How big of a threat are the Carolina Hurricanes?

Nothing is nailed down quite yet, but it’s really starting to look like the Washington Capitals will be the No. 2 seed in the East. That means they will likely draw Carolina, currently quite likely to be the first Wild Card team in the conference.

Things being what they are with Penguins, Islanders, and Hurricanes, however, it’s worth noting that basically any of the three could finish in any order and not have it be too much of a surprise. This comes with the caveat that Carolina obviously started the year horribly, both in terms of scoring and stopping the puck.

As recently as Dec. 29, which isn’t so long ago really, the Hurricanes were two games below .500 — 15-17-5 — in almost half the season. They were on pace for 77 or 78 points and another playoff miss. They were the best team in the league in terms of process at 5-on-5. Tops in their share of attempts, unblocked attempts, shots on goal, scoring chances, and high-danger scoring chances. But despite that, they were fourth-bottom in goal share because they had the worst 5-on-5 shooting percentage and 12th-worst save percentages in the league, 5.3 and .915, respectively. When your PDO is under 97, you’re not gonna win much no matter how good you are.

So it’s been a long road back to the playoff picture, for sure, and one of the stronger second halfs we’ve seen in quite a while from a not-actually-eliminated-yet team everyone wrote off, largely because the process stayed the same and the results got better. The question for the Hurricanes’ eventual playoff opponent is how much of a threat they really pose.

From Dec. 30 to now, the Hurricanes have the third-best winning percentage in the league, only behind two pretty good teams in Tampa and Boston. Some of their underlying stats have taken a step back, some of which we can chalk up to score effects, but they’re basically all still elite, usually fifth or sixth instead of first. And it’s not like they’re PDOing their brains out to make up for lost time. They’re fifth in the league behind other talented, good teams in Tampa, St. Louis, Winnipeg, and Calgary.

You don’t have to look much further than goaltending to find the main reason for the Canes’ turnaround.

Curtis McElhinney, who’s always been a fine backup or 1b guy, had played 13 of Carolina’s 37 games through Dec. 29, with a .922 save percentage and nearly half the team’s wins. And, hey, sometimes you’re gonna lose when playing well, which I think he did two or three times, and sometimes you’re gonna have a stinker, which he did probably the same number of times as he was good in a loss.

Once McElhinney was healthy and very obviously the starter, no coincidence here, the team played great in front of him and he delivered behind them, going 10-2 through March 1 with a .924 save percentage. And that’s despite missing four games with another lower-body injury around the All-Star break on top of the time he missed earlier in the season.

More recently, there’s been a step back, as he’s 2-2-1 with an .878 save percentage in his last five appearances. But those losses? In overtime to Boston, and in regulation to Winnipeg and Tampa. Hardly bad teams to lose to, but worth considering since playoff-quality opponents are what they’re going to get once they get to, y’know, the playoffs.

It’s also worth noting that Petr Mrazek has been the hot hand of late anyway, going 8-2-0 with a .940 dating back to February, though his most recent loss was at Washington — the team’s likely first-round opponent.

Obviously the offense has come around as well, thanks in no small part to the addition of Nino Niederreiter who gave them an extra weapon up front, and younger players like Andrei Svechnikov taking a step in the second half.

But I keep coming back to the fact that they’re likely to play the Caps. Even if you’re a good team, and the Hurricanes definitely are, sometimes you’re going to lose to them because they’re also good. But Carolina is 0-2-1 against them this year, outscored 12-7, with five of their goals coming in a 6-5 shootout loss.

On the other hand, even against just playoff teams in the second half, their record is outstanding: 11-5-2 with a plus-8 goal difference and a plus-41 shot advantage in all situations. And that solid goal difference is including a brutal 8-1 loss to Winnipeg.

So yes, they’ve struggled against the Caps this year and it might just be that Washington has their number. But two of those meetings were in the first half, and one of them was a Scott Darling start (the one where they gave up five, naturally). What’s interesting is that those games have been more or less evenly played, and there’s another one tonight.

If they do indeed get the Caps in the first round, then, the question becomes whether Washington has what it takes to win seven or eight (depending on tonight’s outcome) out of 11 matchups against a Carolina squad that’s been pretty good for most of the season. It would even be hard to beat a bad team that often.

And at this point, everyone can agree that the Hurricanes are basically the opposite of a bad team.

Ryan Lambert is a Yahoo! Sports hockey columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

More NHL coverage from Yahoo Sports