Carolina Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos made an appearance in Raleigh yesterday that I think will not be forgotten by anyone around here anytime soon. Mr. Karmanos was in town to speak to the Greater Raleigh Sports Council's quarterly meeting at the RBC Center. Mr. Karmanos apparently feels it was time to blame former head coach Peter Laviolette for his team's troubles. Luke DeCock at newsobserver.com stated in an article today, "During a speech at the RBC Center, Karmanos ripped Laviolette, saying the coach was basically a passenger when the Canes won the Stanley Cup and painting him as impetuous and stubborn. It was a show of gross disrespect to a man who had a heck of a lot to do with winning the Cup, pulling a team of disparate parts together into a family, even if only for one glorious moment."

After the meeting, the press spoke with Mr. Karmanos to get his take on the team and the firing of former coach Peter Laviolette. His statements about his former coach surprised most people I know and angered many. A reporter asked Karmanos, "At the end you said, something about Peter you just don't like his style or the way he handled things". At that time, Mr. Karmanos stated the following:

"We had the perfect storm in the year we won the Stanley Cup. We played this all over the ice kind of style of hockey and it took about three quarters of the season for people to catch on. If everybody remembers, last quarter of the season even the Stanley Cup period we have a pretty tough go of it. We had a goalie, who had stood on his head, Martin Gerber. He had a career season with us and kept us in games. But pretty soon as the other coaches got used to the new rules, and that they found out ways of defensing us, we didn't change much. The other thing was Peter would make what I think too quick evaluations of players in that from time to time we had players that Peter when they first come into our organization well this guy is a fourth line center. The one that comes to mind is Belanger, who now is a key part of the Minnesota team and you know that happened with quite a few players and you just can't afford to lose those kind of assets. As far as the kind of person he was, I thought Peter was very, very nice person. I liked him a lot. I just felt we needed a change. We needed to win this year."

When a reporter asked Karmanos if he said Laviolette's "public persona was different from his private persona". Karmanos responded, "Yeah, that's what I said in what I thought was a closed meeting." Karmanos later stated, "I think we got, I think we have a playoff team. That's one reason why Peter is gone." When the reporter asked, "So in other words, you don't feel they would have made the playoffs had he stayed?" Karmanos responded, "Well, I don't think, I don't think we had it together enough."

I understand that Peter Karmanos is the owner of the Carolina Hurricanes franchise. I understand he can publically say what he wants about his team and coaching staff. That said, I think it was atrocious, bad, and pretty pathetic to attack the coach that won you the Stanley Cup in public. Peter Laviolette gets you a national championship and you want to trash him in a public forum where he has no chance to respond. That is about as lowlife and classless as anything I have seen in sports around here.

As far as some of the statements Mr. Karmanos made, I would like to offer the following. Karmanos stated Martin Gerber won a lot of games for this team during the 2005-2006 season, which no one can deny. Even though he faltered in the playoffs, his performance during the regular season got this team to the playoffs and a chance to win the Cup. He also stated that the team struggled the last quarter of the season and through the Stanley Cup playoffs. If you remember correctly, Marty Gerber struggled after the All-Star break and that is when the team began to struggle. That said, even after the All-Star break, the team came back with a record of 13-8-3-1. That's better than anything our current team has put up this season. As far as the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the team had a record of 16-6-3. That's not bad when you consider you were playing the top performing clubs in the league at that time. You were not playing the 25th through 30th placed teams for an easy win.

As far as the Eric Belanger situation, when Eric was traded from the Los Angeles Kings, he never appeared to be part of the team on the ice and he definitely did not appear to be happy to be here. It was clear back then that he was not happy about being traded from L.A., where he had played his entire NHL career. In the 56 games Eric played for the Canes, he scored 8 goals on 100 shots. When he was traded to the Nashville Predators, who immediately traded him to the Atlanta Thrashers, he scored 9 goals on 49 shots for a shot percentage of 18.4 % compared to the 8.0% he had with Carolina. I guess it's the coach's fault he missed 92 out of 100 shots.

On the surface, changing coaches has not solved all the problems that Mr. Karmanos may think it has. Look at the numbers. The Canes were 12-11-1-1 in 25 games under Peter Laviolette where they won 48% of their games. They are currently 8-8-1-2 in 19 games under current Coach Paul Maurice with a win percentage of 42%. Even though some aspects of the Hurricane's game may have improved, the win percentage is not one of them. That is not a putdown of Coach Maurice. Instead, that is the case of a team that is not winning and not playing together to the level everyone knows they can.

Look at the Toronto game last night. The Canes hang on in the first period, outshoot the Leafs 12-5, and survive only giving up one power play goal. Carolina fails to show up in the second period and embarrasses themselves by giving up three goals and being outshot 13-5. The Hurricanes' first shot on goal was at 9:23 in the second period. Come on...you play half the period with no shots on goal. That's just plain bad. The only redemption they had in the second was the Matt Cullen goal with 1:29 left in the period. The Canes came out in the third period, again outshot the Leafs by a margin of 15-6 and scored three goals in 7:19. That doesn't include one where the referee had not blown his whistle but was intending to after the puck was already across the line, so that goal was disallowed. The bottom line is that you can't come out and play one period and win the game. That is something this team seems to not understand no matter who the coach may be. The fans are glad Mr. Karmanos was in the RBC Center last night to see that fiasco and let's see if he thinks this is a playoff team today. We all think not.

This team is one of the biggest underachieving groups I currently know of in professional sports. You have goaltenders that have given up bad goals at bad times that have lost games for this team. That is not to say they have not also won games for this team when they probably should have lost. When you have a defensive corps that lets opposing players skate in on your goaltender and score unopposed, I think that clearly shows a major flaw. Then you have a large group of offensive players that consistently fail to score. Common sense tells you that no goals equals no wins, and when you only score one or two a game, it's clear that will not get you a lot of wins in this league. The Canes got outhit 27-20 last night in their own building and it didn't even appear to be that close. Add that to the fact that Carolina is currently near the bottom of the NHL on the penalty kill (26th in the league with a 77.5% success rate) and only 22nd (16% success rate) in the league on the power play. That along with the other factors listed above, you can see why this team is on the road to missing the playoffs again.

What is it going to take to fix this team? That's the million question right now. Mr. Karmanos would do better to focus his energy and resources on the current situation with his team that has lost four games in a row than in bashing his former coach that won him the Stanley Cup. Enough said...

Be sure to read Luke's article at: http://www.newsobserver.com/775/story/1369490.html, and watch the WRAL Video Interview link: http://www.wralsportsfan.com/hurricanes/video/4322623/.