The Hurricanes managed to pick up three points in four games this past week when you consider how badly they were outplayed in all four games. They were outshot in all but one game (which was the one they lost, oddly enough), controlled only 41% of the even strength corsi events and 36% of the shots on goal which shows that they were struggling to control play and had a few bounces go in their favor the last week. Goaltending was one of the main reasons why they picked up five out of eight possible points last week as Cam Ward was outstanding in all four games. The Canes were also turning about 9% of their shots into goals, which definitely factored into them being in more games than they should have.

I'm willing to bet that the road trip had something to do with the Hurricanes being outplayed so badly as all four games were on the road and both were back-to-backs. Despite the tough conditions and rough defensive play (gave up over 60 even strength scoring chances) the Canes were still able to win two games and earn points in three, which is good but not promising in the long-term. Acquiring a first line winger might be the first priority this summer, but Carolina really needs to improve defensively if they want to be a better team next year.

After the jump, we will single out some performances.

Another week is in the books and with that, we will look at the updated standings in the Southeast Division:

Remember, we are looking at wins, possession stats, each team's expected win total based on their goals for/against totals and their current point pace. See last week's post for more information on that.

The race for the top in the Southeast Division looks slightly clearer now. What was once a four team race has dwindled down to three teams with the Tampa Bay Lightning losing all three of their games last week and earning only one point. The playoffs looked like a longshot for them with the way their team has played, but they were only three points out a week ago. This slight losing streak they've been on has them seven points out now, which shows how small the margin of error is this late in the season.

It appears that Florida, Washington and Winnipeg are going to be the main contenders now and Washington has really closed the gap on Florida now. They did themselves a huge favor by winning three of their four games this week and earning points in all of them. The Caps have also seen their possession metrics improve and still have the best goal differential in the Southeast. This strong week puts them within one point of Florida, who earned three points in three games and still have a lead on the division. The four shootout wins and 13 OTL points has helped them a bit in that department, though. It is worth noting that the Panthers are missing a key player in Kris Versteeg and once he gets healthy, they could start to pull away but they are going to need to accumulate as many points as they can with Washington right on their tail. What could make or break Washington is the next couple of weeks where they have a five-game road trip featuring games in Winnipeg, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia. They need to earn points in the majority of those games to stay in the mix. 

Winnipeg is in the mix despite being four points behind but they've seen their possession stats take a tip the last couple of weeks. They are still a borderline positive team when the game is close, but they are getting hammered in corsi, which probably means that they block a lot of shots. The theme for the Jets this year is they have been great at home and are struggling on the road, and that was the case this past week. They defeated Buffalo at the MTS Centre and lost to Vancouver and Calgary on the road. Winnipeg has three home games coming up this week, but only two more after that so they are going to need to make those games at the MTS Centre count and dramatically improve their play on the road. I still think that they are good enough to possibly make the playoffs as the #8 seed or even make a run at the division if Washington or Florida begin to slip up.

If you have been keeping up with the scoring chance recaps, one thing you will notice is that Jamie McBain & Jaroslav Spacek have been the team's "highest rated" defensemen in about six of the last seven games. These two are also leading the defense corps in terms of possession metrics and are currently the only defensemen on the team with scoring chance percentages above the .500 mark. What this means is that whenever these two are on the ice, the puck is moving in the right direction and the Canes have been creating more chances.

Another thing they have in common is they rank near the bottom of the defense corps in corsi relative to quality of competition, which means they are mostly matched up against third and fourth liners from the opposing team. They are also among the team leaders in offensive zone starts, showing that they've been given a strong territorial advantage which has contributed to their success. Essentially, these two have been third pairing defensemen who have been seeing protected minutes and are used in mainly offensive situations. Some might see this as a knock on their game because they aren't being used against tough minutes, but I see it as head coach Kirk Muller utilizing both players to their strengths and it has had a very positive effect on the team's defense.

After the jump, we'll take a look at how McBain & Spacek have excelled in this role and the effect it has had on the rest of the defense corps.

When the Hurricanes inked Tuomo Ruutu to a four-year, $19 mil. contract, the general consensus among the hockey blogosphere is that the team severely overpaid to retain him. There is no doubt that the contract is an overpayment but what I, and other Carolina fans, want to know is what can we expect from Ruutu over the next four years and what does he have to do to justify his contract value?

To figure out if a player is producing relative to how much money he is making, we can use an equation called "Goals Versus Salary." Invented by Rob Vollman of Hockey Prospectus, Goals Versus Salary (or GVS) measures how many goals a player is contributing towards his team compared to a player making the same amount of money. After the jump, we are going to see how much Ruutu needs to produce to justify his contract and whether or not we can expect that from him.

The Hurricanes closed out the last three games of their home stand by going 1-1-1 and slightly outchancing their opponents at even strength by owning 52.5% of the scoring chances. This will be the second week in a row that the Canes outchanced their opponents in the span of the week, which is a good sign for the team moving forward. Although, it's worth mentioning that they only outchanced one team this week (Tampa Bay 16-10) and it was by a wide margin so that likely had a an impact on their overall score. I still think it's a good sign that this team isn't getting shelled at even strength every game like they were earlier in the year and are actually managing to keep things close with most of their opponents. They could have easily been 2-1-0 this past week but they still have some areas they need to work on, one of the biggest being staying out of the box. After the jump, we will take a closer look at how the Canes did this past week and single out some top performers.

There is about 20 games left in the NHL season and we still have yet to see one team emerge as the favorite in the Southeast Division. The Florida Panthers currently sit in first place by four points but I've seen biggest leads evaporate before, so this race is far from over. To get an idea of who will come out of this logjam in first place at the end of the year, I am going to take a look at each team's underlying numbers and determine who is more likely to win the division and earn that much desired playoff spot.

I'm going to do this at the end of every week until the season's over so we can see how things progress over time.

Before we get into anything, I'll break down the table for you. I have displayed the team's wins, points, even strength possession stats, how many goals they scored compared to how many they gave up and their expected win and point total going by Pythagorean expectations. If you don't know what that is, it's basically an expected winning percentage based on how many goals a team scores compared to how many they surrender. For instance, the Canes have scored 171 goals while giving up 197, which would give them an "expected" winning percentage of 46.4%. That equals to about 28 wins.

This method is a good way to see which teams are beating their opponents more handedly and relying less on overtime/shootouts for points. You can see the the Hurricanes have gotten the shaft in that department because they "should" be about four wins better than they are right now but the 14 OT/SO losses bring them down.

Right now, there doesn't seem to be a clear favorite in the division. All of the top four teams are separated by one win and six points and none of them are that great. Florida has been a solid team this year but the main reason why they are leading the division right now is the 12 points they've earned from overtime and shootout losses. The Panthers aren't blowing out teams this year at all as they have the same amount of "clear victories" as Carolina (10) and have earned points in 26 of the 31 one-goal games they were involved in. It's also worth mentioning that they are tied with the Caps for the division lead in fewest goals allowed, showing that good goaltending has been one of the reasons for their success. Florida technically has more points than they "should" right now but they have an edge on the Winnipeg Jets with games in hand and are slightly better at controlling possession than Washington. Their margin of error is also a bit larger than the Caps right now.

The Jets playoff chances are very realistic right now but the fact that they trail Florida by four points and have played two more games might hurt them. They haven't been overwhelmingly better than Florida this year, but I would not be surprised if they ended up winning the division when all is said and done, especially with the Caps seemingly in free fall mode. Although, Washington leads the division in clear victories (16) and have finally broke the .500 mark in corsi tied so they could possibly make a run for the division. Time is not on their side, though.

As for Tampa's recent surge, I still don't think they can take the division. That team has been awful at controlling possession all season and it hasn't changed much at all. The reason for their resurgence is due to some extremely high shooting percentages that aren't sustainable in the long run. Their goaltending is still worst in the league, too even if Mathieu Garon has improved lately. That and their depth is incredibly weak with Vinny Lecavalier and Victor Hedman out of the lineup. Steven Stamkos' line and Eric Brewer are going to need to carry this team the rest of the way if they want to make the playoffs. The Anaheim Ducks basically did the same thing last year so it's possible, but very unlikely.

That's how things look right now. I'll be interested to see what changes next week.

Once upon a time, Zach Boychuk was the Carolina Hurricanes top prospect. He was selected in the first round of the 2008 NHL draft and was known for having great hands and huge scoring upside that any team would welcome. At the time, he had 82 goals and 214 points in 194 games in the WHL so it's easy to see why he was such a high draft pick. Everyone, myself included, thought that he would be playing in the Hurricanes' top six at this point but he has still yet to find a full-time spot on the roster and was just reassigned to Charlotte again.

Boychuk has shown that he can score at junior and the AHL level but he still has not been able to carry over that success into the NHL. Some say that the reason for this is that he is undersized, which is a valid point because at 5'10" and 185 lbs., he isn't exactly a big player and can get knocked off the puck easier than others. Other say that his game is more suited for a bigger ice sheet but his high scoring rate in the AHL suggests otherwise. Whatever the issue is, he just doesn't seem to fit well with the Hurricanes no matter who the coach is.

In last night's game against the Lightning, Boychuk played about eight minutes and a grand total of two shifts after the first period. When I first watched the game, I didn't notice him make any glaring mistakes and wondered what caused Kirk Muller to pull the plug on him. So, I went back and re-watched all of his shifts and jotted down anything noteworthy that he did when he was on the ice. After I examined his play more closely, I'm still a tad confused but noticed some of the deficiencies in Boychuk's game.

We will take a look at those shifts and examine Boychuk's NHL career a little closer after the jump

Cory Lavellette of Canes Country mentioned on Twitter this morning that the Hurricanes have three defensemen with at least seven goals (Harrison, Faulk & McBain) and 29 goals from their blue-line this year. That's a pretty big surprise when you consider that their best offensive defenseman has been out for over half of the season, but it did get me thinking about where the Hurricanes rank in the NHL when it comes to the amount of offense they get from defensemen.

When you think of how much "offense" a team is getting, most will look at goals as a way to judge that. As most of you probably know by now, there is a lot of luck involved with scoring goals and that is especially true when it comes to defensemen, so we have to look at more data here. For this study, I went to Behind the Net Hockey's shot data page and looked at how many even strength goals, shots on goal and missed shots each team's defense had. I also included their average shooting distance and shooting percentage for good measure. I'm going to do this with only five-on-five data for now to weed out some of the noise that special teams create, but I will include some powerplay data along with it.

After the jump, we will take a look at how much offense the Hurricanes defensemen are really supplying and where they rank in the NHL.

"Progress" is a word that you will hear pundits say when referring to the Hurricanes for the rest of the year. A horrible start buried them from playoff contention and ever since Kirk Muller took over, the main thing we are looking for is effort and progress when it comes to the team's future. The effort has been there on most nights but progress was coming at a slow pace during both December and January. Last month, however, we saw the Canes on-ice performance take a few bigger steps forward. They went 6-1-4, have slowly climbed their way out of the cellar of the Eastern Conference and look like a better team. They also did not lose a game by more than a goal for the entire month. The question is, do the underlying numbers show that Carolina is improving?

Sort of. Their overall corsi tied and scoring chance percentage have made minimal improvements from the last month and they are still underwater in both categories. This is mostly because their possession metrics were so poor for the first few months but during February, their EV scoring chance percentage was 49.4%. That's actually a lot better than their performances in other months but still mediocre. Their corsi tied percentage, however, was a much stronger 51.7% during the 11 games they played in February. Considering that they were without Tuomo Ruutu for most of those games, that's very impressive.

So yes, Carolina is making progress and played some very good hockey this past month. I don't think that they are a good team yet but they are a hell of a lot better than they were in October and November. Muller has been able to get the most out of a lot of players on this team but I still think the Canes are missing a few pieces if they want to be a contending team next year. After the jump, we'll take a look at which players were controlling the scoring chances for Carolina.

In an enormous three game sample, the Hurricanes did the impossible and managed to outshoot and outchance their opponents at even strength. Before we start celebrating, I should also tell you that they won only one game this past week and lost the other two via the shootout. What went wrong? In cases like this, goaltending is usually the problem but not this week. Justin Peters was outstanding in all three of his starts and the only reason they got a point against Florida. The reason why the Canes went 1-0-2 last week was because they couldn't stay out of the box against Anaheim and played a lousy third period against Florida where they sat on a two-goal lead.

The team is still learning and we're seeing some improvements but they clearly have a long way to go before they're a good team again.

After the jump, we'll take a look at some individual standouts from the past week.