There are a few players on the Hurricanes blue line who I'm not quite sure what to expect from in this coming season, and defenseman Jamie McBain is one player who is near the top of the list. It feels as if McBain has been around for awhile but it's easy to forget that he is only 24 years old and is about to enter only his third full season in the NHL, so he is still learning the game a bit. When he came out of college, McBain was billed a mobile, puck-moving defenseman who could be a future powerplay quarterback and he has somewhat lived up to that billing. The Hurricanes heavily utilize McBain on the powerplay and he has two decent offensive seasons under his belt, but he has yet to show the ability to run a powerplay on his own or be anything more than a borderline top-four guy.

In McBain's 2+ years with the Hurricanes, the coaching staff has used him in numerous different roles in defense corps and the results have been mixed. He has struggled mightly in a top-four role with Joni Pitkanen but he has seen some decent in limited minutes playing against tough competition with Gleason as his partner. However, the role he flourished in last season was when he was placed on a third pairing with Jaroslav Spacek in a more protected role. The duo did everything you could ask from a third pairing as they were the team's most effecitve unit at even strength scoring chances. With Faulk and Harrison being able to handle some of the tougher assignments, this role seemed perfect for McBain at the time.

Unfortunately for McBain, Spacek is gone and I'm not sure how the team will plan to use him for the upcoming year. I still think that the Hurricanes aren't certain with what they have in McBain either since he's still pretty young and he's been used in so many roles in only 166 NHL games. Either way, they see him as valuable asset since they decided to extend him for two years and everyone will have a better picture of what McBain is by the end of the year depending on how this season goes for him.

The problem, of course, is that no one really knows how this upcoming year could go for McBain. He could either continue to flourish as an offensive defenseman, finally be able to step into the top-four on more of a full-time basis or fall completely off the radar and end up in the press box towards the end of the year. The possibilities are really endless for McBain because he's taken on a lot of mileage already and he has yet to stick to just one role. To get a better idea of what to expect from McBain next year, we will take a closer look at some of the details of his career and see whether or not he will have that breakout year every Carolina fan is hoping for.

Tim Gleason is a player who fans do not expect a lot of points from because it isn't in his general job description. He is a shutdown defenseman and his top priorities are to play tough against the opposing team's top forwards, kill penalties and prevent shots and goals against. This is something that he has done relatively well over his career and he's managed to always put up respectable underlying numbers despite the Hurricanes giving him some of the most difficult defensive assignments known to man...or at least on the team.

Anyway, the point here is that Gleason isn't expected to produce much offense since he primarily plays a defensive role but his point production over the last few years hasn't been terrible. No one is going to consider Gleason an offensive threat but he been able to put up at least 15-20 points a season for most of his career, which isn't too bad for a shutdown defenseman. So while Gleason doesn't have much offensive upside, he isn't a black hole in this area and can be somewhat effective at generating shots on goal and producing points, at least compared to others who are used in a similar role. Personally, I think Gleason has a decent shot and he is capable of leading a break-out from time to time but his offensive acument doesn't extend to much more beyond that.

Last year, Gleason played some of the toughest minutes of his career as he was used on the team's shutdown pair with Bryan Allen. The duo started almost 70% of their even strength shifts in the defensive zone, were trusted with handling almost all of the tough minutes among the defense corps and were two of the Hurricanes most relied on penalty killers, as well. Gleason managed to produce one goal and 15 points at even strength in that setting, which is pretty much the norm for him, so it wouldn't surprise many if his point total was around that mark next season.

Gleaosn may see his defensive workload decrease a little next year since the Hurricanes don't really have another bonafide shutdown defenseman to pair him with, but it's more likely that he will stay in a similar role and continue to get the bulk of defensive assignments. Therefore, it's somewhat easy to nail down what kind of point production we should expect from Gleason this year but there are always some factors that could cause any player to have a career season and after the jump, we will look to see if there are nay for Gleason. 

Most of you probably know this by now, but I am a big numbers guy when it comes to hockey and sports in general. The human mind is very selective and deceptive, which is why I pay attention to the statistics instead of relying on soley memory to form my opinion after watching games. Stats are not perfect and they never tell the whole story, but they do help fans get a better understanding of the overall picture and present objective, factual information about the events that occur in a game. This is another issue for another post, though. Today, I am going to talk about one stat that I never use on here, which is plus/minus.

Plus/minus, or +/- as it's often referred to as, is pretty simple stat to calculate as it takes the difference of the number of goals for and against a player is on the ice for at even strength. It is also one of the most widely used stats in the general hockey community as you'll see just about every sports site list a hockey player's +/- rating on his player card. Hockey commentators also often reference a player's plus/minus in broadcasts and preach it's importance at times. Hell, there are even fantasy leagues that use it as a scoring method. 

So, why do I never use plus/minus? Because I feel that it tells you absolutely nothing about a player in the grand scheme of things and I'm almost certain that not many people know what exactly this stat tells you about anything. Like I said earlier, it's an easy stat to calculate since it's just the differential of goals for and against at even strength but there are plenty of issues that arise with the method of how a player's plus/minus rating is determined. First, I should mention that empty net goals count towards a player's plus/minus, so every player that was on the ice for an empty net goal will be penalized or rewarded for it even if they had no role in the play at all.

This brings me to the next issue with plus/minus, which deals with goals in general. Something that is very hard to grasp is that it takes a bit (sometimes a lot) of luck to score in hockey. There are always instances where a goal is scored as a result of a defender turning the puck over or getting his jock handed to him by a forward but there are many other times when random occurrences lead to goals. A good deflection will beat a goalie, a perfect shot might sneak past his glove hand and there are always those goals where the goalie will let one in from long range and be completely at fault for it. With plus/minus, everyone who was on-ice for the team that allowed a goal gets penalized for it even though they may have done nothing to allow a goal being scored against them. The same goes for a positive rating being rewarded to every player on the ice for the scoring team. Plus/minus basically assumes that everyone on the ice is to blame for a goal being scored against their team, which is kind of ridiculous when you consider how much good fortune goes into scoring a goal, especially in today's NHL.

In the eyes of the national media, Justin Faulk's rookie season went somewhat unnoticed as most of the focus was put on the likes of Gabriel Landeskog, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Matt Read and Adam Henrique. Faulk obviously isn't in the same class as Landeskog or RNH and he did not put up the numbers that would earn him more national recognition, but it's hard to say that his rookie season wasn't special. Since the 2004-05 lockout, there have only been a handful of defesnemen who have been able to break into the NHL for a full year and very few of them played in the situations that Faulk did.

Defensemen usually take a long time to develop compared to other players, so you typically do not see a lot of defensemen in their late-teens or early-20's break into the NHL full-time. Faulk managed to do that last season and he also ended up leading the Hurricanes in minutes played per game, played regularly on both special teams units and was frequently matched up against opposing team's top-sixes. Considering that Faulk only turned 20 this past March, it's pretty remarkable that he managed to step into a full-time role with the Canes and play the minutes that he did. It should also make a lot of fans optimistic about the future because he has already gained a lot of experience at such a young age.

Faulk did have some growing pains when it came to preventing opposing shots and scoring chances, though as he was on-ice for the highest amount of chances against per 60 minutes among Carolina defensemen last season. The Hurricanes were also controlling less than 50% of the 5v5 shots when Faulk was on the ice, so while Faulk was able to step into a big role in the NHL, he had his share of problems. Last year could be considered "trial by fire" for him considering it was his first full year in pro hockey and he was thrown into a big role right off the bat, so I think he performed well in this circumstances.

The Hurricanes know they have a special player on their hands with Faulk but what should they expect him to do in his sophomore season. Some might say that he has already done everything the team has asked of him and more and while that might be true, this upcoming year for Faulk is going to be focused on improving himself as an all-around player. It's possible that Faulk could finish this next year as the team's #1 defenseman if he is good enough, but what can he do to give himself that title? In my opinion, it all starts with him improving his play at even strength and continuing to develop his solid two-way play which is leagues ahead of where many thought it would be.

Now, as far as projecting the upcoming season for Faulk in terms of goals and points goes, this s probably one of the toughest things to predict not only because he is a defenseman but also because he has played one year in the NHL and nothing more. Thus, it will be hard to base his projection off his past performance and instead, I'm going to base it largely off the type of minutes I expect him to play and what areas I think he will improve on this year. This will be a little different approach from my other projections but this is the kind of thing you have to do with a player like Faulk.

With the crippling injury to Joni Pitkanen along with the Tomas Kaberle experiment resulting in an utter failure, the Hurricanes needed some of their other defensemen to step up and fill in some of the holes. One of the players that managed to do that was 19-year-old rookie Justin Faulk but another player who really stepped up his game was Jay Harrison. During training camp last year, many thought Harrison could end up being either the team's 7th defenseman or a waiver wire victim, but he ended up making the team out of camp and was eventually relied on to play top four minutes and became a key part of the team's defense corps.

Harrison mentioned that he was working on his shot over the last off-season and the hard work seemed to pay off for him as this is what kept him on the team and opened up a lot of opportunities for him. Before last season, Harrison wasn't thought to be much more than a good, reliable third-pairing defenseman but the fact that he added some offense to his game helped him earn a leg-up on some other camp hopefuls and earn him a spot on the team along with some considerable time on the second powerplay unit. Harrison's new-found offense really showed last season as he led all Carolina defensemen in goals with 9 and finished second among defensemen in points with 23.

Those numbers aren't going to set the world on fire, but Harrison definitely turned in a nice season considering that he played more minutes than he ever has before and played a much bigger role than he ever did before in his career. The question now is what can he do to build on last year? Harrison is a late-bloomer as he didn't play his first NHL season until he was 28 and that was only two years ago, so it's very likely that what we're seeing now is the most Carolina will get out of Harrison for his career. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, though.

Outside of Tim Gleason, Harrison might be the team's sturdiest defensemen when it comes to playing in his own zone, so the team might rely on him as one of their tough-minute players and his chemistry with Justin Faulk could mean that he will continue to log a lot of big-minutes. Ideally, Harrison is a borderline 2nd/3rd pairing defenseman on most teams but he showed last season that he can be serviceable in a bigger role if needed, so that makes him nice to have around but it's still unclear what role the Canes will have him play next season.

We know that Pitkanen, Faulk and Gleason are going to be in the top-four but the player who finishes off that quartet is anyone's guess. Harrison might be the one to step into that role since he played most of last season there but that could easily change if Jamie McBain has a great season. My thought is that Kirk Muller will rotate the defense pairings a little bit and Harrison will probably get a long look in the top-four sometime during the early part of the season.

After the jump, we'll take a closer look at how he might perform in this role and what else coudl be in store for Harrison in the upcoming season (should there be one).

Much of the Hurricanes defense this season is going to rest on the health of Joni Pitkanen. The big Finn is usually one of the team's leaders in ice time and is the team's most skilled defensemen when it comes to play-making and handling the puck. Pitkanen's skillset along with the fact that he plays so many minutes, makes him a very important asset for the Hurricanes defense corps and they are going to need him to stay reasonably healthy this year if they want their defense to be in decent shape. Injuries have always been a problem for Pitkanen and it reached a new high last season as a concussion, knee surgery and various other injuries limited him to only 30 games. We already know that the NHL is going to cancel a good chunk of the season, so Pitkanen's health will be even more crucial for the Canes this year.

Most people think of Pitkanen as more of an offensive threat who does most of his damage on the powerplay and while that might be his strongest asset, Pitkanen is relied on to do much more than work the powerplay. He normally plays more minutes than any other Carolina blue-liner and he will probably see his defensive responsibility go up next year with the Hurricanes not having many bonafide shutdown defensemen who can play top-four minutes. Pitkanen has experience playing a tough-minute role and killing penalties, so I think he could be relied on to play tough minutes along with either Justin Faulk or Tim Gleason in the top-four.

Pitkanen's strong offensive game usually leads to him posting better underlying numbers than the rest of the defense corps, but I have a difficult time saying that will continue if he is moved to a tougher role. The move to tougher minutes will also have an impact on Pitkanen's goal & point total at even strength because if he is starting more shifts in his own end, it's going to be difficult for him to drive the play forward and get more scoring opportunities. That being said, I don't think the team will put too big of a workload on him because while the Canes do have a lot of puck-movers, Pitkanen is the best of all of them and utilizing him in a shutdown role is misusing him in a way.

We all know that Pitkanen is capable of putting up at least 40 points in a season and he has been able to do that three times in his eight years in the NHL. He would likely have more if he were able to stay healthy for an entire year but it is what it is. Pitkanen is getting close to 30, so there are bound to be some questions about how whether or not he can be as effective offensively as he used to be, especially after all of the injuries. Much like Eric Staal, one thing we do know is that Pitkanen will play top minutes on this team and will get his opportunities. His effectiveness will depend on how he holds up throughout the year and if he can continue to be as good as he was from 2008 to 2011. 

Defensemen are usually hard to project because their point totals at even strength tend to be very random, but we're going to give it our best shot with Pitkanen based on his underlying numbers in recent seasons.

This may sound like blasphemy to some people, but Chad LaRose was one of the Hurricanes better forwards last season. No, he doesn't have the best skillset, never puts up dazzling numbers and was probably over-slotting in the top-six but he did a lot of good things for this club that got overlooked. LaRose is never going to be known as a goal-scoring threat or a top forward but an area that he managed to excel in last season was being able to create a lot of offense and drive possession at even strength for the Canes. Oh, and he managed to be one of the few Carolina players who was able to do this while taking the majority of his even strength shifts in the defensive zone and be matched up against tough competition. On a team that was beaten so badly territorially at even strength, that says a lot.

Unfortunately, LaRose's hard work has never led to much success in terms of boxcar stats. He has a couple of 19 goal seasons under his belt but his career high in points is only 32, which really isn't a lot for someone who has spent time in the top-six. LaRose did miss 15 games last season and was on the receiving end of some bad puck luck (he had the 34th worst PDO in the NHL) so you could make the case for him having a better season if he was healthy and had a few bounces go his way. While that might be true, I still don't think LaRose's ceiling is that high. Injuries are one thing but LaRose has always had a low shooting percentage over his career and neither has his on-ice shooting percentage. A low shooting percentage in one season can be blamed on bad luck, but there comes a point to when you start to believe there is something more keeping a player back when it happens on a yearly basis.

Outside of Eric Staal and some of the teams other top forwards over the years, LaRose is usually among the Canes shot leaders but has struggled to score on a consistent basis and it wouldn't surprise me if this relates to him having somewhat of a limited skillset. We'll discuss this in more detail later, but I think most Canes fansd know what to expect from Mr. LaRose by now. He's the type of player who will work hard every shift, give you 12-19 goals in a season and play any role that the coach staff asks him to. Last season, he was utilized throughout the lineup and played on just about every line at least once. The Canes had a lot of forward depth issues and LaRose was able to help out by being somewhat useful in just about every role.

Now that the Canes project to have a much stronger top-six and forward corps in general, where does LaRose fit into the equation? His ability to drive possession and hold his ground against tough competition makes him a top candidate for the third line and with the lockout ruining training camp, he may have less competition for that spot whenever the season starts. A third line role is pretty much an ideal situation for a player like LaRose, but what kind of impact will it have on his numbers? We will take a closer look at that after the jump.

Back in February of 2009, Jim Rutherford made one of his better trades in recent memory when he acquired Jussi Jokinen from Tampa Bay in exchange for Wade Brookbank and Josef Melichar. Jokinen was having the worst season of NHL career during that time and had only 16 points in 46 games with the Bolts. In each of the three years before that, Jokinen was a 40+ point player and an ace performer in shootouts, who could possibly give the Hurricanes forward corps a significant boost heading toward the playoffs. Rutherford decided to take a low-risk gamble by acquiring a talented, but under-performing player for two guys who weren't in the NHL the next season and it's fair to say that this move has worked out for him.

Since the Canes acquired him, Jokinen went on to play a huge role in the Hurricanes playoff run in the year they acquired him, score 30 goals the next season and be a key player of their top-six. However, last season was seen as a bit of a disappointment for him by some fans. He scored only 12 goals, which is his lowest full-season total since arriving in Carolina and had only 26 points at even strength. Compare that Jokinen's scoring rates during his previous two years with the Canes and you'll notice a pretty big drop-off. He went from scoring at least 2 even strength points per 60 minutes to not even scoring at a top-six rate. That's quite a decline, but how much of it was on him?

While Jokinen is a legit top-six player, he may have deceived a lot of people into thinking that he is better than he actually is with his 30-goal campaign in 2009-10. I'm not saying that Jokinen doesn't have solid goal-scoring talent, but when a player whose previous career high was 17 goals scores 30 in a season, you start to raise some eyebrows on what led to him having such a good year. Call me crazy, but I'm willing to bet that his 18.7% shooting percentage at even strength and 20.5% shooting percentage on the powerplay had a role in it. There are some players who are able to sustain shooting percentages that are above average, but when over 18% of the total shots a player takes end up in the back of the net, it usually means that he benefitted from a lot of good luck and is prone to see his goal/point total come crashing back down to Earth the next year.

Jokinen's shooting percentage would indeed fall the next season and it continued to decline the year after that to the point where he shot at only 8.5% at even strength and 10.2% overall. Thus, simple regression resulted in Jokinen going from being a "30-goal scorer" to having only 7 even strength goals two years later. Is what Jokinen showed last season his true talent level, though?

The thing with Jokinen is that he has never been that much of a goal scorer and most of his points usually come from assists, so it wouldn't surprise me if he never scores more than 19 goals again. That being said, he was a victim of some poor shooting luck at even strength last season, so I think he could be due for a rebound there but it won't be anything extreme. There is also talk of Jokinen returning to the wing this year, which is probably the only way he stays in the top-six with both Staal brothers now centering the first and second lines respectfully.

I mentioned in Jiri Tlusty's projection that he and Jussi Jokinen could be battling it out for the left wing spot in the top-six but I think Jokinen will ultimately win the job and stay there for the majority of the season. Now, if he does stay in the top-six, will he be in for a better season or will his numbers continue to regress? We'll explore this after the jump.

Jiri Tlusty might be the most difficult forwards on the team to project. He had a breakout season last year and some may think that the sky is the limit for him, but there are a lot of factors that make the upcoming season very hard to predict for him. Tlusty's break-out season was the result of him receiving top-six minutes, most of which were spent playing on a line with Eric Staal, and some generous shooting luck to go along with it. This isn't suggesting that his breakout season was a fluke, but it does make you wonder how Tlusty will perform next season if he is bumped out of the top-six, which could happen this year.

On top of that, there isn't much that is known about Tlusty and what his "true talent" is. He has been in the league for five seasons, but last year was the only season where he played over 60 games. This was also the first season where he began to play significant ice-time instead of being used as a bottom-six plug as he often was in the past. Tlusty also played about 42% of his total career ice time in last season alone, so it's hard to get the full scope of what his true talent is going by what he has done so far because there is such little data to base this upon.

Tlusty's strong scoring numbers in the AHL (120 points in 130 games) have to give you some confidence as far as his top-six ability is concerned, but whether or not he will get the minutes to produce at a top-six level next year is a good question. This is why I could see Tlusty's numbers go either way next season. On one hand, he may bulid off last season and have close to a 40 point campaign if he stays in the top-six but he could also see no improvement in his boxcar numbers if he gets relegated to a third-line role for most of the year and plays fewer minutes. Tlusty hasn't done anything to "lose" his top-six spot but it's really hard to slot him in there over Jokinen at the moment and he may have to end up earning his minutes like he did last season.

There are no guarantees with this year's Canes squad and Tlusty's spot in the lineup is one of the many things that seems to be up in the air. Personally, I see no issue with him being on the third line with Jeremy Welsh & Chad LaRose, but things could end up being very different if the team wishes to keep Jussi Jokinen at center, effectively slotting Tlusty in the top-six with some of the best linemates he has ever played with. His numbers this year could go in either direction depending on how Kirk Muller wants to use him, so that's going to make this a very tough projection to nail down. 

Despite that, we are going to do our best to predict the upcoming season for Tlusty after the jump.

The Hurricanes are a team that has often been mentioned in trade rumors for the last few years and one of the most frequent names that often pops up on rumor sheets is their rugged forward Tuomo Ruutu. This reached an all-time high last season when the Hurricanes appeared to be sellers at the trade deadline and had to make a decision on what they wanted to do with Ruutu going forwarrd since his contract expired at the end of the season. Since it was a sellers market and Ruutu was having a good season, trading him would have made sense, but Jim Rutherford elected to re-sign the big Finn for four years instead.

This move was met with mixed reactions. On one hand, you had those who were glad that Rutherford decided to retain one of the team's best forwards at a reasonable term length. Ruutu had just turned 29 last February, so he has at least a few years left of good play left in him and shouldn't experience a huge decline until his new contract expires when he turns 33. This was also a way of Rutherford showing that he is willing to make an effort to retain his key players and not lose him for nothing through free agency. It wouldn't surprise me if he was still feeling the burn of letting Erik Cole walk only for him to have a career season in Montreal and didn't want to have another incident like that. 

On the flip-side, Ruutu isn't in the prime of his career anymore as most player's scoring numbers begin to tail off when they enter their 30's, and the Hurricanes may not get good value out of what they are paying Ruutu if his production takes a steady decline. Rutherford also paid a big price to keep Ruutu in Carolina as he will be paid $19 mil. over the four years of his contract, equating to a cap hit of $4.75 mil. per season. Under the previous salary cap, this isn't anything deterimental but it could end up looking bad if the cap goes down a significant amount. It's also worth mentioning that Ruutu hasn't been a dominant player at even strength in two years, which is a major concern when it comes to predicting his future success and whether or not he will be able to give the Canes good value for what they are paying him.

The emergence of Jeff Skinner and off-season additions of Jordan Staal and Alexander Semin will mean that there will be less pressure on Ruutu to be one of the offense's main catalysts, but the Hurricanes are still going to want him to produce at a top-six rate since he is capable of doing so. His 34 points in 72 games last season is a bit disappointing but he was on quite a tear from December until he got injured in mid-February, when his season was derailed a bit. The Hurricanes will need Ruutu to play more like he did before the injury if they want to get the most out of his contract, but they are also going to need for him to contribute in other areas, ones that won't show up on the scoresheet.

With the Hurricanes top-six undergoing a bit of a makeover this off-season, some players are going to have adjust to different roles and Ruutu could end up being one of them. What impact will this have on him and what kind of scoring production should we expect from Ruutu this season? Find out after the jump.