Led by third-year standout Jeff Skinner, the Carolina Hurricanes could be ready for a breakthrough season. (Getty Images)

Preview: Team-by-team | Picks | 50 things to watch | Top 50 players | All-NHL

The Carolina Hurricanes haven't qualified for the postseason since 2009, when they advanced all the way to the Eastern Conference final. Don't be surprised if that drought comes to an end this season thanks to a strong core that was already in place and a couple of big moves over the summer.

Not only could the Hurricanes make their first playoff appearance in four years, they might even be capable of making some noise in the Eastern Conference (this was actually one of my bold predictions for the 2013 season) if things break right for them.

And we have the numbers to prove it.

(Or at least to try to predict it.)

Heading into this past offseason, the Hurricanes already had a core to build around with Eric Staal, Jeff Skinner, young defensemen Jamie McBain and Justin Faulk and veteran goaltender Cam Ward, who already has a Stanley Cup and a Conn Smythe Trophy on his resume. They also had a strong finish to the 2011-12 regular season under new coach Kirk Muller, earning at least a point in 37 of their final 57 games (by comparison, they earned a point in just 12 of their first 25 under Paul Maurice).  

It's a team that looked to be headed in the right direction and had a good foundation to start with. But general manager Jim Rutherford wanted to make a splash in the offseason and add impact players. He did just that by acquiring Jordan Staal from the Pittsburgh Penguins in a draft-day blockbuster and then signing talented winger Alexander Semin away from division-rival Washington.

These are big-time moves and make the Hurricanes a formidable threat in the Southeast Division, which should once again be wide open without a clear-cut favorite as every team has its own set of flaws and shortcomings. That's a nice way of saying the division will probably stink again.

Perhaps the biggest impact that Staal and Semin will have on the roster is improving the Hurricanes' ability to possess the puck and tilt the ice in their favor. Look at it this way: hockey is a game of puck control and possession. The team that has the puck the most is going to create the most chances, score the most goals and ultimately win the most games. It's very simple.

You can get a feeling for how well a team possesses the puck and how often they have it in the other team's end of the ice by simply looking at how many shots they attempt as opposed to how many they allow. BehindTheNet.ca, one of the leading statistical analysis sites for hockey on the Internet, tracks a statistic called Fenwick Percentage. That simply looks at what percentage of shots are taken by a particular team (For example: If 100 shots are taken in a game, and 52 belong to Team A, that means Team A has a Fenwick Percentage of 52 percent).

Of the top 15 teams in Fenwick Percentage last season, 13 qualified for the playoffs. That means only three of the bottom 15 teams made it. The Stanley Cup champion Los Angeles Kings were fourth, which means their postseason success shouldn't have been much of a surprise even though they were the West's No. 8 seed (it's the biggest reason why I picked them in every single round of the playoffs last year).

For the most part, this was a rather large weakness for the Hurricanes for much of the 2011-12 season (they were 21st in Fenwick). It's also an area in which Staal and Semin excel. And not only do they excel on their own, their teammates improve when they're on the ice with them. Adding them to a roster that already includes strong possession players like Skinner, Eric Staal and the underrated Chad LaRose gives the Hurricanes a strong group of players that should be able to drive play up the ice and keep the pressure off Ward so the game isn't constantly being played directly in front of him.

The beauty of Jordan Staal's game is that he's also able to do it while playing against some of the toughest competition in the NHL. He's already one of the top two-way centers in the league and has proven that he's capable of doing the heavy lifting against opponents' top forwards, which can open up his teammates on other lines to get softer matchups they can exploit.

Of the 14 teams that missed the playoffs last season, the Minnesota Wild seem to be the one that's getting the most attention as a potential breakthrough team in 2013 thanks to the additions of top free agents Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, as well as the potential that rookies Mikael Granlund and Jason Zucker bring. The Hurricanes are the team that's more likely to have that breakthrough season. They're not only starting from a better place than Minnesota was (I like Staal, Skinner, McBain, Faulk, and Ward better than Minnesota's five best players last season), they're also in a weaker conference and don't have a team like Vancouver to compete against in their own division.

I'm not saying Carolina is ready to win the Stanley Cup this season, but the Hurricanes made the right moves over the summer that addressed the right areas. It's going to set them up to open a few eyes around the league.

For more hockey news, rumors and analysis, follow @EyeOnHockey and @agretz on Twitter and like us on Facebook.