Canes start homestand

Canes play the C[r]apitals tonight. This game is the beginning of a four-game homestand.

I have a hunch that if the Canes do good in this homestand, they'll be carrying that momentum to the top of the division.
I have a hunch that if the Canes split the homestand 2-2, they are probably a .500 team for quite a while.
I have a hunch that if the Canes lose all of these games, they'll be petitioning the NHL to play all of their games on the road. (That would be a 2-6-2 record in front of their own fans - not good.)

Of course, these are just a hunches based on no facts whatsoever.

To be completely honest, I can see both ends of this spectrum - the Canes gloriously riding to victory - or the uncomfortable feeling of losing four in a row against teams that you could have stolen points in the standings from.
My optimistic projection (realize that it is a projection and not a prediction, as we all know what happened when I "predicted" the Montreal-Carolina series last season... last time I'll ever predict anything.) is 4-0 or 3-0-1. My realistic projection is 3-1 or 2-1-1.
Let's not go into my pessimistic projection...

In other news: CarolinaHurricanes.com has an article on both Letowski and Stillman and their respective recoveries.