If there's a remedy for this kind of hangover, Carolina coach Paul Maurice hasn't found it yet.

In last season's playoffs, his Hurricanes did everything right. They hit. They rolled four lines. They played solid team D. And they upset the Devils, Canadiens and Leafs to get to the Stanley Cup Finals. So what if they ended up as Red Wings roadkill? The Canes turned a hockey wasteland into a hotbed, and they had fun doing it. Maybe a little too much.

"Once you start thinking you're great and you don't put in the work to be great, you're doomed," says G Kevin Weekes.

Doomed as in groping in the depths of the Eastern Conference, where Carolina hovers only a few points above the cash-strapped Sabres and the talent-strapped Thrashers. The Canes went winless in eight straight in January. "There's no easy way out," says captain Ron Francis. "You can't wish for it to turn around. You have to make it happen. You have to get sick of losing."

Evidently, they're still not. The Canes collectively are a minus-152. Only four players have more than seven goals. They've given up the first goal in 21 of their last 26 games and have scored more than two goals only 20 times in their first 53.

GM Jim Rutherford failed to replace the clutch scoring of free agent LW Martin Gelinas, who currently has 14 goals for the Flames, and traded D Marek Malik to Vancouver. When D's Bret Hedican and David Tanabe got hurt in January, Maurice had little to fall back on. If Weekes and cohort Arturs Irbe were showing more of last season's brilliance, or if the Canes were excelling in team defense as they did in the playoffs, or if their forwards could put the puck in the net, the weakness of the backline wouldn't be quite so noticeable. Instead, it's a Hurricane Alert.

Center Rod Brind'Amour, who's one of the team's top scorers (14 goals, 23 assists), a key faceoff man (second on the team at 56.5%) and a PK wiz, could miss three months with a torn tendon in his right hand -- and there's no one on the horizon to fill his skates.

Yet Captain Francis maintains a bold front: "We believe we're making the playoffs."

Maybe. But this hangover is turning out to be a bear to shake.

This article appears in the February 17 issue of ESPN The Magazine.