The Carolina Hurricanes may have forward Alexander Semin back in the lineup Tuesday night for the Pittsburgh Penguins, Canes coach Kirk Muller said.

Semin missed the past two games -- losses to the New York Rangers and Boston Bruins -- with an undisclosed upper-body injury.

After Tuesday’s loss, the easy decision would have been to swap struggling defenseman Bobby Sanguinetti out of the lineup for Jamie McBain, a healthy scratch in the Hurricanes’ first two games. No one would have raised an eyebrow.

Instead, veteran Joe Corvo was a healthy scratch Thursday against the Sabres and Sanguinetti stayed in. It was a curious, but thoughtful, decision on Muller’s part, sending a message of accountability to the veterans while bolstering Sanguinetti’s wounded confidence.

McBain played well. Sanguinetti played well. And the Hurricanes produced their best defensive performance of the season in the 6-3 win over Buffalo.

Lost amid the talk about Eric Staal's run of points and Cam Ward's saves and the Canes' resurgence under Kirk Muller has been some players more quietly putting together solid seasons.

Tim Brent, to name one.

The forward, signed to a two-year free-agent contract in July, has 12 goals and 24 points -- both career highs -- in 74 games. Used mostly as the Canes' fourth-line center, he also has been shifted to other lines at times under Muller while getting significant power-play time at the point.

"You know how I coach, if someone's not going (in a game) someone will move up, and he's been up at right wing, at center," Muller said today. "He's always ready to play. He's quarterbacked our power play. Because of that he's stayed in the lineup and he's been an important part of some games for us this year."

A month into Kirk Muller’s tenure as coach of the Carolina Hurricanes, his players have reached the point where they’re no longer trying to grasp the changes Muller has made. Those have been internalized now. The hesitation on the ice is gone.

“You certainly feel like you know what you’re doing now,” Sutter said. “The first three or four games, there were a lot of gray areas. We were kind of hesitant and stuff like that. Now we’re kind of settled into how we want to play and what we’re supposed to do. We’re a little more comfortable around here and guys are starting to find it a little easier. It takes time.”

In any language, Kirk Muller knew to stay away. Asked about the Francophone Furor in Montreal since the Canadiens fired French-speaking head coach Jacques Martin and appointed English-speaking Randy Cunneyworth their interim coach in his place, Muller spoke delicately.

“I look at it more like, my glass is half full,” Muller said. “Nashville gave me an opportunity to be a head coach in the minors and Carolina gave me this opportunity here. That’s really all I base my things on. I’m loving where I am, I love my situation and I hope (Cunneyworth) does well.”

My column for tomorrow's paper is about the changes Kirk Muller has made to the power play, and how they're starting to show results, but the comparison between what he's doing here and what he did in Montreal last season bears some further examination.

Montreal's efficiency jumped four percentage points in the final 35 regular-season and playoff games, and P.K. Subban scored seven of his 11 power-play goals over that span. Over the past four games, Carolina is converting at a 24.0 percent clip, up from 12.2 percent under Paul Maurice.

Muller has given new roles to Justin Faulk and Tim Brent on the first unit, and he's starting to see results.

While the Hurricanes acknowledged the bad news about Jeff Skinner and Joni Pitkanen on Wednesday -- both are out indefinitely with what have finally been confirmed are concussions -- Jay Harrison couldn’t have been happier to be back on the ice.

He has missed 10 games and three weeks -- the entire Kirk Muller Era -- with an “upper body” injury that has now been revealed as a concussion of his own. While the team muddled its way across Canada, Harrison was at home, recovering. Wednesday, he was cleared to practice with the team, one of 10 skaters to take part in a small-scale practice.

“You spend as much time with these guys as you do with your family,” Harrison said. “I definitely missed them, and I missed it, for sure.”

Canes forward Jeff Skinner and defenseman Joni Pitkanen have been diagnosed with concussions and will be sidelined indefinitely, general manager Jim Rutherford said today.

Skinner, the team's leading scorer, was evaluated Wednesday by Dr. Sandeep Gavankar at Carolina Family Practice and Sports Medicine in Cary. Skinner, 19, did not play in the Canes' last two games, against the Winnipeg Jets and Toronto Maple Leafs.

"This is a big step back and you hate it for the players," Rutherford said. "And especially with a young player such as Jeff, at this point in his career. He's a player who plays so hard and loves the game so much."

When the time came for Guy Carbonneau to fill out his coaching staff in the summer of 2006, when he was named head coach in Montreal not long after the Hurricanes eliminated the Canadiens in the first round of the playoffs, he started with veteran Montreal assistant Doug Jarvis. That was an easy hire.

For his other assistant, he turned to a former NHL teammate whose only coaching experience was at Queens University in his hometown of Kingston, Ontario -- not exactly the upper echelon of the hockey world.

“I wanted somebody who played in the league,” Carbonneau said Tuesday afternoon. “Someone in the right frame of mind, someone who was real. … I kind of had other candidates, but the one thing that I liked about Kirky was his passion for the game. I knew he had that in him. He fit the mold.”

Kirky, of course, is new Hurricanes head coach Kirk Muller, who won a Stanley Cup with Carbonneau in Montreal in 1993 and back went to the finals with him in Dallas in 2000. It was Carbonneau’s first head-coaching job, but he had no qualms about hiring an equally inexperienced assistant, because he believed that strongly in Muller.

A key member of the Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup team in 2006 and the 2009 conference finalists, Ray Whitney remains fond of this area and this franchise even after leaving as a free agent to join the Phoenix Coyotes in the summer of 2010. He watched with particular interest when Kirk Muller was hired to replace Paul Maurice on Monday, because there may be few people in the game of hockey Whitney knows as well.

Whitney played with Muller for the Florida Panthers for parts of three seasons, and the two became close friends, even taking their wives to the Caribbean together during one Olympic break, and still talk every few weeks. I caught up with Whitney late last night to talk about the Canes’ new coach.