Hockey was indeed alive and well in North Carolina during the lockout, as the Charlotte Checkers got off to one of their best starts in team history and have the second best record in the AHL at 23-11-2-3. Their performance during the lockout was very promising for the Hurricanes organization because most of Charlotte's top players were younger players who the Hurricanes drafted. Developing talent in the minor leagues is always important in running a successful franchise, so it was great to see guys like Zach Boychuk, Drayson Bowman, Zac Dalpe and Bobby Sanguinetti excel in Charlotte during the lockout. 

The Checkers receiving the bulk of their production from guys who are on the cusp of being ready for the NHL is somewhat of a double-edged sword in a way, though. It was good to see these players perform well during the work stoppage, but most people knew that these players were going to get their shot in the NHL once it returned. This would lead to a massive talent purge on the Checkers and put the team in a rough spot depending on how many players the Hurricanes decided to call-up. Charlotte isn't in the same boat as Oklahoma City where virtually all of their best players will be going to the NHL, but they could potentially lose some key pieces once the NHL season begins.

Charlotte had to play two games this weekend without the services of Zach Boychuk, Tim Wallace, Dan Ellis, Drayson Bowman, Jeremy Welsh and Bobby Sanguinetti and they could potentially lose a few more players depending on who else is called up, who makes the Hurricanes and who gets lost on waivers. Add in the injuries to Rasmus Rissanen, Jerome Samson and Marc-Andre Gragnani and there could be some tough times ahead for the Checkers. 

That's the risk you take when you have so many players in their early to mid-20's playing in the minor leagues. The AHL acts as a developmental league but it's easy to forget that the Checkers are an independent franchise just like the Hurricanes and they have their own goals to ice a competitive and successful team. The Canes could potentially take a lot of talent away from the Checkers (9 players in total were called up) depending on what happens over the next week.

Just what are the Checkers going to be left when all is said and done, though? To find out, we will take a closer look at how Charlotte's players have been performing this year and discuss who will have to fill in for some of the pieces they will be losing to the NHL very soon.

While the Southeast is going to be far from the strongest division in the NHL this year, there is a good chance that it might be the most competitive. The Florida Panthers managed to dethrone the Washington Capitals as the incumbent champs last season and both of these teams appear to be weaker on paper heading into this year. Meanwhile, the other three teams in the Southeast made improvements last year and the race for the top spot could be much more entertaining than people are expecting. The 48-game season will also play a role in that because every game is going to mean much more than it does in a normal year.

I feel like the Southeast Division is arguably the hardest to predict in the NHL this season with every team being relatively close talent-wise, but something that will go a long way to determining who wins it will be how these teams play against each other. All teams will be playing within their conferences this year and 18 of those games will be intra-division. Divisional play is going to take up over 37% of the schedule which means that those wins (or points) will be even more important than usual. This could be a problem for the Hurricanes, who won only 9 of 24 divisional games last season, but this is shaping up to be a different team and a different division than it was in 2011-12.

Carolina should be better than they were a season ago and that could help them pick up some more wins against divisional foes, but let's keep in mind that they aren't the only team that improved this off-season. I mentioned earlier that both the Winnipeg Jets and Tampa Bay Lightning also have stronger rosters and while the Florida Panthers and Washington Captials are weaker, the Hurricanes won only one game against the Panthers last year and the Caps are always a dangerous team. In other words, the Southeast could go in just about any direction. 

Just how bad was Carolina's divisional play last year, though? Find out after the jump.

Yet another month has gone by without an NHL season but there are still many players on the Hurricanes roster and prospect pool who are currently playing in other leagues. The last time I wrote an update on this, Jiri Tlusty and his point-per-game scoring rate in the Czech League was leading the way. He has been given the luxury of playing on a line with Tomas Plekanec and Jaromir Jagr, so he is definitely benefiting from strong linemates but his scoring line is still impressive. He could potentially see a return to top-six minutes in Carolina once the lockout ends with Tuomo Ruutu being injury and opening up a wing spot on the top two lines. Tlusty's success overseas is a tad surprising for those who thought his breakout season was a fluke and we look forward to what he can do once he and the Hurricanes return.

Who else on the Hurricanes roster and prospect pool is performing well during the lockout, though? Find out after the jump.

Tracking zone entries are something that I have touched on briefly in past articles but have yet to do any serious posts on for the Hurricanes to explain why I am doing this. Part of the reason for this is because I am currently doing a major project from last season and do not have enough data on the team for me to do a substantive post about them. That will come at a later time. For now, I thought it would be a good idea to show what exactly I'm doing with this project and how it correlates to success on the ice.

The main goal behind tracking zone entries is finding out which teams are controlling the neutral zone, how they are entering the zone and how well they perform territorially after getting the puck in. There are other methods but generally, the two most common ways that teams enter the opposing zone are either by dumping the puck in or carrying it in themselves. The whole "dump and chase" method is something that you'll hear a lot of color analysts talk about as one of the "keys to victory" for their team because it's a safe way to get the puck in deep. Carolina's color analyst often puts emphasis on "good dumps," whatever the hell that means.

While dumping the puck in presents less chance for a turnover, there hasn't been much evidence to show that it leads to success in terms of generating shots or scoring chances. In fact, past studies have indicated quite the opposite and it makes sense when you think about it. Teams who simply dump the puck in are essentially giving the puck back to the other team in their own zone. Unless they play in a system that puts emphasis on strong forechecking and creating turnovers, this method doesn't seem like the best for success, especially if you're playing from behind. 

In my years of watching the Hurricanes, I have noticed that they tend to play "dump and chase" a lot and it could be one of the reasons why this team has been so poor territorially over the last three years or so. I will have a better idea of this once I have more games tracked but to show you what exactly I'm doing with this project, I will go over one of Carolina's game from last season and show how much the team's zone entries correlated with the amount of shots and scoring chances they generated. 

The game is Carolina's 3-2 shootout loss to the Ottawa Senators from last October. Why did I pick this game? Because it's where I am currently at in the season right now and featured a lot of even strength play. I thought it would serve as a good introduction to this project, which we will start after the jump.

Earlier this week, it was announced that Philippe Paradis was being assigned to the ECHL by the Chicago Blackhawks/Rockford Ice Hogs. You may remember that Paradis was the Hurricanes first round pick from the 2009 NHL Draft and was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs later on in the year in exchange for Jiri Tlusty. Seeing how Tlusty has emerged as a top-six player and is currently playing well overseas while Paradis has struggled at just about every professional level, I think most would agree that the Hurricanes won this deal by a landslide. This did get me thinking about what kind of shape the Hurricanes prospect pool would be in had they kept Paradis and how Rutherford and the Canes scouting staff has had a lot of tough luck when it comes to drafting during their tenure.

Would you believe that since the year 2000, there have been only eight draft picks by the Hurricanes who went onto play 100 or more games for the team? Would you also believe that behind Eric Staal, Niclas Wallin has played the most games in a Carolina sweater among players drafted by Rutherford? Well, it's true. Not every team can be as good as the Detroit Red Wings when it comes to drafting younger talent, but the Hurricanes had some very rough drafts from 2000 through 2009. Aside from landing Cam Ward, Eric Staal and Brandon Sutter, there were not a lot of great players to come out of those drafts at all.

Now with that being said, the Hurricanes were still a reasonably competitive team during most of those years and this was mostly due to Rutherford being able to acquire talent through trades rather than the draft. If you were to look at just about any of Rutherford's moves during the last 10-12 years or so, it's pretty easy to see that he is more of a "play for the present" kind of guy and doesn't like to have his team sit through long rebuilding periods. He has shown that he isn't afraid to trade away draft picks from proven talent and would rather take a risk on a somewhat seasoned prospect rather than drafting one who is a few years or so away from the NHL. The recent trades involving Jordan Staal, Riley Nash and Bobby Sanguinetti indicate that and so do the trades he made during the 2005-06 year when Carolina won the Stanley Cup.

Trading away draft picks is something that a lot of GM's are reluctant to do but in the end, those picks are only as valuable as the team's scouring department, as it has been proven over the years that some organizations have an eye for finding talent in the later round of the draft. The Hurricanes, unfortunately, have not been one of those teams for most of the last decade and Rutherford seemed to notice this somewhere down the line and began to use a lot of his draft picks as trading chips. Some may not like this strategy but draft picks are never a sure thing and Rutherford was able to turn some of Carolina's picks into pieces the team could use to make the team immediately better.

The most pointed at example of Rutherford's trading is the deal that sent Keith Primeau and a 5th round pick to Philadelphia in exchange for future captain Rod Brind'Amour but there are actually a few more that really stick out. The Canes had to send five of their draft picks away to bring Doug Weight, Marc Recchi and Anton Babchuk to Carolina during their Cup run and I think just about everyone will tell you that they were well worth the price, and that's before you consider that the only current NHL-er to come from those picks is James Reimer. A couple other trades to mention is the Matt Cullen deal from 2008 where the Canes sent their third round pick from 2008 to the Rangers to acquire him and the Aaron Ward trade from 2002 where Carolina got him from Detroit for a second round pick. Both of those players ended up being more than just rentals for the Hurricanes and played important roles in their post-season success, albeit in separate years.

Rutherford's strategy changed a little bit once 2010 rolled along. The team's core was aging and there were not many younger players to take their place outside of Eric Staal. Knowing that the organization needed young talent and that they were going to end up with a high draft pick, Rutherford elected to trade away some of his older players on expiring contracts in exchange for picks. Since then, the team's drafting has gotten better and it also helped that he used a few of those picks to acquire some other younger talent like Riley Nash and Bobby Sanguinetti who were far closer to being NHL ready than most kids in the draft.

Then you have the Jordan Staal trade, which shows Rutherford going back to his older ways of trying to win now rather than waiting out another rebuilding year. I'm still not sure if Staal's value will equate to what Rutherford gave up, but this isn't the first time that he has traded away a first rounder or a high draft pick before. Seeing how the best player taken with a pick that Rutherford traded away was Jiri Hudler back in 2002, I don't think the Canes have too much to worry about on that front. Carolina still does not possess a top-notch prospect pool but they do have a lot of young talent who are on the verge of being NHL-ready, so it will be interesting to see what happens with these players and what Rutherford does in future drafts. The lockout is going to put even more pressure on a team like Carolina to play for the present, so we could see some interesting moves up his sleeve once if the NHL season resumes.

Another month has gone by without the NHL but some the Hurricanes players have been busy playing hockey in different leagues overseas. As of this post, there are now five players on the Hurricanes roster who are playing in European leagues to stay fresh during the lockout with Jamie McBain being the latest addition. The young defenseman decided to go on a short-stint with the Lahti Pelicans of Finland's SM-Liiga at the beginning of the month. He initially planned to stay for only a few games but it looks like he may stick around for a bit longer now that the lockout has gone into December. Jussi Jokinen also decided to extend his stay in Finland by playing a few more games with SM-Liiga's Karpat HC this month.

Now that these players have some more games under their belt, we'll take an updated look at what their performance would look like if they were in the NHL during this time using Gabe Desjardins' NHL equivalency values. If you need a refresher on what those are, I outlined it in last month's post on this topic.

We'll move onto this month after the jump.

Something you may have noticed is that I haven't posted any updates on Carolina's NCAA prospects in a couple weeks. The reason for this is because there are usually only two games per weekend in the college rankings and with only five players to track, there isn't much to say about them unless they had a big performance. This is especially true if you don't have a chance to watch any of their games, which has been the case for me and the Hurricanes NCAA prospects this year. That is, until last night when I tuned into NBC Sports to watch the Wisconsin/Denver game featuring Carolina's 2012 fifth round draft pick Brendan Woods. 

Woods isn't one of the team's highly regarded prospects and he is only a borderline top-six player on a struggling Wisconsin Badgers squad, but getting a closer look at him to dissect the pros and cons of his playing style is never a bad thing. Watching this game also gives us a chance to look at some other team's prospects as there were many NHL draft picks playing in this game and keep an eye on some players who might be entering the draft this summer. This also gives me a chance to finally do some statistical tracking with college hockey, which is something that's been on my to-do list for awhile. Better late than never, I suppose. 

After the jump, I will breakdown the Denver/Wisconsin game a little bit and point out some things in Woods' performance that stood out to me.

In case you haven't heard, the Charlotte Checkers have one the best offenses in the American Hockey League. Even after being shutout by the Texas Stars last night, they still have scored more goals than any other team in the league and have been held to three or fewer goals in only five games this season. They are also the only team in the AHL to currently have at least five players with five or more goals, so the scoring has been relatively spread out amongst the forward corps. The NHL and the Hurricanes might be MIA for the time being, but the Checkers are at least doing their job of keeping hockey interesting in the Carolinas.

The start the Checkers are off to has gotten a lot of fans excited about some of the Canes younger prospects, namely Zach Boychuk who has been a point-per-game player for most of the year, but Charlotte isn't the only team in the league with a high-powered offense. The NHL's absence has led to there being a massive talent increase across the entire AHL and many teams are enjoying hot starts thanks to that. Among those teams are the Abbotsford Heat, Springfield Falcons, Oklahoma City Barons, Grand Rapids Griffins and many more.

I've gone over my concerns about the success of the Checkers offense not being sustainable in the long-run because of inflated shooting percentages, but what's to say that they are the only team going through this? For all we know, there are just as many players on Abbotsford, Oklahoma City and Springfield with high shooting percentages that can't be expected to stay where they currently are. Seeing how the Checkers compare to them in that aspect should give us a good idea of how good this team really is.

In addition to that, it would also be nice to know how the Checkers compare to the rest of the AHL in terms of how much of their production is coming from players who have a chance to make the NHL relatively soon. There might be a lot of NHL talent in the AHL right now but there are still quite a number of players who will likely spend the majority of their careers in the minors and gaudy numbers from those players ultimately do not mean much for an organization's prospect pool and future. Seeing how the Checkers rank in this department will give us a better idea of how much their success means to the Hurricanes organization.

After the jump, we will take a look at where the Checkers stand in both areas.

It's the middle of November and there has still yet to be an NHL game played this season. All fans have to be beyond frustrated right now but I think the Hurricanes fanbase might be among the most pissed off right now. This was looking like a season with a ton of promise for this team. They had one of their most eventful off-seasons in recent memory by acquiring Jordan Staal and Alex Semin and on top of that, their division is pretty much up for grabs right now. There was so much excitement and anticipation heading into this year regarding this team and now it is all put on hold until the owners and Player's Association come to terms with a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Until that time, there isn't anything fans can do except wait and wonder about what could have been.

There are still a lot of things that are left up in the air with the Hurricanes this season, though. Most are wondering how the acquisition of Alexander Semin will turn out, but I think adding Jordan Staal to the mix is a little more intriguing, mostly because there is a lot about Staal that is uncertain. One thing we do know about him is that he was fantastic as a shutdown center for the Pittsburgh Penguins for the last six years and still has a lot of upside remaining. There are a lot who say that Staal can emerge as a huge scoring threat if he is given the right linemates and ice-time, which isn't too crazy to say if you look at his body of work in Pittsburgh and consider that he is only 24 years old, but one thing to remember is that Staal wasn't always confined to the third-line center role with the Penguins.

If you go back to the latter-half of the 2010-11 season, you may recall that both Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin missed significant time with injuries, leaving Staal as the team's #1 center during that stretch. There was also a brief time period last year where Staal was placed into this role as the Pens normal top-two centers were out with injuries. How did he perform during these stretches? Well, he had 23 points in 31 games from February to the end of the 2010-12 season and 4 points in the 5 games in October where Malkin was hurt. His numbers are decent enough but once agian, points don't tell us the entire story, especially with a player like Staal.

To get a better idea of Staal's performance, along with just about every other player, you need to take a closer look at their contributions on the ice, which is why I am currently doing a very ambitious project where I am tracking scoring chances, zone entries, zone exits and many other on-ice events for as many games as I can. You may remember that I did scoring chances for the Hurricanes last year, and while those are helpful, they still only tell you part of the story, which is why I will be expanding my studies this season (whenever it starts) and am currently tracking the previous year in my down time.

I am currently at the part of last season where Staal assumed the top-line center role for the Penguins, so after the jump we are going to take a closer look at his performance during the Penguins game against the Montreal Canadiens on October 20, 2011. The analysis starts after the jump.

The junior hockey season has been an odd one so far, or at least it has for a lot of the teams currently housing Carolina Hurricanes prospects. Take Ryan Murphy's Kitchener Rangers for instance, they were struggling a fair bit at the start of the year but have straited to turn things in the right direction over the past few weeks. They won all three of their games in the last week and are 8-1-1-0 in their last 10 games. Murphy hasn't been the main catalyst for this turnaround but he has been improving a lot after a rough month of October and had another multi-point performance this weekend. The news of both Murphy and the Rangers turning things around is good news for the Canes organization as a whole.

On the other hand, some teams that were flying high early in the year are now going through a rough patch with the current prime suspects being Daniel Altshuller's Oshawa Generals. The Generals were one of the most exciting teams in the OHL during the beginning stages of the year and were mostly backed by a high-powered offense and one of the OHL's leading offensive threats in Boone Jenner. At the time, Altshuller wasn't providing the Generals with remarkable goaltending, but he was performing well enough to prevent them from losing games and maintain their spot at the top of the East Division. Over the last 10 games or so, things have gotten tougher for the Generals as they have won only three games in that stretch and are hanging on by a thread to the top spot of their conference. Their offense appears to have run into a bit of a bad stretch and Altshuller just hasn't performed well enough to steal games for them, which is something he may need to do eventually.

Brock McGinn's Guelph Storm could also fit into this category but they haven't struggled as much and are still in the mix in the Midwest Division. They certainly helped their cause this week by getting a shutout over the first place team, Owen Sound, but that was undone after they dropped their next two games to Sarnia and Brampton respectively. It's still along season ahead for everyone and we've already seen how much can change over the course of a month, so it will be interesting to see how the standings look come mid-December. Some good news is that all but one of the OHL teams with Carolina prospects are in the top-half of their conference so most of the team's we're following have had a decent first 20 games or so.

After the jump, we will look at the performance of Carolina's CHL prospects in more detail.