A New Trend on Tobacco Road

Carolina Hurricane General Manager Jim Rutherford could look out at the RBC Center on Jan. 28 and see the monster he seemed to have unleashed.

On the ice, the Hurricanes were whipping the Atlanta Thrashers, 4-1, taking another step in becoming only the sixth NHL team to win 13 games in one month -- the Hurricanes would pick that up three days later in Montreal.

In the seats, a franchise-record 18,930 fans, the team’s eighth sellout this season on a day when the Duke and North Carolina basketball teams had home games.

From the rafters, Ron Francis’ No. 10, retired that night in a tribute to a player who did two tours with the team -- one when it was in Hartford and one after it moved to Raleigh -- during a career that is expected to land him in the Hall of Fame.

A first-place team? Passionate fans? Blue-blood hockey lineage? All of Toronto must have been seeing Hurricane red.

Before the season, the safe bet was on the Hurricanes going about as far as one could spit tobacco. One Chicago writer was blunt: “The Eastern Conference has a lot of bad teams and Carolina may be the worst.”

This, though, has become the Frankenstein of the NHL, and the guy wearing the smock is Rutherford, who pieced together a team that was ignored coming out of training camp and is now tops in the NHL with 38 victories and 80 points.

“We certainly felt that we had a chance to be a playoff team,” Rutherford said. “But to suggest that we would have 80 points right now, no, I don’t think anyone would have suggested that.”

No one did. Now, the reevaluations must begin, now that the Hurricanes are an NHL-best 22-5-3 since Dec. 1.

The success cannot be put off on the Southeast Division’s being weak, since the Tampa Bay Lightning is looking more and more like the defending Stanley Cup champion. Besides, the Hurricanes have a 10-3-1 record against the Atlantic Division and are 10-2-1 against the Northeast Division, including two victories over the Ottawa Senators.

“We have been making changes for the last couple of years and added a lot of new faces,” Rutherford said. “When you make that many changes, it is not always perceived outside [the organization] how significantly that improved the team.”

The Hurricanes were written off as flukes after losing to the Detroit Red Wings in the 2002 Stanley Cup finals and finishing last the next season. Out of that finish, though, came Eric Staal, the second overall pick in the 2003 draft.

Staal has developed into Eric the Red Light, with 34 goals and 71 points. Erik Cole already has career highs in goals (24) and points (51). Rod Brind’Amour (48 points) is providing the type of season he had with the Philadelphia Flyers.

Rutherford seized opportunities after that. The Mighty Ducks had Jean-Sebastien Giguere and Ilya Bryzgalov, leaving 31-year-old Martin Gerber as odd-goalie-out after the 2003-04 season. The Flyers needed a defenseman for a Stanley Cup run in 2003-04 and swapped Danny Markov for Justin Williams.

Gerber, whose two quality seasons with the Ducks prepared him to be a No. 1 goaltender, has a 2.31 goals-against average in winning 10 of his last 11 starts. Williams is the team’s second-leading scorer.

All the free-agent signings that few took note of -- Matt Cullen, Oleg Tverdovsky, Frantisek Kaberle and Cory Stillman -- have been productive players. Even now, Rutherford is proactive, acquiring the much-sought-after Doug Weight from St. Louis last week. Weight, in his second game with the team, scored the winner in a shootout victory Sunday over Boston.

“I was hoping this would be a good season, but with [28] games left I can’t even believe where we are at right now,” Cullen said.

That has brought out more fans in an area where college basketball reigns. The Hurricanes are 23-4-1 at the RBC Center, the NHL’s best home record, and they have sold an average of 15,011 tickets per game this season. The team averaged a little more than 12,000 tickets sold in 2003-04.

Whether this is a budding fan base or merely drive-by front-runners remains to be seen. But the Hurricanes had only three sellouts in 2003-04 and now have three in the last three weeks, plus three other crowds of more than 16,000 in that time.

“We have a lot of hard-working guys on this team,” said Cullen, who has a career-high 20 goals. “This is a blue-collar area. The fans appreciate that.”

Restraint of Trade(s)

Trade talk will eat up a portion of the general manager meetings, which run today through Thursday in Las Vegas. But this season has produced fewer deals since the season began.

“It is a little different year for making deals because of the salary cap,” Rutherford said. “You have teams that went out and signed a bunch of players last summer that put them near the cap. That left them little room to work with.”

There are believed to be 10 teams that are at or near the $39-million ceiling. Some deals, such as the Mighty Ducks’ moving Sergei Fedorov’s albatross-like contract, seemed to have as much to do with clearing cap room as they did with improving the team.

The other factor may be the parity, King General Manager Dave Taylor said. With 25 of the 30 teams either holding a playoff position or within eight points of one with the March 9 trade deadline looming, “There are fewer sellers,” Taylor said.

“We moved the deadline from 25 days until the end of the season to 40 days,” Taylor said. “In past years, people knew where they stood. Now, you win four in a row and you’re in the hunt.”

Cease in the Crease

Goaltender interference will probably be the hot-button topic at the meetings this week.

“There is no question that with the open rules there is more traffic in front of the net and more bumping of goalies,” Taylor said. “It is a concern of a lot of teams right now.”

General managers also will discuss topics ranging from video replay to a new uniform design.