LeafsParadise.com

Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it. We talk an awful lot about the relative strength of divisions in the NHL. The Atlantic, for example, is loaded with some of the best sides in the league. The Northeast has good top teams and utter dross at the bottom. The Pacific has some squads capable of serious success. The Central could be the second-toughest top-to-bottom division. The Northwest has Vancouver and a bunch of minnows. The Southeast, though? Well, who knows? If nothing else, it's been a summer of change for the Southeast Division, perhaps moreso than any other in the league. There have been somewhat stunning significant player movements, coaching changes, additions, and subtractions throughout the division, and now it's more or less impossible to tell who is going to do what, and finish where. Obviously the big headline grabber in all this is Carolina, which finished dead last in the division and 12 points back of the winners. Jim Rutherford made it clear that he was done casting about in the bottom of the conference, and spent huge money and assets to both add and extend Jordan Staal, then added Alex Semin from a division rival for good measure. It's probably a lot to ask of those two players to add the equivalent of six wins over the course of next season, but what makes Carolina a contender here is what everyone else can do as the season progresses.