Early in the season, many fans thought the Hurricanes found a solution to their long-standing problem of acquiring a suitable back-up to Cam Ward in Dan Ellis. Originally signed to a professional tryout contract with the Charlotte Checkers, Ellis played tremendously during the NHL lockout and earned the back-up job in training camp. His performance in the first few months of the season were very good, as he got to start a handful of games and did a fine job in relief of Ward in a few games. As a back-up, Ellis did just about everything you could ask from a goaltender, but he was presented with a much bigger workload after Ward suffered a knee injury that would keep him out for the rest of the year. Ellis would have to go from being a back-up goalie to a 1 A/B type role and start more games than he was used to. His performance in this role can be divided into two parts. 

Prior to Ward's injury, Ellis had a save percentage of .925 over six games and he ended the year with a save percentage of only .906, which is a little less than what you would expect from a typical back-up. Ellis definitely struggled in the latter half of the year, but he also went through some injury troubles of his own. Before the Hurricanes 4-1 loss to the New Jersey Devils on March 21, Ellis posted a save percentage of .912 over six games after Ward's injury. Ellis himself also sustained an injury this game after cutting his leg open with his own skate blade and this would keep him out of action for two weeks. After he returned from the injury, he posted a save percentage of .887 in his final seven starts of the season. Prior to the that, his save percentage was .918 over 12 games.

It is my opinion that Ellis was not fully healthy after returning from injury because before that occurred, Ellis' performance was adequate and more than suitable for a back-up goaltender. If the Hurricanes are going to be searching for a #2 goalie this summer, going back to Ellis would not be a bad option. Justin Peters might be under contract, but he has not proven himself to be a capable NHL goaltender and with $6+ mil. invested in Ward, the Hurricanes don't have the cap space to spend friviously on this position. Since the Hurricanes haven't been able to develop a back-up goalie (yet), they will have to turn to free agency to find a back-up netminder and retaining Ellis seems like an easy thing to do for next year. How does he compare to other available back-ups, though?

Let's go back to the summer of 2011 and imagine yourself projecting the Hurricanes roster. The team had a huge hole to fill on the first line with Erik Cole leaving via free agency and the only players brought in to replace him with Alexei Ponikarovsky, Anthony Stewart and a couple of rookies with some upside. During this time, I thought it presented a great opportunity for one of the team's younger players to step into a scoring role and this is exactly what happened as Jiri Tlusty eventually found a permanent home on the first line. Tlusty's emergence as a scorer came out of nowhere to some people because he was utilzed as a defensive forward for most of his first two seasons with Carolina. He always had a lot of skill, though and fans finally got to see more of it last year when he was bumped up to a line with Eric Staal and had a respectable 17 goal, 38-point campaign over 79 games.

Being only 24 when the season started and poised with a lot of talent, there were a lot of reasons to be excited about Tlusty's future but many were curious about what his ceiling was. Is what we saw from Tlusty last year the best he can be in the NHL or is there the potential for him to do more? Is he nothing more than a third liner on a team with better forward depth or is he a true top-sixer? I thought Tlusty was good enough to be a top-six forward, but my concern with Tlusty was whether or not he could succeed when playing away from Eric Staal. When you look at the territorial performance of these two compared with Tlusty's performance on other lines, it's not too far-fetched to say that Staal made Tlusty look better than he really was last year.

How Tlusty can perform away from Staal is something we didn't have to find out this season but one thing that Tlusty made perfectly clear this year is that what we saw from him last year wasn't even close to his full potential. Tlusty showed everyone that he is a true top-six forward by scoring 23 goals, leading the Hurricanes and ranking fifth in the entire NHL. He also led the NHL by having 9 multi-goal games including four in the month of April alone, making him well worth his $1.6 mil. cap hit and then some. 

His linemates definitely played a big role in this, as Tlusty had a front-row seat on the first line with Staal and newcomer Alexander Semin, but he actually proved to be a very good fit as the "finisher" on this unit. Tlusty is probably the least-skilled player on the first line, but he is a talented goal-scorer and one thing he seemed to be consistently good at was finding the soft spot in the defense and being in a perfect position to score on almost a regular basis. This isn't that hard to do when you have linemates like Staal & Semin who can create space, but you can not fault Tlusty for playing his role well by being the Hurricanes go-to goal-scorer. 

Tlusty's always had a lot of talent and he's gotten better with every season, but I don't think any fan predicted him scoring 20+ goals in a half-season, seeing how this would be pro-rated to 39-40 goals in a full year. He did post some fantastic numbers while playing in the Czech League during the lockout, so there may have been some thinking he could carry that over to the NHL. I'm not sure how many predicted him to lead the Hurricanes in goals with the likes of Eric Staal, Alex Semin and Jeff Skinner on the team, though. It's a season that came out of nowhere and Tlusty may have even surprised himself with how good he was.

Much like Staal, Tlusty saw a lot of things go his way in this past year and it's unlikely that he will reach this plateau again, but that doesn't mean he will become worthless after this year. Tlusty still does a lot of things well and will likely stay on the first line, but the expectations for him should be leveled when you take a closer look at how this season went for him, especially since he is entering a contract year.

Between their minimal scoring contributions, lack of size, poor defensive play and general inconsistencies, the bottom-six was a major troubling point for the Hurricanes this season. It wasn't supposed to be a problem going into the year because on paper, the Canes had plenty of depth forwards to make up their bottom-six and had plenty of guys who they could supposedly count on. Even with Tuomo Ruutu missing the start of the year, they had a good combination of young players and veterans who could provide secondary scoring, or at least it seemed that way on paper. When put into action, it backfired tremendously. 

If you remember right, the Hurricanes started the season with Zach Boychuk and Zac Dalpe in the top-six while guys like Drayson Bowman, Patrick Dwyer & Chad LaRose were slated to be in the bottom-six for most of the year. Both players were off the team before the end of the month and numerous bottom-six forwards would end up taking turns on the second line and not many of them proved to be much of a long-term solution. Outside of the first line and 2/3 of the second line, the Hurricanes forward corps spent a good part of the year being jumbled around and they seemed to roll with a different lineup every night. The third and fourth lines were made up of players who did not fit anywhere else in the lineup and neither unit had much of an identity, which was the underlying problem.

The Hurricanes third line was going to see some changes with Brandon Sutter being traded to Pittsburgh and Jordan Staal assuming the "shut-down" role on the second line. This left the door open for the Hurricanes to use their third line in a new way, possibly in a more offensive role than year's past. They ended up going with this plan but their execution of it was far from ideal and a lot of it was because their line combinations were somewhat random. They started the year off with Jussi Jokinen as the third line center, which isn't a bad idea on paper but placing him with grinders like Patrick Dwyer, Drayson Bowman & Chad LaRose did not seem to help him out much. Jokinen was eventually replaced with Riley Nash on the third line but the two wing spots rotated seemingly every game. Any time the Hurricanes third line appeared to develop chemistry, it was either blown to bits by injuries or more line juggling.

Above all, I don't think anyone really knew what role Carolina's third line was supposed to play this past year. When Jokinen was centering it, they were supposed to provide secondary scoring. Once Nash took over, they were more of a checking line and more lauded for their defensive than anything else. It just seemed like the coaching staff stuck any forward who couldn't stick it in the top-six on the third line while all of the leftovers took turns on the fourth line and were used sparingly. In other words, the Hurricanes forward depth ended up being a mess and their bottom two lines did not have much of an identity.

Heading into next year, the Canes find themselves in a similar situation where their top-six is set but their third and fourth lines are in for some changes. Carolina will need to have more of a thorough plan when constructing their bottom-six and they can possibly take some cues from playoff teams on how to do it.

Now signed to a four-year, $19 mil. contract, Tuomo Ruutu is expected to play a key role in the Hurricanes future by being a contributor in the team's top-six while providing a much-needed physical presence on top of that. It's hard to deny that Ruutu makes an impact whenever he is in the lineup but unfortunately, Ruutu spent most of this year watching the team from the press-box. Ruutu underwent hip surgery about a month before the start of the year and while he made his return ahead of schedule, he only played 17 games total this season. It was also revealed that Ruutu will have surgery on his other hip this off-season, so he wasn't at 100% even when he was in the lineup this year.

Ruutu has the entire off-season to recover, so he should be ready by the time training camp rolls around but his health is still a concern, mostly because his absence creates a huge void for the Hurricanes to fill. When he was on the shelf, the Canes had a big hole in their top-six and struggled to find a good fit for the right wing spot on the second line. They ended up over slotting third liners there for most of the year and predictably, none of them were a permanent solution or a replacement for what Ruutu brings. It took Ruutu a few games to get back to his full form but after that, he was one of the Canes better forwards in the latter stages of the season and I look forward to seeing what he can do in a full year.

With the news of his injury coinciding with the signing of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, there were some people who thought Ruutu would be a candidate for the Hurricanes to use the amnesty clause on, but those talks should have died down by now. When healthy, Ruutu is an impactful player that the Hurricanes are going to struggle to replace no matter what, so his spot on the team should be safe for the next year or so. Ruutu is overpaid and will probably see his production go down as he gets older, but he is still an important part of the Hurricanes and was very good when healthy this past season.

All Carolina fans breathed out a collective sigh of relief when it was announced that Eric Staal would be ready for the 2013-14 season after suffering a sprained MCL while playing in the World Hockey Championship. As team captain, Staal's presence would have been missed in the locker room if he was out for a longer time but his impact on the ice would have been an even bigger void to fill. Staal has been the Hurricanes best offensive player for the last eight years and he is coming off one of his best seasons of his career. There is normally a lot of criticism directed towards Staal and his large contract but this year, he earned every penny of his $8.5 mil. salary.

After being held without a point in the first two games of the season, Staal recorded a hat trick in the Hurricanes 6-3 win over the Buffalo Sabres and didn't look back after that point. He finished the year with 18 goals and 53 points in 48 games, which is pro-rated to 90-91 points in a full-season, and his line with Alexander Semin & Jiri Tlusty basically carried the team offensively for basically the entire year. Seeing how there were only 12 games this year where Staal did not record a point, it's more than fair to say that the Hurricanes scoring woes can't be pinned on him and his line. All but 10 of his points also came at even strength, so that makes his season even more impressive.

It was quite a special year for the oldest Staal brother and it's a shame that the Canes had such a bad season because Staal's production, along with the rest of the first line's, ended up being "wasted" in a way. Staal still has plenty of good years ahead of him, but it will probably be difficult for him to replicate his even strength point-production from this past season. It's not that Staal isn't capable of scoring at an elite rate, because he is, but more to do with the fact that Staal's past season was so absurd and very few players have been able to produce at that level annually. For some perspective, Staal had more even strength points than any other player in the NHL and the second highest 5v5 scoring rate, (trailing only Sidney Crosby)  which was also the seventh highest since 2007-08. Staal is a fantastic player, but expecting him to continue producing at this rate is unreasonable because so few players have been able to do it.

That being said, Staal will still be only 28 years old at the start of next season and is now playing with better linemates than he ever had before, so Staal can still perform at a high level even if this season was an aberration of sorts. After the jump, we'll take a closer look at the year that was for the Hurricanes captain and get a better idea of what to expect from him in future seasons.

Fan expectations always vary from player to player in a given year and this season, I think Carolina fans had higher hopes for Jordan Staal than anyone else on the roster. It made sense to expect a lot from him, too. He has always been one of the best two-way centers in the NHL and has shown the ability to be even more than that during his time with the Pittsburgh Penguins when given the opportunity. The Hurricanes also gave up a fan-favorite player (Brandon Sutter), a promising defensive prospect (Brian Dumoulin) and a high-first round pick to acquire him, so Staal was going to need to do a lot to prove himself with the fans and win them over. In addition to that, Staal signed a long-term deal with the Hurricanes shortly after they traded for him and is going to be an integral part of this team going forward.

While Jordan did not have a bad season, he seemed to be a disappointment in the eyes of a lot of fans based on results alone. During his Pittsburgh days, the common belief with him was always that he had the ability to be a top-six center on a lot of clubs and was never given the linemates, ice-time or power play time to perform at that level because of the Penguins center depth. I've always thought that these claims were overblown because injuries to Sidney Crosby & Evgeni Malkin have given Jordan the opportunity to step into a bigger role, but it still isn't far-fetched to say that he hasn't reached his peak offensively. After all, he was coming off a year where his even strength point production was at a first-line level and it was not the first time in his career that he put up these kind of numbers. Staal has also done an amazing job of dominating puck-possession while playing tough minutes throughout his entire career, so there was a lot of evidence to believe that Jordan Staal could take that next step and be a top-tier player.

Unfortunately, the Hurricanes didn't get those results this year. Staal had his lowest even strength scoring rate since 2007-08, had the second worst plus/minus rating on the team and his point-per-game rate was the lowest it had been in three years. Staal still had a good season, but since he was playing in a bigger role than he was in Pittsburgh, a lot of people were expecting more so he had a disappointing season in a lot of people's eyes. 

If you judge a player only on boxcar stats then yes, Jordan had a disappointing season, but there is more to the game than just that and Jordan actually excelled in a lot of areas this year, many of which don't show up on the scoresheet.

Even in a year with a $70.3 million salary cap, finding players on cheap deals is essentially to building a winning club. Not every team has the same funds and those in smaller markets have to find players on bargain contracts to stay in contention rather than try to outbid their competitors. Big market teams have to do this, as well and it will be important next year with the cap going down, whether it's through entry-level contracts or buying low on certain free agents. The Hurricanes have done a fine job of acquiring these types of players over the years and they've had to do it out of necessity for awhile since they normally operate under a budget. Things have changed a bit over the last couple of years, though as Jim Rutherford has stated that he plans for the team to spend more money than in years past. That gives them some more wiggle room, but finding good deals will still be important.

The Hurricanes are still not going to be a cap team and are set to be about $9 mil. under the limit next season. With over $4 mil. committed to eight players next season and a few holes on the roster to fill, finding bargains is going to be essential. It's tough to predict what exactly you are going to get from a player each year, but one way to judge his contract is looking at his "Goals Versus Salary" value, which was developed by Robert Vollman. Each player has different expectations and more is expected out of players with higher salaries than those who are making the league minimum. Goals Versus Salary (GVS) tells us how each player performed relative to these expectations. 

GVS is determined by looking at each player's "Goals Versus Threshold" value, which is a stat that shows the offensive, defensive and shootout "value" of each player, and comparing it to what is expected of them based on their salary. Their expected value is determined by taking their salary, subtracting it by the league minimum salary and multiplying that number by 1.99, which is the number of goals $1 mil. is worth under the current salary cap. Originally, the rule is that 3 goals costs $1 mil., but that was when the cap was much lower so I adjusted the value to what it is now. For more information on GVS, check out Hockey Prospectus' articles about it here.

After the jump, we'll look at who gave the Hurricanes the most for their money based on GVT.

A "need" that Hurricanes GM Jim Rutherford wanted to address last off-season was acquiring an enforcer to help prevent other teams from taking liberties on some of Carolina's more skilled players. The Hurricanes specifically wanted to invest in some protection for Jeff Skinner, who has already suffered two concussions in his young career, and the old theory is that getting a "tough guy" will help prevent other teams from roughing up your stars. The times have changed in the NHL, though and enforcers don't play as big of a role as they used to. In today's NHL, most "tough guys" play less than 10 shifts a game and aren't even on the ice long enough to serve as "protection" for star players. They aren't very skilled players, so coaches generally don't give them a lot of ice time and it's a rare occurrence for an enforcer to be out there in a key situation. This is the role of the enforcer in the NHL now and why the idea of them providing "protection" for stars is silly. The Hurricanes found this out the hard way when they acquiring Kevin Westgarth from the Los Angeles Kings this season.

Compared to other enforcers across the league, you can do a lot worse than Westgarth because while he isn't particularly a useful player at even strength, he isn't a complete liability like Jared Boll, Cam Janssen or Colton Orr. That being said, he still doesn't contribute in many other areas outside of his intangibles and as a result, he spent a fair mount of the season in the press box and whenever he was in the lineup, he played an average of about five minutes per game. You need to be able to roll all four lines to be a competitive team in the NHL now and dressing Westgarth to play 5-8 shifts a night isn't accomplishing that. I don't have that many bad things to say about Westgarth as a person because he knows his role and says all the right things, but I don't think the Hurricanes were icing their best possible lineup when he was playing.

As far as him "protecting" the Hurricanes other players goes, Skinner was hurt twice this year and Westgarth was in the lineup in both games. Neither injury was his fault, but this shows the limitation of enforcers in today's NHL. It's tough for them to protect star players because they are rarely going to be on the ice at the same time as them and they only take action after said injury occurs. Protecting younger players is always going to be a tough challenge but there were probably better ways to do it than acquiring an enforcer.

After the jump, we'll talk about what contributions Westgarth made when he actually got to play.

We will continue our player reviews from this past season by taking a closer look at the year that was for Tim Gleason. Recently signed to a four year, $16 mil. contract, Gleason is set to be a key cog in the Hurricanes defense corps for the next few season and is expected to provide a solid, veteran presence for players like Justin Faulk to learn after. Gleason has also established himself as a fine shutdown defenseman over the last few years. The Hurricanes have always leaned on him to do the bulk of the heavy lifting for the defense corps, as he is normally matched up against the opposing team's best forwards and is a regular on the team's first penalty killing unit and for the most part, his performance has been very good compared to similar defensemen. He was also coming off his best season in the NHL and was expected to anchor the team's "new" shutdown defense pairing with Justin Faulk for most of the year. Unfortunately, Gleason ended up being a different kind of anchor.

There are a lot of different types of "shutdown" defensemen out there and I've always considered Gleason one of the more underrated in the league. As it was noted earlier, he managed to fare okay territorially in tough minutes, can skate well and not be a liability when it comes to things like leading breakouts and moving the puck out of the zone. This year was a different story, though as Gleason posted some very ugly underlying numbers for his standards and looked considerably slower this year compared to year's past. This led to him getting bumped off the top defense pairing for part of the year and even benched toward the end of a few games.

Some of this wasn't exactly his fault since it was revealed at the end of the season that Gleason was playing a lot of the year with a broken foot, which is tough to deal with no matter what minutes you play. Gleason only missed six games this season despite this and that was the first time in over two years that an injury forced him to miss any action, so that says a lot about his toughness and pain threshold. Gleason's durability is very admirable, as I am sure this isn't the first time he's had to battle through an injury but I think it was pretty clear that the injury was affecting his play quite a bit since his performance this season was much lower than what is normally expected from him.

Gleason is normally the type of shutdown defenseman who can take away space from opposing forwards, preventing shot attempts and be useful with the puck by helping drive the play forwards, but some of these qualities were there for most of this season and it had a chain reaction on the rest of the defense. Again, Gleason clearly was not at 100% for most of the year, so I can't be too hard on him but when you put this much weight on the shoulders of one player and he struggles, the rest of the defense suffers because they have to pick up the slack. When healthy, Gleason is easily this team's best shutdown option and capable of playing in the top-four but he wasn't healthy this year, so he was a little less than that.

After the jump, we'll take a closer look at his season.

It's about that time of the year where we will look back at the season that was for the Hurricanes by taking a look at the individual performance of each player.  Last season I did this by showing how effective each player was at controlling scoring chances but I'm going to take a different route this time. Scoring chances are very important, but they're just part of an even bigger picture, so we're going to dig a little deeper with our player analysis this season. We're going to be looking at how they were used and how they performed in all three zones. This means looking at their ice time, special teams usage, quality of competition, zone starts and their performance by scoring chances, puck-possession, scoring chances and point-production. We want to be thorough as possible with this analysis so that everything is covered, so we're going to be looking at basically everything I've tracked along with data that is available on sites such as Behind The Net. 

Who better to begin this analysis with than the fan base's scapegoat of choice for most of the year, Jamie McBain? Going by the eye-test and most fan's opinions, McBain's third season in the NHL was a tough one. He was on-pace to have his lowest point total in a full season (8 points in 40 games), gained a reputation for making bad defensive mistakes and his most memorable moment of the season was when he back-handed the puck into his own net on a clearing attempt. This may have been only McBain's third full-season in the NHL, but I think management and fans had some higher expectations for him.

At 25 years of age, McBain is still young but we're starting to see more of what kind of player he is and right now, he is pretty much a third-pairing defenseman and not much more than that. The Canes had him take on a larger role for parts of the season due to injuries and he struggled with them, so I think it's fair to say that he is basically just a #5/6 defenseman at this point of his career. The Hurricanes had too many of these players, which led to McBain's name being circulated in trade talks for the latter half of the season and will continue to be for most of the summer. That and every Carolina fan seems to want him off the team because all they remember are the mistakes. 

Scapegoating is one of my least favorite things in sports because it is rarely ever one player's fault, especially in hockey when you have six different players on the ice at the same time. Whenever a fan finds a scapegoat, they become the subject of harsh ridicule and anything good they do is virtually unnoticed. McBain definitely deserved some of this because his mistakes were just plain horrible to watch at times, but was he as bad as some of the scapegoats would lead you to believe? Let's find out.