Happy Monday morning to everyone out there.  The Hurricanes are off the ice today for the Kids 'N Community Golf Tournament, so there probably won't be too much to report until tomorrow morning. 

Paul Branecky

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Hopefully, anyway.  As Erik Johnson of the St. Louis Blues proved to us a few weeks ago, the golf course can be a dangerous place.  Let somebody else do the driving and hang on tight, boys.

Speaking of the injury bug, I added a new injury report feature to the site this morning.  It won't contain any news that I won't post or update you with in this blog, but it might serve you well as a quick reference from time to time.  If anybody needs a page like that, it's us, unfortunately.

That chart looks bad, doesn't it?  Hopefully it's not as bad as it looks, though.  From everything we've heard, everyone on that list except Justin Williams has a good chance of being ready for opening night.  Also, extra caution is obviously used in the preseason.  Guys like Matt Cullen, Ray Whitney and Tim Gleason aren't in danger of losing their roster spots anytime soon, so the Canes are much better off letting them take their time.

As for some other features on the site, I've updated the depth chart since yesterday's cuts.  Among the changes, I moved Dennis Seidenberg into the top six defensemen based on his very good preseason.  Haven't seen enough of Anton Babchuk yet, so he's out for the moment, and I give Frank Kaberle the edge over Josef Melichar for now based on recent exhibition games.

Making a debut appearance in the forward ranks - Zach Boychuk!  I'm having a tough time deciding if he has a realistic chance to stick with the team to start the year.  On one hand he's looked great in practices, but on the other hand he hasn't taken any NHL-level contact yet.  That's quite important for a smaller player.  I could see the Canes signing him and trying him out for the first 10 games of the season, and then possibly sending him back to his junior team in Lethbridge.  Any more games than that and it would count as a year against his NHL contract.

Keep in mind that I'm not intentionally slighting Dan LaCouture or Jeff O"Neill - I have to pull players from the NHL's database to add to the chart, and those guys aren't available since they aren't under contract.

Also, I wanted to remind everyone about our Kaiton's Corner section and podcast.  We have every Kaiton's Corner segment (Chuck answers your submitted questions on-air) and interview available on demand.  Even if you don't subscribe, his memories of the Spectrum episode is worth listening to just for Associate Coach Kevin McCarthy's awesome story.

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