March 9, 2010

Regrouped Hurricanes storming back into chase

By Wes Goldstein | CBSSports.com Staff Writer

Call it a tale of two seasons, albeit one with the final chapter still to be written.

For the Carolina Hurricanes, the ending has the potential to be as remarkable as it would be unlikely, with last spring's Eastern Conference finalists now in the process of making a desperate, if daunting late push to overcome a disastrous start and repeat a scenario they created a season ago.

Young Brandon Sutter has helped spark the 'Canes down the stretch. (US Presswire)

"Obviously it's a cliché, but you still have to take it one game at a time," captain Eric Staal said. "We've been playing very well lately and with a lot of confidence, so you never know what could happen."

This season would be a good example of that.

The Hurricanes opened their schedule expecting, or at least hoping, to build on a great second half run that lifted them into the playoffs and left them as one of the final four teams last season. In part, the plan was to give several of the aging veterans remaining from their 2006 Stanley Cup team a last kick at the can, but those dreams quickly turned into a nightmare. Carolina was hit hard by key injuries, including extended ones to Staal and franchise goalie Cam Ward only a few days apart, and ended up buried in the standings within weeks of the first puck being dropped.

"You don't want to use injuries as an excuse, but the reality is that we just had too many NHL players out of the lineup," coach Paul Maurice said. "That said, we weren't playing the way we needed to play to win.

"At the end of last season we were winning an awful lot of one-goal games by being smart. But for whatever reason, we started this one playing a high-risk game from our end, giving up way too much offense and as a result, not generating enough as a team and causing ourselves even more problems."

Big ones actually. The offense was almost non-existent and Ward was shaky as Carolina opened the season by losing 16 of the first 18 games including 14 in a row, a level of futility that had the Hurricanes dead last and 15 points out of a playoff spot by Christmas. With the handwriting clearly on the wall, general manager Jim Rutherford started shifting his focus to the future, making it known that he would be a seller leading up to the trade deadline while opening up roster spots for young players to show what they could do.

Rutherford was true to his word, moving out veterans like Niclas Wallin, Matt Cullen, Aaron Ward, Joe Corvo, Scott Walker, Stephane Yelle and Andrew Alberts mainly for draft picks and prospects by the time the cutoff arrived. As a result, Carolina now has 11 picks in this June's draft, including three in the second round and two in the third. And it shaved some $2 million of its payroll, a critical accomplishment for a small-market franchise that has struggled at the box office this season.

"That's understandable because our team didn't play well for a few months and times are tough, so we didn't draw as much as we would have liked," Rutherford said. "From a business point of view, we felt the need to cut our losses while still keeping an eye on the future, and in that respect, we did what we wanted to do."

And Rutherford managed to keep what was widely considered his best trade asset -- high-scoring veteran forward Ray Whitney. But his most important move seems to have been made long before he started shipping away players. On Jan. 20, the general manager named Staal to replace veteran Rod Brind'Amour as captain, a change that was surprising because of its timing, but one that had an immediate impact.

Staal had a hat trick in his first game wearing the "C," while the Hurricanes have gone 13-4 since then, including eight wins in their last nine games. They have outscored opponents 57-33 and posted some of the league's best special-teams numbers in that span. Equally important, Carolina has also lowered the average age of its roster by more than two years to 28.05 over the last couple of months. Young players like Brandon Sutter and Zach Boychuk who have been given added ice time have provided the kind of energy that has helped fuel a turnaround after it seemed like the season was over.

"Some people might think the pressure came off at midseason, but to me the difference was have having enough players coming into the lineup with a completely different kind of pressure," Maurice said. "They don't feel responsible for what happened in the first few months of the season, they're here working hard, trying to make a name for themselves and to stay in the NHL. It creates a lot of positive energy."

That's what the Hurricanes hope to ride as far as they can down the stretch. Carolina is still without Ward, who went down for a second time just before the Olympic break and is listed as day to day, but in the meantime, veteran journeyman Manny Legace and rookie Justin Peters have been carrying the load and keeping the Hurricanes faint hopes alive.

"Obviously we have a big hill to climb, but we'd like to make this playoff race a little more interesting," Rutherford said.