or "bad" their powerplay may be. On the penalty kill, you could have a unit that manages to not allow any shots for a minute and fourty five seconds, then a harmless looking wrist shot from the point sneaks past the goaltender and the penalty kill gets tagged for a goal allowed despite doing just about everything right.

The goal of a penalty kill is to prevent as many shots and chances against as possible, which is why I look at those numbers instead for determining how good a team is in that area. Carolina appears to have the 26th ranked penalty kill with a 78.4% success rate according to this metric, which indicates that the PK hasn't improved that much compared to last year. General observation tells you otherwise, which is why we need to dig deeper into the Canes PK to see how "bad" it really is. In terms of shots allowed per 60 minutes, Carolina has the 12th worst PK in the league surrendering about 53 shots per 60 mins. and while that isn't good, it is a hell of an improvement from last season when they were the second worst penalty killing team in the NHL.

Defensemen are generally considered the main players on the penalty kill but forwards play a big role as well. It's their responsibility to win battles along the boards, block shots, win faceoffs and clear the puck which are all critical when killing penalties. Outside of Brandon Sutter and Patrick Dwyer, just about all of Carolina's forwards struggled at killing penalties last season so I wanted to look at their performance so far this season. There are also some personnel changes that have taken place over past year, so going deeper into the forwards performance on the PK will show how much of an effect they've had. The results may surprise you.

More after el salto

Three points in three games this past week for the Canes. That doesn't sound too bad, but they were outshot, outchanced and outscored for yet another week. All three games were decided by only one goal and the fact that two came in losses does show that the Canes were getting slightly unlucky the past week but they were VERY lucky to even escape Toronto with a point and they were outplayed by the Canucks at even strength in their only victory. The numbers for the week match up with the team's overall performance this year, though. Their shot rate was about 46.6 while their chance rate was roughly the same. It is frustrating that we're not seeing much of an improvement in that area under Kirk Muller but we're seeing some improvement on the powerplay with 12 scoring chances generated on the man advantage compared to only 7 powerplay chances given up. Cam Ward also seems to be regaining his usual form and he could steal us some more wins down the road. He did against Vancouver and Carolina may have not have even earned a point in the standings last week if it wasn't for him.

Injuries are playing a big role into the lack of progress, though. Jeff Skinner and Joni Pitkanen were two of the team's best possession drivers and it's going to be interesting to see what the numbers look like with both of them out of the lineup. I have a feeling they won't be pretty though. Most of us have accepted that this team is too far out of the race to make a push towards the playoffs so it's evaluation time from now on.

More after the jump

I was just as shocked as anyone to see that the Jamie McBain-Tim Gleason defense pairing was kept together in Thursday night's game against the Canucks because of how poorly those two played as a unit until then. While they had a respectable outing that game, I thought Kirk Muller would have decided to reunite Bryan Allen and Tim Gleason since they were going up against a strong offensive team and McBain has struggled in a shutdown role thus far. That's when I began to thought to myself the negatives of the Allen-Gleason defense pairing. Both guys are studs in their own zone and the best defensemen on the team in terms of preventing chances against but neither are that good of puck movers.

There is a lot of pressure put on defensemen to get the puck out of their own zone with break-out passes that you need to have a puck-moving defenseman on almost any pairing. One of McBain's strengths is being able to move the puck well and with Joni Pitkanen on the shelf indefinitely, that makes him an attractable option for the top pairing. Allen and Gleason, on the other hand, are not known for their puck-moving skills but are both so bad that they can't play on the top pairing?

This is where looking at zone entries and exits will come in handy. Derek Zona of Copper and Blue looked at this for the Oilers and the folks at Broad Street Hockey have been tracking zone entries for the Flyers all season. The latter part is what we're the most concerned with here because having a defenseman that can get the puck out of the zone is crucial for establishing any kind of offense. To compare McBain and Allen's puck moving skills, I watched each of their shifts from the last game they played on a pairing with Gleason (Thursday vs. Canucks for McBain and Nov. 26th vs. Florida for Allen), recorded what happened each time they touched the puck in the defensive zone and logged how they advanced the puck. Did they make an outlet pass to a forward in the neutral zone, rely one of the forwards to exit the zone, make a big slap pass around the boards and hope for the best or do it the old fashioned way and exit the zone themselves?

Find out the answer after the jump

The Carolina Hurricanes were hit hard with injuries the past week as it was announced last night that both Joni Pitkanen and Jeff Skinner will be out indefinitely after sustaining concussions. I don't even need to tell you how critical of a loss Jeff Skinner is, so I'll save the statistical mumbo jumbo for him. However, I do want to touch on how the injury to Joni Pitkanen will effect the defense. He's missed about 10 games already and has been such a key piece to the defense that things tend to get shaken up a lot during that time. That's certainly been the case this season as the Canes have gone through about 30 different defense combinations this year and the only two consistent pairings were Pitkanen/McBain and Allen/Gleason. Tomas Kaberle and Jay Harrison was the only other defense pairing that had a long tenure and that's obviously defunct now. The constant mix-and-matching on the blue-line has been going on all season but it always seems to increase a ton whenever Pitkanen is out of the lineup. He always logs a ton of minutes and is playing TOUGH situations this year, so that's understandable. After the jump, we'll take a look at how Carolina's defense pairings have played this year and some possible solutions as to what the team can do while #25 is on the IR.

Before his terrific performance against the Leafs last night, Cam Ward was one of the main frustrations with this Hurricanes team as he's clearly played below his standards this year. Ward has been Carolina's back-stop ever since he took them to the Cup in 2005-06 and has been performing at a high level for the past three years (EV Sv% <.920 during that time). This year, however, he's taken a sharp turn downward with his even strength and overall save percentages being way below the league average. He's beginning to show frustrations with both his play and, to some extent, the team around him. So who is to blame for Ward's struggles? Is the defense in front of him making his job harder or is the problem with Ward centered around himself? We'll explore this after the jump.