from Luke DeCock of the News & Observer,

Four points back in the division with three games in hand, the Hurricanes are far from out of it, mathematically speaking. With only one win in their past 10 games, they might as well be. A despondent Rutherford admitted as much Wednesday.

“Based on the position we’ve put ourselves in here over the past two or three weeks, I wasn’t going to trade younger players or high draft picks for somebody who may or may not make a difference in the last month,” Rutherford said. “There weren’t any deals that made sense for us.”

Once again the Hurricanes are trapped in the middle, the worst place to be. If you’re not going to make the playoffs, it’s better miss by a lot and grab a top player in the draft. Instead, the Hurricanes are trapped in a perpetual cycle of mediocrity, never quite good enough to compete, never quite bad enough to rebuild.

There’s almost nothing wrong with the Hurricanes now that couldn’t have been foreseen before the season. The concerns about scoring depth and defense were all there in January, and when first Cam Ward and then Justin Faulk went down, the foundation the Hurricanes’ early season success had been built upon crumbled, exposing all the flaws Ward and Faulk had helped paper over.

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