Hurricanes fans are fearing the worst right now, as it was announced earlier this morning that their goaltender Cam Ward will miss the next 6-8 weeks with an MCL sprain. Things certainly could have been a lot worse judging from how bad the injury looked when it happened, but at the very least, it's good to know that this isn't anything season-ended or career threatening. That's the good news, the bad news is that the Hurricanes are going to be without their starting goaltender for possibly the rest of the season and that's a big piece to lose no matter what team you are. Ward wasn't having a great start to the year, but his last five games have been terrific and he has stolen more games for the Hurricanes over his career than he has lost.

What many are wondering now is whether or not losing Ward for the next two months will ruin Carolina's season. To put it bluntly, no. Ward is a very good goaltender, but he is not elite and this has been restated countless times. His performance since 2007 has ranged from above average to great and his even strength save percentage was at only .917 this season, which is slightly below average. The one thing that Ward provided was stability in net since he has been the goaltender in Raleigh for so long. He isn't Pekka Rinne or Henrik Lundqvist, so the Hurricanes just need to get average to above average goaltending out of Dan Ellis and Justin Peters the rest of the way and they should be in good shape. 

The question then becomes whether or not Ellis/Peters can provide the Hurricanes with that.

The Hurricanes did themselves a huge favor this weekend by picking up two wins against the Florida Panthers because it now gives them a bit of a cushion on their lead in the Southeast Division. Things are still pretty tight, though as the Winnipeg Jets trail them by only four points and Canes have recently come out of a stretch where they lost three divisional games. Carolina's record is padded thanks to a 10-3-1 record against the rest of the Eastern Conference but constantly giving games away to divisional opponents is going to allow other teams to stay in the race, which is why their lead is far from safe. Add in the fact that the Canes have 11 divisional games left and things could easily turn out bad for Carolina if they continue to struggle in the division, which is why getting two wins over Florida was huge.
 

Last time we checked the standings based on how many points each team has earned and how many games they had remaining, the Hurricanes and Lightning were in the best positions to win the Southeast with both needing to gain points in about 56-57% of their games to reach 55 points. Since then, the Hurricanes have earned eight points in seven games while the Lightning won only one of six and earned only two points. Meanwhile, the Winnipeg Jets have climbed their way back into the mix by earning eight points in six games, taking over second place in the division from Tampa Bay. They are obviously in a better position now but it's only slightly improved compared to where it was a couple weeks ago..

After Game 10, I did a brief overview of the Hurricanes season up until that point and determined that the Hurricanes should be in good shape for the rest of the year. There were plenty of reasons to be confident, the team was crushing their competition at even strength, had two good scoring lines and were just finishing up a road trip where they went 4-1-1 against Atlantic & Northeast Division teams. Since then, the Hurricanes have suffered a barrage of injuries, losing five players in the span of less than a week and the team seems to have fallen apart. The Canes have won only two of their last six games since the road trip and have looked pretty lifeless in almost all of their last five games.Three of those losses coming against Southeast Division opponents, who they are battling for points with right now.

It's pretty easy for some to point to injuries as the reason for the Hurricanes recent struggles and it's a justifiable excuse. Injuries are tough to overcome and it's even tougher when three of those players are defensemen who regularly log big minutes. Not having Jeff Skinner is obviously a big loss too and they also lost a depth forward in Tim Brent, who is a fourth liner but plays often on both special team units. It also doesn't help that the lineup has changed basically every night, as the Canes have used 22 different skaters in the last week alone and at least nine or ten of these players started this season outside of the NHL. In addition to that, a good few of the players from the AHL are playing some pretty big minutes, too and there is only so much one can expect from this roster the way it is constructed right now.

At the same time, injuries are part of the game and every team has to deal with them. The Ottawa Senators lost their two best players and seem to have no problem with at least staying competitive in most of their games. Carolina probably isn't going to win many games with their defense corps consisting of only one proven top-four player right now, but this team has struggled to be even competitive lately. I try to stay away from questioning effort and compete level since I really don't know what goes on inside the player's heads but for the last three games, this team had a tendency to come out flat while the game is on the line and that's concerning. Take the Tampa Bay game for instance, the Canes were competitive in the first two periods and were down only 1-0 heading into the third. They came out flat, were outshot 13-2 and let Tampa run away with it. The same thing happened against Washington after the first period and it nearly happened once more against the Islanders before team mounted a comeback.

I really think it's best to stay rational in this situation since this is only five bad games with a depleted roster. Not to mention that the division still appears to be up for grabs since no one else the Southeast has yet to take control of things yet and the Hurricanes still have 13 divisional games left. Carolina is lucky to be in the position where they are now and the guys on IR are going to come back eventually but even if/when those players return, Carolina needs to get more out of some of the guys currently on the roster, namely their top players.

A little under four weeks ago, the Hurricanes made the decision to send Zac Dalpe down to the AHL to make room for Tim Wallace. Dalpe has been one of Carolina's best forward prospects for quite some time now but he has yet to make his mark in the NHL despite making the Hurricanes out of training camp for three years in a row. I'll admit that he was in a bit over his head during his first two seasons since he wasn't doing much to drive the play against opposing team's fourth lines. There also wasn't much room for him on the roster and he was constantly used on the fourth line instead of being placed in a scoring role, so giving him top-six minutes in the AHL made sense.

Dalpe has been able to thrive in the AHL with the Charlotte Checkers the last couple of seasons and earned a spot on the Hurricanes after training camp this year. The difference was that there was room for him in the top-six as he was played on the second line along with Jordan Staal and Jeff Skinner. Dalpe might have struggled in his previous NHL stints, but he played much better this season and looked like he could finally settle into a full-time role. Then he was re-assigned after playing only six games. Now he is back with the team again and will look to make a more lasting impression this time around, something he was well on his way to doing so during his last stint.

Sure, Dalpe's two points in six games might tell some people that he wasn't doing his job in the top-six, but goals and points are not everything in hockey. I know it's probably frustrating to know that Dalpe hasn't scored a goal since December of 2011, but he has only played in 11 games since then and only six this season. Judging his overall body of work based on a small sample size is not the best thing to do, so the door is open for Dalpe to succeed if he continues to build on what he did during his previous stint with the Hurricanes.

If I can quote an older post, here are some of Dalpe's underlying numbers from right before he was sent down.

Dalpe was making the most of his minutes by creating more scoring chances relative to his ice time than both of his linemates. He was also slightly better than his linemates at territorial play than his linemates while playing some pretty tough minutes on Jordan Staal's line. Dalpe was also one of the team's stronger players in terms of neutral zone play, by having control of the puck on 59% of his zone entries. That percentage is far away from being the best on the team, but it's a fine rate for a top-six forward and better than some other players were performing. Whether or not he can continue that remains to be seen, but it's a little confusing that the Hurricanes decided to send Dalpe back to the AHL when they did because he was doing just about everything right but score.

The Hurricanes have struggled to find linemates for Jordan Staal all season long and things got even more difficult after Jeff Skinner went down with a concussion, so this is a perfect time for Dalpe to step in and make an impact. Dalpe did not miss a beat when returning to AHL play as he continued to tear it up during his most recent stint with five goals and eight points in seven games and a 3.42 shots per game rate. He has already proven what he needs to in the AHL and now it's time for him to get a longer test at the next level. Personally, I thought he should have never been sent down because he was doing a lot of good things with the Hurricanes and didn't do anything to lose his roster spot. The team has needed another scoring forward for awhile now and he should be able to fill that void given the opportunity. .

Much like we can't judge Dalpe as a player based on his small sample size of NHL games he has played, we can't automatically guarantee that he will succeed based on six strong games at the NHL this year. That being said, if he continues to play like he did in his first stint with Carolina this year, then I think he will be in Raleigh to stay.

If you were to poll most Hurricanes fans right now, most would agree that Alexander Semin has been a great addition to the team. He has made their first line a real force to be reckoned with and is usually one of their best players every night. However, I'm sure that most people were hoping that he would have more than three goals 14 games into the season and only one at even strength. His current pace would give him roughly 10-11 goals on the year and that would be only 17-18 in a full-82 game season. It's not that Semin is playing poorly, but the goals just haven't been coming to him for whatever reason.

Going strictly by a goal-per-game rate, one might suggest that Semin is on a decline. He has scored at a rate that was between .4 and .6 goals-per-game for msot of his career but the last two seasons, he's dropped down to below .3. So if you were only looking at goals, then you could say that Semin is on the decline as an offensive player but it's not just all about goals and points. Something people often forget is that a lot of things need to go right for a player to score a goal. The most a player can do when trying to score is find a soft spot in the defense and do his best to pick an open corner in the net when firing a shot on net. I think most would say that Semin has been doing that so far.

So why doesn't he have more goals? To put it bluntly, he hasn't been receiving much shooting luck at all, especially when you compare his numbers with the rest of his career.

In case you didn't know, the Southeast has been clearly the weakest division in the NHL so far. After Tampa Bay's 4-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs last night, they are now tied with the Hurricanes for first place in the division with 17 points. Both team's records would put them no higher than third in any other division and make them bubble playoff teams if the automatic qualifer was done away with. I said at the beginning of the year that this division would be very weak but somewhat competitive and so far it's proven that with the Lightning and Hurricanes tied for the top spot and likely alternating throughout the course of the season. The Winnipeg Jets are also not too far behind with 13 points and could find themselves back in the hunt with a good winning streak.

This all begs the question, what will it take to win the Southeast Division this year? The cut-off point for a playoff spot has been predicted to be about 55 points which would equate to roughly 94 in a full 82-game season. Florida had 94 points and won the division last year and I'm hoping that it will take more than that this season, but we could be looking at a similar finish if things continue to stay as they are. 

Let's say that 55 points is what it will take to win the division. How close are the Hurricanes from getting to there compared to their Southeast adversaries? The good news is that they are ahead of the pack, albeit only slightly.

Some unfortunate news came earlier today when the Hurricanes announced that Jeff Skinner wasn't feeling well at practice today and would not be traveling with the team to Montreal for tomorrow's game. This will leave three key players out of the lineup with Tim Gleason and Joni Pitkanen also injured but that's hopefully only a short-term concern. More people are worried about the health of Skinner and how serious his injury is. As of right now, it's only been announced as an "upper-body concern" but with Skinner's concussion history and the number of hits he has been taking lately, it's easy to get really worried about this. 

Skinner is the second highest scorer on the team behind Eric Staal, so losing him would be a significant blow but even if he is out for more than a couple games, the Canes second line should be in decent shape because of the guy centering it, Jordan Staal. One of the reasons the Hurricanes traded for Staal in the first place is because he has shown the ability to carry almost every line he has centered for his entire career and do it while being matched up against opposing team's top lines. He was able to do this with the Penguins and he's been doing a fine job in that role with the Hurricanes so far.

For most of this season, he has been playing in a tough-minutes role alongside Jeff Skinner and Patrick Dwyer and this line has been the Canes best offensive unit in terms of producing scoring chances. The amount of offense they've been creating is actually surprising considering the type of assignments they've been receiving but Staal, Skinner and Dwyer have been getting the job done. I'm sure Skinner has played a big role in this but Staal's ability to drive the play forward at even strength has always been among the best in the league so there is no doubt that he is playing a big role in this line's success, too.

Taking Skinner off this line is going to obviously cause them to lose a lot of offense, but that doesn't mean it will become useless. Staal wasn't exactly blessed with playing with offensive juggernauts during his time with the Penguins as his most common linemates in Pittsburgh include the likes of Tyler Kennedy, Matt Cooke, Ruslan Fedotenko, Petr Sykora, Pascal Dupuis, Chris Kunitz and Max Talbot. None of those lines will strike fear into the hearts of opponents, but Staal was able to make most of them very effective (Sykora being the only one he struggled with) and they ended up being useful lines who could at least drive the play forward. What's to say that he can't succeed with someone like Patrick Dwyer, Jussi Jokinen, Jiri Tlusty, Zac Dalpe or even Drayson Bowman?

The Hurricanes obviously can't stick anyone with Staal and hope things work out because his linemates in Pittsburgh were talented and somewhat useful away from him. However, Staal has proven that he doesn't need a scorer on his wing to succeed, so the Hurricanes can probably get by with overslotting someone on the second line for now without crippling the team's offense.

Staal has been with Skinner for most of the year, but Muller shook things up a bit for the Tampa Bay game and put him with Jiri Tlusty and Patrick Dwyer while placing Skinner on a line with Jussi Jokinen. The Canes ended up losing 4-1 but Staal's play was not the reason why. They were actually very effective at driving the play forward, created four scoring chances as a unit and Staal was on-ice for six total chances throughout the game. They were also matched up with Steven Stamkos' line for most of the contest and completely held him in check.

I don't want to get carried away over one strong game, but Staal really played well that night and he was doing it without having a top-end talent on his line like he did in Pittsburgh. If he can continue to do that with someone like Dalpe, Dwyer or Bowman then the Hurricanes might be in good shape without Skinner. At the very least, they should be able to be a line that keeps the puck in the opponent's zone and creates scoring chacnes whenever they are on the ice.  The Hurricanes are going to be weaker offensively with Skinner out of the lineup and I'm not sure who will take over his minutes on the powerplay, but I'm confident that the second line will be fine as long as Jordan Staal is the one centering it. This might actually be a good test for him to see how much he can elevate the play off his linemates.

Over the last few months, I've discussed the importance of neutral zone play and tracking zone entries and today, we are finally going to take a look at how the Hurricanes are performing in that regard. Anybody who reads this blog already knows that I am a big follower of the statistical side of hockey and I've been tracking scoring chances for the Hurricanes (among other teams) for the past year or so. Scoring chances and shot-based metrics such as Corsi and Fenwick do a good job of showing which teams are controlling possession and tracking neutral zone play enhances this. 

Think of it this way one of the goals in hockey is to spend more time in your opponent's zone than not, and winning the battle in the neutral zone is a necessary step to accomplish that. Shot-based stats tell you who is spending the most time in their opponent's zone and making the most of their opportunities, but tracking zone entries and neutral zone play can build on this in a number of ways. Being able to control the neutral zone is what leads to teams having more extended time in their opponent's end and in turn, leads to more shots and goals against.

So how do we track neutral zone play? The process is very simple, we look at which players are entering the offensive zone and whether or not they are doing it with control of the puck. It's been shown in past studies that teams who enter the zone with possession are more likely to create shots and scoring chances than teams who just simply play dump-and-chase. Not that dumping the puck in is always bad, but it's essentially giving possession to the other team in most cases and getting the puck into the zone with possession usually leads to more offense, more goals and usually more wins. Tracking neutral zone performance can tell us which players help their teams win more by seeing which ones are the strongest at driving the play forward. It can also tell us who creates the most offense off of their entries, reveal why some players struggle to move the puck forward and who might be a passenger on their line.

I've been tracking zone entries for the Hurricanes and two other teams this season to help expand on this study and see which players are the strongest in terms of neutral zone play. I did this by re-watching every game this season and noting which players got the puck into the offensive zone and if they did it via carry-in, dump-in, pass, tip or another method. It's a simple but time consuming process that can reveal a lot of interesting things about many players and teams in the league.*

After the jump, we'll take a look at what the Hurricanes neutral play says about them and their players.

* I did not count dump-ins where players went off for a line change because the team is obviously not trying to create any offense off those.

There are some people who hate change and it's understandable. Going through changes is never easy for anyone, especially when something has been the same way for such a long time. That's just the way humans work and sometimes it's justified because change isn't always a good thing. In the case, however, change can lead to great things and the Carolina Hurricanes underwent a pretty massive change this off-season. They lost a key cog in Brandon Sutter but also gained a couple huge pieces in Jordan Staal and Alexander Semin.

No one knew whether or not these two players would work out for the Hurricanes but one thing we did know coming into this season was that we were going to see a completely different Hurricanes team. Not many knew how to respond to it. Some were worried, some were excited and some had no idea what to expect from this new-look team. As fans, it's been awhile since this club had made a few big splashes in the off-season and we had gotten used to the way this Hurricanes team had look for the last few years. A huge change like they had undergone this off-season obviously led to some skepticism by many people, myself included.

Despite that, it's hard to argue that some big changes were needed in the Hurricanes case. This club had missed the playoffs three years in a row, were consistently among the league's bottom-feeders in even strength play and were on track to be a lottery team before Maurice was fired in favor of Muller in Decemeber of 2011. Change was brought on the coaching front last year and we saw the player personnel moves to go along with it during the following off-season with the hope that they would change this team for the better.

There are a lot of things to like about this year's Hurricanes team. The offense is much better than it was last season, they have more depth and this team is a lot more fun to watch than last year's squad. The defense, however, has had it's share of problems and it's been very evident on the penalty kill. The Hurricanes penalty kill ranks third to last in the NHL, gives up more shots per 60 minutes than any other team in the league and has been partially responsible for at least three of the team's losses this season. There have also been a few games where the Canes PK has surrendered multiple goals, including last Monday's game where the Islanders tagged them for four goals.

Even strength play is often what dictates success in the NHL and while the Hurricanes have been good in that department, giving up a goal more than once every five times they are on the penalty kill can easily put a team in a hole. The Hurricanes are somewhat lucky to be in a good position now despite this terrible penalty kill when you think about it. The worst part of it is that their PK woes haven't been due to bad luck, they've been giving so many shots on the PK that they would still be ranked near the bottom of the league even if Cam Ward/Dan Ellis weren't posting a combined .825 save percentage.

An easy solution to a bad penalty kill is to stay out of the box, but I honestly think that penalties are unavoidable this season because the refs are calling basically anything borderline, so a better solution is to fix the penalty kill. How should the Hurricanes do that, though? They lost their best penalty killing defenseman in Bryan Allen and didn't replace him, so there isn't much they can do there with the current roster as far as the defense corps goes. They do have some fine defensive forwards and they should be able to help out, but it clearly hasn't been that way so far. 

After the jump, we'll take a look at some of the mistakes the Hurricanes penalty killers have been making, who some of the biggest offenders are and what can be done to fix it.