Jim Rutherford has had a busy offseason in Carolina.(Getty Images It's not exactly a secret to say that the Southeast Division was pretty bad last season.Perhaps even terrible, at least as far as NHL standards go.How bad was it? Well, consider that every team finished the regular season with a negative goal-differential, while the five teams as a group were outscored by 129 goals. Just to put that into perspective, the second-worst division, the Northwest, was "only" outscored by 61 goals as a group.The race for the top spot was pretty tight all year with any of the five teams having a legitimate shot to take it well into the season. Not because they were all great teams, or even good ones, but because none of DeAndre Carter Jersey them were good enough to run away with it. The team that surprisingly won the division, the Florida , finished the season 14th in the NHL in points and allowed 24 more goals than they scored, an unheard of number for a division champion.Will it be more of the same in 2012-13? Or will another surprise team emerge from the pile of mediocrity and take what should once again be a wide open division? Two teams in the division made what should be considerable improvements to their rosters this summer. Take the Tampa Bay , for example. Armed with one of the best offenses in the NHL (and the best goal-scorer in ) the Lightning's season was sabotaged by a lack of depth on defense and some of the worst goaltending Andre Roberts Jersey in the league. General manager Steve Yzerman addre sed both areas this summer. First, he added goalie -- who almost has to be an automatic improvement over Dwayne Roloson and as soon as he puts on a uniform -- from . He then addre sed the defense by adding and in free agency.While those moves should certainly improve the Lightning, no team in the division made more potential impact moves this summer than the Carolina .General manager Jim Rutherford made it known from the start of the offseason that he was looking to make some big additions to his roster, and he wasted no time making it happen. On draft night he swung one of the biggest trades of the offseason when he acquired , one of the top two-way centers in the NHL, from the Pittsburgh in exchange for , Brian Dumoulin, and the No. 8 overall pick in the draft (which Pittsburgh used to select defenseman Derrick Pouliot).After a brief flirtation in the trade talks, Rutherford stayed true to his word and was willing to take on unrestricted free agent on a short-term contract, signing him to a one year, $7 million contract last week. It's a move that resulted in some extreme reactions in both directions, ranging from what a steal it could be to what on earth the Hurricanes were thinking bringing in a guy like Semin.(I fall on the great signing side -- a lot of money, sure, but as a one-year contract there's not a ton of risk involved.) What makes the signing even bigger for Carolina is that it also weakens one of its top competitors within the division (the ). There's no doubt that Semin has his share of critics (especially in Washington) and has some flaws to his game, but he's still a big-time talent that's capable of impacting the game in a lot of ways. The Capitals were a better team with him.When speaking to Bob Wage of Canes Country following the signing, Rutherford had some interesting comments regarding Semin's game, the proce s that went into signing him, and some of the criticisms that are often lobbed in his direction regarding his defensive play and his ability to play in big moments.From :"The stats we look at provide much more detail," said Rutherford. "Jason Karmanos looks at this and the stats show how a player performs under certain circumstances. If he can perform under pre sure, at the end of the game, with the score tied, and against the best competition. The results of our analysis
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