The Southeast Division has really gone through some twists and turns in its final year of existence. At the beginning, it looked like the Tampa Bay Lightning had control of things, then the Carolina Hurricanes soon took over their spot. After these two teams drifted out of the picture, the Winnipeg Jets then swooped in and appeared to take hold of the division after getting hot for two weeks. Now that they have cooled down, the Washington Capitals have stepped up and are now sitting at the top of the division with a four point lead after winning nine out of their last ten games, earning points in all of them.

We all know what happened to the Hurricanes and how their season quickly fell apart, but what's the story for the rest of the division? Some crazy things were bound to happen this year with there being a condensed schedule, but I can't remember the last time the division was this shifting. That's probably because I'm so used to the Caps sitting at the top while the rest of the division fights to even stay alive for the playoffs, sans last season, but it seems like the Southeast this year will be decided by whichever team gets hot at the right time and that team currently appears to be Washington. The Jets are also still in the mix and they have a bit of an "easier" schedule down the stretch, so it's very likely that this race could come down to the last day. Still, the Caps look like they are in the driver's seat right now since they are the "hot" team and have four points on Winnipeg with the same number of games remaining. 

A reason why the Caps have been able to claw their way up the ladder is that they have gotten the best of their divisional counterparts. It's also a reason why the Canes have fallen so hard over the last month.

One of the many things that I like about Kirk Muller is that he has been willing to give many young players a chance to succeed. Since his arrival, Muller has been the "Anti-Paul Murice" of sort where he has given most of the Hurricanes younger players top-nine minutes during their call-ups instead of just plugging them into checking line roles. He sort of did this out of necessity when he took over last season since the Hurricanes were starved for top-six forwards and one of the younger players was going to have to step in sooner or later. Guys like Drayson Bowman, Jerome Samson, Zach Boychuk and Zac Dalpe all got a shot under Muller and while Bowman was the only one who stuck, all of them were given an opportunity to succeed after Muller took over.

The Hurricane's don't have any A-level forward prospects in their system right now, so asking one of these players to fill a top-line role would be unreasonable. This season was a different story. The Hurricanes had only spot open in their top-six, which was on the second line and every spot in the bottom-six was basically up for grabs. Brandon Sutter's absence obviously left a big hole to fill as the third line center, but with Jordan Staal taking over his role as the tough-minutes center, all the Canes needed to do was build a third line that could drive possession in soft minutes. Considering that they spent most of last season over-slotting third-liners in the top-six, one would think that assembling a competent third line shouldn't have been an issue for the Canes. Between Drayson Bowman, Patrick Dwyer, Chad LaRose, Riley Nash, Chris Terry, Brett Sutter, Tim Brent, Zac Dalpe, Jeremy Welsh, Andreas Nodl, Tim Wallace, Zach Boychuk and many others, the Canes had enough players that should have been able to succeed in a soft-minutes role.

The third line has gone through a ton of changes this year and hasn't been able to provide any secondary scoring, so this strategy didn't work out, but the plan wasn't terrible going in. Look around the league and you'll see other teams employ similar strategies. Both the St. Louis Blues and Ottawa Senators have gotten decent production out of their bottom-six while composing them of mostly younger players or grinders who didn't fit into scoring roles. The Hurricanes strategy wasn't terribly different from their's but the execution wasn't as good. Some of it relates to players under-performing, but some of it also relates to Muller and Rutherford not utilizing all of the forward options that they had at their disposal.

A few days ago, I wrote on the subject of PDO and how it has gone downhill for the Hurricanes over these last few weeks. It basically showed that the Hurricanes have been going through a stretch of awful luck lately and that the team is better than what they have showed during this losing streak. In a full season, PDO regresses toward the mean of 1.000 for most teams, but this is obviously not a normal season and there was bound to be some fluky things happening. Take the Toronto Maple Leafs for instance, they are currently shooting at over 10% at even strength and while that will probably crash back down to Earth in a full year, it's enough to propel them into the playoffs now. Same with the Ottawa Senators, who have a team save percentage of over .930 and are in good position to make the playoffs despite losing their two best players. If not for their unreal goaltending, they probably wouldn't be in this situation. Luck is going to play a huge factor this year, which is why I'm hestiant to overreact to whatever the results are.

That being said, the Hurricanes recent skid is something that would get them into trouble even during a full-season. Every team has 8-9 game stretches where they can't buy a goal or go through a bad losing streak, but when you win only one game out of 13, that's going to put you in a hole no matter what. The Hurricanes underlying numbers from this season might show that they are a good team, but it's hard to call what we are seeing right now a "good team that's just unlucky." There has to be more to it than this.

After going most of the season without a collective scapegoat, Hurricanes fans seemed to have found one in defenseman Jamie McBain. The entire team is struggling right now, but he has been taking a lot of heat from the fans ever since Carolina went on their brutal losing streak. The hate reached a new high after his brutal showing against the Winnipeg Jets two weeks ago where he was on-ice for two goals against, one of which he put in his own net. Most of the criticism he has been taking lately has been deserved since his mistakes are costing the team a lot more right now and he has the tendency to get caught in no-man's land more than others. He has also been on-ice for seven even strength goals in his last nine games after being on-ice for only seven in his first 20.

Like I said earlier, the entire team is struggling right now but McBain seems to be a step behind the entire team right now for whatever reason. Some say that he has never been good, but it wasn't too long ago when people were talking about how he had the highest plus-minus rating among the defense corps and how he has become better defensively than in year's past. His underlying numbers also show that he hasn't been terribly better or worse than he was last season, so why is it now that everyone wants him run out of town? Personally, I think it all relates back to Justin Faulk's injury and how McBain's role has changed since then.

It was only a month ago when the Hurricanes were in the driver's seat in the Southeast Division and basically all they needed to do was gain points in a little under 60% of their games to make it in. Since that point, the Canes have gone 3-11-1 and are now in the running for a top-five pick rather than a playoff spot. This free fall was something that even I didn't see coming because, as I have often reiterated here, the Hurricanes have been one of the better teams in the NHL at controlling puck-possession this season. This is usually what leads to success in the NHL, but not all the time. Goaltending, shooting luck and injuries are going to keep some good teams out of the playoffs this year because there are fewer games to make up for lost ground. The Hurricanes have been hit especially hard by the injury bug this year, but they've also seen a lot of other things go wrong for them as of late. This is evidenced by taking a look at their PDO over the season. 

For those who don't know what PDO is, it's the sum of a team's even strength shooting and save percentages and shows how lucky or unlucky a team has gotten. A PDO over 1.000 shows that a team has gotten very fortunate while a team with a PDO under 1.00 shows that they may have gotten a few bounces that have gone against them. Carolina's PDO has stayed stagnant for most of the year, but recently it has taken a nose dive. Looking at it over five-game segments shows this team's fall from grace pretty well.

15 goals. That is all the Hurricanes have gotten from players not in their top-six this season and it's probably even lower than that if you take away special teams goal. Scoring depth is something that I did not think would be a problem for the Canes this year, but it's a pretty big issue right now. Their top line has accounted for a little under 45% of the team's overall goals and 33 of the 55 non-empty net goals they've scored during five-on-five play. As nice as it is to have a potent first line, the other players really need to produce to help take some of the burden on them. 

The Hurricanes might possess one of the best first lines in the NHL right now, but they aren't going to score every night, so the other lines are going to need to pick up the slack and they haven't done that lately. Jordan Staal's line with Jeff Skinner are somewhat guilty of this, too but I'm more willing to give them a pass because they have been productive in terms of creating scoring chances. The third and fourth lines, however, have not been so innocent.

The last time a Hurricanes third liner produced a goal was on March 16th against the Washington Capitals when Patrick Dwyer deflected in a point shot from Jay Harrison and the ONLY time a Carolina fourth liner scored came all the way back in early February when Tim Wallace scored against the Islanders. The Canes bottom two lines have gone through a lot of changes this year, but when you have only one total goal all season from an entire line, then that's not good. Even if a lot of fourth lines aren't depended on for scoring. Compare the Hurricanes scoring numbers with the rest of the league and you can see that they lean on their top-six a lot more than the majority of the NHL.

Whether the Hurricanes were buyers or sellers at the deadline, the one thing I did not want to see Jim Rutehrford do was make trades purely for the sake of it. The Hurricanes weren't going to find an answer for their defensive problems this deadline, so there was no point in dealing for another third-pairing guy and they didn't have enough assets to acquire a better player. At the same time, if the Hurricanes chose to be sellers, they don't exactly have a lot of attractable players on the roster right now and the most they would get in a trade were fringe prospects or low/mid-round draft picks. Draft picks in general are never a sure thing and the probability of one turning into an NHL player gets lower as you get into the later rounds, which is why I did not want to see the Hurricanes give away players for that price. Unfortunately, the Canes ended up doing that by sending Jussi Jokinen to the Pittsburgh Penguins for a conditional 6th/7th round pick. 

Jokinen is currently on pace to have his worst season in the NHL in terms of goals and points but I still believe that he had trade value for other teams, all of which went down the toilet when Rutherford elected to place Jokinen on waivers last week. He ended up clearing without any team putting in a claim. Now Jokinen had absolutely no value and Rutherford would pretty much have to accept any return he could get. Supposedly the reason why no team ended up claiming Jokinen was because he still had a year left on his contract, which will pay him $3 mil. next season. Sure, that looks bad when you see that he has only 11 points in 33 games, but there was a time when Jokinen was worth that kind of money and it was only a year ago.

Stats courtesy of Behind the Net

Jokinen's goal-scoring pace in 2009-10 was clearly an aberration, but he has produced at a pretty solid rate for most of his career with his numbers taking a complete tailspin this year. Carolina's head coach, Kirk Muller tried just about everything to get Jussi going this year. He started the year centering the third line and that didn't work out, which promted Muller to move him back over to right wing on Riley Nash & Jordan Staal's line respectively. Jokinen ended up not producing much, which has made everyone believe that he is washed up, worthless and "not a fit" for Muller's system, but I think he was just having a bad year more than anything else.

While Jokinen's scoring was down, he was shooting the puck a lot more and doing a solid job at driving the play forward despite having weaker linemates for most of the season. Puck luck is something that a lot of hockey fans don't accept, but Jokinen clearly did not have any of it this season. He was shooting at only 9.8%, nearly 3% lower than his career average and the Hurricanes, as a team, were shooting at less than 5% at even strength with him on the ice. His scoring numbers will probably decline as his career goes on, but he is nowhere near as bad as his boxcar numbers suggest right now. 

That being said, it was going to be tough to find a suitor for Jokinen because of his contract and low-boxcar stats, which meant that the Canes would have to sell-low regardless. What I don't understand is why the Hurriacnes were so eager to rid themselves of Jokinen a week ago when they placed him on waivers. Players like Blake Comeau and Ryan Clowe (who had a combined total of 4 goals) were traded today for bigger returns, so would it have hurt Carolina to hang onto Jokinen for another week instead of offering him for free on the waiver wire?

By doing that, Rutherford basically sent a message to the entire NHL saying that he doesn't want this player on his team's roster and would accept any turn to get rid of him. No team is going to give up anything more than a conditional pick for a player who was available for free only a week ago, thus giving Rutherford zero leverage in a future deal. Penguins GM took full advantage of this situation by acquiring Jokinen for a conditional 6th/7th round pick AND making the Hurricanes pay the rest of Jokinen's salary next season. In orther words, they essentially got a top-nine player for almost nothing. 

Even if the Hurricanes were going to sell and tank the rest of the season, you want to manage your assets well as a GM, which I do not think Rutherford did with Jokinen by waiving him. Even if the Hurricanes wanted to free up space for Tuomo Ruutu, they had enough room on the roster to keep Jokinen on the team for the rest of the year and could have traded him in the summer while eating some of his salary. The return certainly couldn't have been any lower than what they actually got for him today.

I'm not sure if Jokinen will be a fit in Pittsburgh and see more bounces go his way, but I wish him the best. He was a class act during his time in Carolina and will be missed.

The Hurricanes trade for a "veteran defenseman" finally happened, only the player they acquired was someone nobody expected. Instead of getting a "gritty veteran defenseman" like many thought, Rutherford added some help to the powerplay by acquiring Marc-Andre Bergeron from the Tampa Bay Lightning. All the Canes gave up to acquire him was a 7th round pick and waiver acquisition Adam Hall (who was subsequently waived again after the trade), so this is a low-risk move for the Hurricanes, but it's also a very strange one at that.

Assuming no one else is traded, the Canes will have nine defensemen on the roster once Justin Faulk and Bobby Sanguinetti are healthy and Kirk Muller is going to have to do his best to shuffle players in and out of the lineup. Even if the Hurricanes trade one of their defensemen within the next 24 hours, that leaves eight on the roster and I'm having a very hard time figuring out how Bergeron fits into the lineup. There is no doubt that he can provide help to a powerplay that's currently ranked dead last in the NHL, but his usage at even strength has been pretty suspect over the years.

For those who know nothing about Bergeron's history, here's a quick bio. He is a very skilled powerplay quarterback and puck-mover. He has a very hard, accurate slapshot that makes him dangerous on the powerplay and he can also lead defensive zone breakouts very efficiently. He's basically your prototypical offensive defenseman,  something the Hurricanes have too many of as it is but Bergeron is a bit of a special case. While he has improved the powerplay of just about every team he has been on, he has yet to stay with any team for more than three years because he is a defensive liability at even strength. His underlying numbers speak for themselves here.

Bergeron plays third-pairing minutes and usually starts the majority of his shifts in the offensive zone. Guy Boucher protected the hell out of him when he was with the Lightning the last three seasons, starting him in the offensive zone over 70% (!) of the time. I wish I knew how the Hurricanes planned to fit Bergeron in their lineup but I honestly don't see how it can work right now with Faulk still injured. The entire point of making a trade for a defenseman was to get someone to take pressure off McBain & Pitkanen and it seems like Bergeron will do the opposite of that since he needs to be sheltered to be effective.

With that being said, Bergeron is very, very good at what he does. He has been a negative possession player in only one of the last six seasons and has produced at a pretty impressive rate at even strength on top of that. The nice thing about a player like Bergeron is that while he might be a defensive liability, he is good enough at keeping the play in front of him that he's only defending 20-30% of the time he's out there. Bergeron actually thrived quite a bit under Boucher in his first two years with Tampa Bay. He's been a healthy scratch for most of this year, though.

The main thing to take away about Bergeron is that he can do a lot of good things for you in the offensive zone and he's even better on the powerplay.

Bergeron has produced terrific results on the powerplay for every team he has been on and I think this is where he will help the Canes the most. I mentioned earlier that their powerplay is ranked last in the NHL, but they are in the top-half in producing shots, The problem is that none of them are going in.. Only the Buffalo Sabres have a worse shooting percentage during 5v4 play and I'm not sure if Bergeron can help that. His big shot from the point and puck-handling skills will definitely create more chances, but not many are going to care if the goals don't come. The encouraging news here is that Bergeron has been able to give his teams results on the powerplay in the past, so hopefully that continues.

We know that Bergeron can help the Canes produce more offense and possibly help on the powerplay, it's just that  finding a spot for him in the lineup is going to be tough. Can Muller protect Bergeron as much as Boucher did? He's been giving extra offensive zone starts to any defenseman not named Justin Faulk or Tim Gleason, so I guess it shouldn't be too hard to shelter him, but I still don't see how he fits in unless another defenseman is traded. The Hurricanes had an abundance of puck-moving defenseman heading into this season and just added another, so it's going to put a lot more pressure on their heavy-lifters (Gleason, Faulk, Pitkanen) to do a lot more. We could possibly see the Canes use seven defensemen with Bergeron taking Westgarth's spot and being used in strictly offensive situations.

In short, this is a low-risk move for the Canes and while Bergeron does fill a need, I'm not sure just how good of a fit he will be. He only makes Carolina only a marginally better team if he plays to his full potential, but that's usually what a 7th round pick will get you.

Stats courtesy of Behind the Net.

The Hurricanes were able to end a seven-game winless skid in Saturday's game against Winnipeg and that win had a ton of significance in the Hurricanes playoff aspirations. They got a road win (in regulation) against a divisional opponent, gained some ground on the Jets and were able to keep pace with the rest of the bubble teams in the Eastern Conference. The Hurricanes probably had no business staying in the race after losing seven games in a row, but they are still right in the thick of things and can still make the post-season and possibly win the division if they have a good run to close the season. It's bad that they let themselves get into this position after leading the Southeast for a fairly long time, but the fact that they are still in the race is still good.

Actually going on that run is going to be the difficult part because, you know, this is a team that went two weeks without winning a single game and only amassed one point in the standings during that time. Thankfully for the Canes, the Devils, Rangers, Flyers, Capitals and Islanders are all in a similar position right now and it's going to be a really tight race for the last two/three playoff spots. The Jets are also at a bit of a disadvantage due to games in hand, so their lead in the Southeast is far from safe. It may even take less than the 55 points I had set as the cutoff point earlier in the season since a lot of these teams are going to need to earn points in 70-80% of their games to reach that.

What will the Hurricanes need to do to make it in over these teams is the question. We'll explore that after the jump and look at their odds of winning the Southeast, as well.

Anyone who has been following the Hurricanes this season knows that Kirk Muller's forward line combinations are prone to change on almost a daily basis. Injuries have caused him to try a lot of different things with his lineup and we've seen just about every combination possible in only 33 games. It reached a new high during the recent losing streak when Muller changed the lines a couple times per game and even tweaked the team's first line of Eric Staal, Jiri Tlusty and Alexander Semin, which has been the only unit to remain untouched for most of the season. The line juggling is likely going to continue over the next few games since the Hurricanes have a few players whose injury status is currently unknown, namely Tuomo Ruutu and Chad LaRose.

For most of the year, Muller has kept his first line the same with Tlusty, E. Staal and Semin being utilized in a power-vs.-power type of role while his second line has been primarily focused around Jordan Staal & Jeff Skinner handling the tough minutes. This strategy has changed a bit as of late, though as Muller has moved Skinner to the third line with Riley Nash & Jussi Jokinen for two of their last three road games. My suspicions is that this is to free Skinner up to to some easier matchups on the road since the opposing team won't be able to load up their best shutdown players against Carolina's top-two lines. He also seems to trust Nash enough to assume that he can keep up with Skinner and do enough to drive the bus on this line.

Muller has done some pretty interesting things this year in regards to how he runs his forward lines and the decision to move Skinner to the third line for road games is an especially curious one. On one hand, Skinner has been the team's best territorial forward this season and could do some significant damage against a weak matchup. However, Skinner has also managed to post great underlying numbers while playing tough minutes, so is there any need to protect him and place him with weaker linemates on top of that? This move could be only temporary, but it's still worth discussing since it's a pretty important time of the season right now. 

Then there are the defense pairing, which have also been changed up a lot thanks to injuries but they've remained the same as of late. The team is in a bit of a bind right now with Justin Faulk and Bobby Sanguinetti out of the lineup and Muller has kept things relatively the same for the past week. Not having Faulk available obviously limits what Muller can do but it's a little interesting that he has been changing the forwards up constantly while leaving the defense the same after how bad some of them have played lately, especially Joni Pitkanen and Jamie McBain.

Things will probably improve there once Faulk or Sanguinetti returns but until then, Muller has to do what he can to make the most out of the hand that's been dealt to him and that includes finding suitable lines & defense pairings that can fit his system. For the most part, the Canes have been a good puck-possession team at even strength this year and they have enough healthy players to be one right now even though they've struggled in this department lately.

After the jump, we will look at some stats from Hockey Analysis' With or Without You tool to see which Hurricanes lines and defense pairings have been the best in terms of controlling possession this year and what Muller can possibly do now to dress the best lineup possible.