Per Hurricanes.NHL.com:

Jim Rutherford, President and General Manager of the National Hockey League’s Carolina Hurricanes, today announced that the team has signed defenseman Tim Gleason to a four-year contract extension. The deal will pay Gleason $3.5 million in 2012-13, $4.5 million in 2013-14 and 2014-15 and $3.5 million in 2015-16.

“We thank Tim for choosing to stay with the Hurricanes long term,” said Rutherford. “He is one of our core players, someone who brings character and leadership to our locker room, along with being a key piece on the ice. This is a very important signing for our team going forward.”

Gleason, 29, is in his eighth NHL season and sixth with the Hurricanes, and currently leads all Hurricanes defensemen in hits (87), plus/minus (+2) and total minutes played (1,063). He ranks second among Carolina blueliners in assists (13) and penalty minutes (44), and third in points (14), skating in all 51 games for the team this season.

Originally acquired from the Los Angeles Kings along with Eric Belanger in exchange for Oleg Tverdovsky and Jack Johnson, Gleason has totaled 86 points (13g, 73a) and 416 penalty minutes in 401 games with the Hurricanes. The Clawson, MI, native has led Carolina defensemen in hits each of the past four seasons (2007-08 to 2010-11), ranking fifth among NHL defensemen in hits last season. A first-round selection (23rd overall) of the Ottawa Senators in the 2001 NHL Entry Draft, Gleason (6’0”, 217 lbs.) played his 500th NHL game on Nov. 27 at Ottawa, and has totaled 15 goals, 99 assists (114 points) and 514 penalty minutes in 526 career NHL games with Los Angeles and Carolina.

Cam Ward’s blocker save is the last contact a Hurricane makes with the puck before Ilya Kovalchuk’s pass sails into his own net.

Cam Ward absolutely robs Keith Ballard with a glorious diving glove save late in the third.

Ottawa Senators coach Paul MacLean confirmed that Milan Michalek, who leads the League with 19 goals, is day-to-day after suffering a concussion following a collision with teammate Erik Karlsson during Tuesday’s game against the Buffalo Sabres. He won’t play tonight when the Senators host the Boston Bruins.

“Right now we have to follow the concussion protocol, so he’s day-to-day,” MacLean said. “It’s based on as long as he’s symptom-free, he can participate. He felt way better today, so we’ll see how it goes.”

The injury occurred with just over five minutes left in the game, when Michalek collided with teammate Erik Karlsson.

“I read the guy’s pass and stepped up and I think (Michalek) was coming full speed to backcheck,” Karlsson said after the game. “I was only looking for their guys and not ours and we collided pretty hard there. We were both going forward.”

With Michalek out, expect Bobby Butler to play in his spot alongside Jason Spezza. However, MacLean doesn’t think it will be too long that Michalek will be out.

“I don’t believe at this point that it’s going to ruin his year,” said MacLean. “It’s disappointing, but not devastating.”

For more on tonight’s game, check out the preview here.

Things have gone from bad to worse in a hurry for the slumping Carolina Hurricanes.

Leading scorer Jeff Skinner and key defenseman Joni Pitkanen are out indefinitely with concussions, team officials said Wednesday.

That marks the latest blow to a team that has lost 16 of 20, fired its coach, dumped one of its big offseason acquisitions and dropped to the bottom of the Eastern Conference.

New coach Kirk Muller, speaking roughly 45 minutes before the team announced Skinner’s diagnosis, promised the Hurricanes would be “extremely careful” in dealing with the injury to the NHL’s reigning rookie of the year.

“We’re not naïve on the situation as far as how important it is to get these guys healthy before they get back,” Muller said. “Whatever that time frame is, we’ve got to monitor it each day. But he’s not going to step back into the lineup until he’s ready to go for sure.”

Skinner, 19, leads the team with 12 goals and 24 points and last year became the first Hurricanes player to win the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie. He was hit at Edmonton on Dec. 7, then was scratched two nights later at Winnipeg with flu-like symptoms — the first game he missed in his brief NHL career.

Skinner then was held out of Tuesday night’s loss at Toronto after the ailment was recharacterized as an undisclosed injury, and general manager Jim Rutherford updated the status of Skinner and Pitkanen in a statement issued roughly an hour after the end of practice Wednesday afternoon.

“He’s pretty much been our best player all season,” forward Anthony Stewart said of Skinner. “It’s tough with him out, but … we want to see him back as soon as possible.”

The injuries to Skinner and Pitkanen — who leads the team’s defensemen with 12 points and nine assists — represent the latest things that have gone wrong during a miserable season that has already seen a coaching change and the trade of one of the players Carolina added during the offseason.

The Hurricanes fired Paul Maurice two weeks ago and brought in Muller, a respected 19-year NHL veteran and six-time All-Star who was only a few games into his head coaching career with Nashville’s AHL affiliate in Milwaukee. He wasn’t asked to blow up the depth chart or overload the players with new X-and-O schemes — but to get them to skate with confidence and accountability. Under Muller, they’re 1-4-2.

“We’ve kind of jumped right in, and I think it’s more like trial and error, as far as we kind of learn in the games rather than practices,” Muller said, pointing to an overtime loss at Toronto on Tuesday night as evidence of improvement. He called that loss “probably our best overall game, that we (had) the most overall consistently for 60 minutes. … I think they’re understanding the identity of what we’re looking for, and what we’re trying to preach here as a staff.”

Then, Carolina unloaded defenseman Tomas Kaberle — and his three-year, $12.75 million contract — to Montreal last week in a trade for 37-year-old defenseman Jaroslav Spacek, who’s in the final year of his contract. The Hurricanes signed Kaberle to the long-term deal in July, hoping a reunion with Maurice — his former coach in Toronto — would rejuvenate his career, but instead the Czech defenseman was a minus-12 with no goals and nine assists.

Still, the Hurricanes insist they’re seeing glimmers of hope that they can somehow claw out of the East’s cellar.

They entered Wednesday night one point behind the New York Islanders and three behind Southeast Division rival Tampa Bay, and play host to defending Western Conference champion Vancouver on Thursday night.

Rookie Justin Faulk, who was paired with Spacek against Toronto, says he’s already picked up some pointers from the veteran defenseman and praised him as an easy fit in the locker room. The effort has been there lately, even if the wins haven’t — and the players say that’s bound to change sometime.

“Obviously, we’re going through a tough stretch, a tough little bit with some trades and coaching changes and personnel,” defenseman Jamie McBain said. “It’s obviously something that’s a little bit of a mind game. But we feel pretty good about where we’re at. We’ve been playing some good hockey, and we haven’t been rewarded with bounces this year, it doesn’t seem like.

“Maybe our last 8-10 games, as far as playing the way we want to play, we feel pretty confident,” he added. “We’ve had a couple letdowns, maybe, in some thirds (periods) where we had the game in our hands and weren’t quite able to close it out. But we feel good — when we play our game, we feel we can play with anybody, and we’ve proven that on different nights.”

Per NHL.com:

The Carolina Hurricanes have traded defenseman Tomas Kaberle to the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for defenseman Jaroslav Spacek.

Hurricanes GM Jim Rutherford said last week that he was not happy with Kaberle’s play and if he continued down his current path he wouldn’t be with the club much longer. Rutherford found a partner in Canadiens GM Pierre Gauthier, who has acquired a player in Kaberle that has 9 assists and a minus-12 rating in 29 games.

In return, the Hurricanes are getting Spacek, who has 3 assists and a plus-2 rating in 12 games this season. Spacek, though, hasn’t played since Nov. 12 due to an upper-body injury, but he was cleared for contact earlier this week and was considered a possibility to play for the Habs Saturday afternoon at New Jersey.

After playing in Winnipeg on Friday, the Hurricanes don’t play again until Tuesday in Toronto.

The Hurricanes signed Kaberle over the summer and were so convinced he could help them that they immediately traded Joe Corvo to the Boston Bruins. Kaberle, who was coming off winning the Stanley Cup with the Bruins, was far from a hit in Carolina, leading Rutherford to go on XM Radio’s NHL Home Ice and blast the struggling defenseman.

“He came into camp and didn’t prepare himself properly,” Rutherford said. “He came in like the Boston Bruins did after winning the Stanley Cup and enjoyed his summer, and he hasn’t caught up. He got off to a slow start by his own doing and now he has to figure out a way to get out of it or he won’t be playing with the Hurricanes long.”

Kaberle, though, had 2 assists in each of his final two games with the Hurricanes, and helped new coach Kirk Muller pick up his first win Wednesday night in Edmonton.

Spacek has missed the last 12 games after suffering an upper-body injury in the second period of the Canadiens’ 3-2 shootout loss to Buffalo on Nov. 14. He also missed five games earlier in the season with an upper-body injury.

Per ESPN:

The last-place Carolina Hurricanes fired coach Paul Maurice for the second time in less than a decade Monday and replaced him with former All-Star Kirk Muller.

Muller begins his first NHL head coaching job with a slumping team that has made one playoff appearance since 2006 and has lost 10 of 13 games.

He was in his first season coaching the Nashville Predators‘ AHL affiliate in Milwaukee after spending five seasons on the Montreal Canadiens‘ staff. He played 19 seasons in the NHL, made six All-Star teams and led the Canadiens to their most recent Stanley Cup in 1993.

“It’s very simple: you’ve got to get guys to believe in the system,” Muller said. “You’ve got to get them to believe in being accountable for each other. And if you can come every night and you create that culture, and you give them something, a way to believe in how they play and why you’re going to win that night, I think that’s what players want.”

Carolina dropped to 8-13-4 following Sunday night’s 4-3 loss at Ottawa, its third in a row. The Hurricanes are 14th in the Eastern Conference — but only five points out of the No. 8 spot — and play Southeast Division leader Florida on Tuesday night to begin a three-game homestand.

“You certainly don’t give up on the season at this point in time, and as bad as we’ve been over the last five weeks or six weeks, we’re really not far out of being in the thick of things,” general manager Jim Rutherford said. “A new coach can’t come in and just put his new system in in a morning skate and all of a sudden make things better.

“We may win tomorrow night, we may not, but really what I want to see is on a consistent basis, we have that work ethic,” he added. “And when we get to that consistent basis, the wins will come and they will come in streaks.”

Rutherford said he began considering changing coaches roughly a month ago during the team’s slow start and reached his decision following the Hurricanes’ listless 4-0 loss at Montreal on Nov. 16.

Rutherford said he and Muller — whom he said was the top name on his short list — had been in contact for little over a week, and he discussed the job with Jeff Daniels, coach of the Hurricanes’ AHL team in Charlotte but ultimately preferred to go outside the organization.

Maurice became the second coach in his division to lose his job Monday. His firing was announced about 90 minutes after the Washington Capitals fired Bruce Boudreau and replaced him with Dale Hunter. That means every team in the division except Tampa Bay — which hired Guy Boucher in 2010 — has changed coaches since last spring.

Maurice’s assistants — Rod Brind’Amour, Dave Lewis and Tom Barrasso — were retained and will work for the 45-year-old Muller, a star center picked behind Mario Lemieux in the 1984 NHL draft who went on to score 30 or more goals five times and post seven 70-point seasons.

He has been asked to revive a Carolina team that ranks 28th in the league in goals allowed, giving up an average of 3.24, and has one of the worst power-play units in the NHL, scoring on just 12.2 percent of its chances with the man advantage.

“I’m just honest, straightforward,” Muller said. “I believe in accountability. I believe that it’s a tough league, you’ve got to work hard, and if everyone’s accountable to each other, everyone buys into a system, it’s amazing what you can accomplish.”

There may be more changes ahead for the Hurricanes. Rutherford wants to add a top-six or top-nine forward and could try to deal a defenseman.

“We’re a long ways away from being the team we need to be,” Rutherford said.

Maurice, who helped shepherd the club’s move from Hartford to North Carolina in the late 1990s, returned to the Hurricanes in December 2008 when Peter Laviolette was fired. He guided their run to the 2009 Eastern Conference final, the club’s only postseason berth since they won the Cup in 2006.

Before that, they hadn’t reached the playoffs since Maurice led them to the 2002 Stanley Cup final — the highlight of his first stint with the team. He was first fired by Carolina in 2003-04 following an 8-14-8-2 start.

Maurice received a three-year contract in 2009 that ran through this season. His combined record with the team was 384-391-145, and his career record of 460-457-167 includes two years with Toronto sandwiched by his stints with Carolina.

Maurice did not immediately return a text message left Monday by The Associated Press seeking comment.

Maurice holds the Hurricanes’ career coaching record with 25 playoff victories. The 2009-10 team set a club record with a 14-game winless streak, last season’s group finished one victory shy of making the postseason when it lost the finale on home ice and this season’s team has shown virtually no consistency.

“When you put a group of guys together at the start of each season, you watch to see the team come together and to jell,” Rutherford said.

“Some teams do, and some teams don’t. And at this point in time, this team hasn’t — for whatever reason. … From a team-concept point of view, even in years we haven’t made the playoffs … we’ve been very fortunate with real character guys that wanted to win at all costs. And at this point in time, this group of guys don’t. Haven’t.

“So that’s what we’ll see here. Can Kirk pull these guys together and get them to step their game up? And if he can, that’s good for this group.”

Former figure skater Jeff Skinner displays grace and grit in the same play with a center ice spin-o-rama and second chance finish.

Cam Ward makes an unbelievable glove save on Tim Connolly to keep Carolina up by a deuce.