NHL Carolina

In Carolina yesterday, Hurricanes GM Jim Rutherford delivered his year-end state of the team speech to the local media, and it's probably safe to say the performance came a couple of weeks early as far as Rutherford was concerned.

Coming a little less than a week after a loss in the regular season finale against Florida that effectively opened the door to Washington stealing the Southeast Division title, it's understandable that Rutherford was a tad cranky -- especially as GM of a team that missed the playoffs for a second year in a row after winning a Stanley Cup in 2006.

Given that Rutherford telegraphed his intention to shake up his roster at the trade deadline in a radio interview back in January, Joe Ovies of 850 AM The Buzz made sure to ask Rutherford about the status of head coach Peter Laviolette:

[L]et me just say I don't think Peter Laviolette is going to get the axe. However, when I gave Rutherford an opportunity to clear up his status, he continued to keep it vague and offered up verbal clues as to why he wants to remove himself from the end of the season before having a serious talk. Bottom line for Rutherford, "everyone in our business is under review."

Or as Dan Patrick used to say, he's listed day to day, but aren't we all?

The NHL didn't really get all that much of a bump from Willa Ford's participation on the hit ABC show "Dancing with the Stars" because she wasn't yet married to Mike Modano -- allowing her to raise her profile via a constant state of flirtation with her dance partner during the show. Hockey might see a higher profile in the series' sixth season, as Kristi Yamaguchi competes on the show while her husband, Carolina defenseman Brett Hedican, competes in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. (Assuming that...nah, the Hurricanes will make the cut, right?) Yamaguchi has been playing up her husband's career in interviews, telling ABC News that she put her figure skating and celebrity career on hold for four years for "[being] a mom, hanging out, being a hockey wife."

In a move that will certainly diminish her chances of entering the Dallas Mavericks' locker room, Yamaguchi is also blogging for OK! Magazine during her stint on "Dancing With the Stars"; her latest post might be of interest to Hedican's teammates:

I just want to give some shout-outs to my family now – my husband, who's been amazing. He's still in his hockey season so it's a little sad we're going to be separated, but he's been so supportive of me. He'd come to watch us practice during the past month and would tell me, "Oh, you've got to teach me all these dance moves once all this is done!" I hope we stay in it long enough so he can come see me compete.

I'm sure Rod Brind'Amour and Scott Walker are just dying to see The Brett Hedican Mambo. The last season of "Dancing With the Stars" ran from Sept. 24 through Nov. 27, so no matter how deep the Hurricanes go in the postseason the show will still be on the air. Seeing as how Yamaguchi is the early favorite to win this season, I wonder if there's a friendly wager on who lasts longer in their respective competitions. I'm also pondering this: If she "plans to move back to the Bay Area this year, so her kids can grow up with their cousins," as Yamaguchi told ABC News, how will that affect the future for 36-year-old Hedican, who is a UFA after this season?

After his trade to the Carolina Hurricanes, Joe Corvo sinned against two fan bases when he 'fessed up to the fact that he had requested a trade out of Ottawa for an American destination. Senators general manager (and not yet coach) Bryan Murray slammed Corvo and Raleigh when he said the defenseman would excel there because "they don't talk (hockey) very much" in Carolina: "He'll probably thrive in that environment and I like guys who thrive under pressure." But Hurricanes fans like Cason Blog were didn't exactly muster up sympathy for Corvo's plight: "Despite what Murray and Corvo said, I don't think it's an American players are fish out of water in Canada thing. I think it's a Joe Corvo has a fragile psyche thing."

Fragile psyche was replaced with vengeful spirit on Sunday afternoon, as Corvo scored his first NHL hat-trick in Carolina's 5-1 win over his old Senators mates. "If I got to write a storybook ending, this would be it," he said after the game, but the chapters leading up to that ending are just as interesting: Carolina is now 12-3-1 since acquiring Corvo and Patrick Eaves for Cory Stillman and Mike Commodore on Feb. 11. Corvo has energized the Carolina power play with eight points and four goals -- pretty ballsy wearing Paul Coffey's old number, isn't it? -- and has 15 points in 15 games with the Hurricanes. That's enough to quiet the Carolina skeptics ... and infuriate Senators fans. "Joe Corvo got a hat trick. That is not a typo," was today's game summary from Scarlett Ice.

Southeast Division bashers take note: Both Florida and Washington are two points away from joining Carolina in the postseason as of Sunday night.

There are a few absolute no-nos in the world of hockey fighting: kicking, biting, spitting, and head-butting. Given the danger and possibility of serious injury involved with head-butting, it's a pretty obvious case for any player to be suspended if he does something like that.

As per the evidence above, Carolina's Scott Walker decided to give Ottawa's Mike Fisher a little head-on-head action, and was quickly tossed from the game for doing so.

"It was cheap. It caught me off guard," Fisher said. "I'm sure he will get some games for it. He ran the goalie. He made no attempt to get away, and I just wanted to let him know he can't do that."

As if Fisher is one to talk about running goaltenders *ahem*.

Anyway, I would guess that Walker, since he didn't deliver an actually bloody injury to Fisher, will get two games, maximum. While the NHL *should* send a message to the guy for a very dangerous action, we all know the NHL doesn't actually have the nuts to suspend somebody unless the media is all over the story. Does anyone think Walker will get off scot-free? I guess we shouldn't be shocked if he does ...

* Even The Acid Queen, one of blogdom's biggest Hurricanes fans, is pissed off at her boy for his stupidity. Read her rant here.

The NHL has recently started pushing the promotional notion that hockey players are "just like you and me," which is a sales pitch that's long overdue. For a lot of us, our connection with the game was created through its most blue-collar players: the brawlers, the fourth-line grunts, the physical defenders at whom you never have to scream "take the body" because they always do. Players whose dedication and fortitude eclipse their talent level. As I've often said: I'd pay to watch Dale Hunter play 100 times before I'd pay to watch Mike Gartner.

So for every Sidney Crosby there's a Kevin Nastiuk, back-up goaltender for the ECHL's Las Vegas Wranglers. He's a 21-year-old prospect with some upside, under contract with the Carolina Hurricanes, who picked him in the fourth round (126th overall) in the 2003 draft. The brilliantly nicknamed "Nasty" was ECHL goalie of the month in February and won two games for the Wranglers in the postseason; Las Vegas is currently down 3-1 to Idaho in the Kelly Cup playoffs.

What makes a guy like Kevin Nastiuk endearing are stories like the one spun by Rob Miech in today's Las Vegas Sun. Nastiuk logged about 6,400 miles in his 2005 Toyota 4Runner over the course of a few weeks this season, as he bounced from Edmonton to New York to Florida to Salt Lake City and finally to Las Vegas. Just another minor leaguer, traveling from city to city through promotions, demotions and unforeseen trades - like the one that sent him from the Florida Everblades to the Las Vegas Wranglers:

"I tried to get here as soon as possible," he says. "I was tired of driving a lot of hours. I shouldn't have done it by myself, but there was nothing else to do."

He met the team in Salt Lake City, where the Wranglers were playing the Grizzlies. Gulutzan told him to take his time covering the home stretch to Las Vegas.

"There were times I had to wake myself up, crush a few Red Bulls and coffee," Nastiuk says. "I'd stay awake listening to music or calling people I hadn't talked to in a long time."

When the Wranglers season ends, Nastiuk will cap his 8,000-mile circuit with a 1,490-mile trip to Edmonton.

Just a reminder, as we watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs, of how far some of these players have come.