For the first two months of this season, Boone Jenner and Zach Werenski had a routine they’d follow.
Each home game, the two residents of New Albany would ride to Nationwide Arena together. No matter whether it was home or away, they’d grab a football about 90 minutes before the game and toss it around for five or 10 minutes as part of their warmup process.
Now, with the news that Jenner is out approximately six weeks for a fractured jaw suffered last Friday, Werenski admits it's a bit weird that he doesn’t have the CBJ captain there in the same way.
“We had this routine we started this year, and it’s been a lot of fun doing that with him,” Werenski said. “Gamedays are going to be different for me now.”
That will be an adjustment for Werenski, but things will change a lot more for someone like Pascal Vincent. The first-year Blue Jackets head coach, like his predecessors, has come to rely on Jenner in all situations. Jenner’s 19:18 of average tice time per game leads Blue Jackets forwards, and he’s an integral part of the team’s power-play and penalty-kill units.
From a production standpoint, Jenner was among the league’s top scorers this season at the time of his injury with a team-best 13 goals, and his faceoff win percentage of 55.9 is in the top 20 in the league. Simply put, with everything Jenner does, there’s no one player who can step in and fill his shoes.
“He’s such a big piece, and we know he’s a big piece,” Vincent said. “We realize it even more when he’s not around. It changes everything – the way we run the bench, the rotation of the players, special teams. It’s on the bench itself, in between shifts, in the room. It just reinforces his value, but at the same time, I truly believe that regardless of who is wearing the jersey, there is a way to put yourself in a position to win.”
The Blue Jackets have tried several different players in different situations down the middle in the two games since Jenner’s injury, including veterans Justin Danforth and Sean Kuraly as well as youngsters Adam Fantilli, Dmitri Voronkov and Cole Sillinger. Voronkov and Fantilli have gained the lion’s share of the power-play time, while Danforth, Sillinger and Kuraly have been key cogs in the PK unit.
Fantilli’s ice time of 19:29 on Thursday night in Toronto was the most of his rookie season, as was Sillinger’s 16:50, while Voronkov’s 15:12 was his fourth-highest mark. Both Fantilli and Voronkov won 50 percent of their draws against the Maple Leafs, and Vincent said the young centers – Voronkov is 23 but in his first NHL season, while Sillinger is 20 and Fantilli is 19 – will have more opportunity with Jenner out of the lineup.
“We might have to expose them a little bit more and see how they respond,” Vincent said. “You can see it’s quite obvious (Fantilli has) been sheltered … but he’s been responding well to more and more, so with Boone out, that might be something we will do.”
The on-ice component is just one piece of the puzzle, though. Off the ice and on the bench, Jenner’s impact can’t be overstated as the leader of the team, as well as the franchise’s all-time leader in games played. On a team with multiple young players trying to find their way, his ability to set an example has been pointed to as a key piece of what the Jackets are trying to build.
Kuraly refers to Jenner as the “heartbeat of the team,” while Werenski has high praise for the way Jenner carries himself each and every day.
“Obviously fans don’t get the behind the scenes look at what goes on on a day-to-day basis in the room, practice days, gamedays, but he’s the guy everyone looks at,” Werenski said. “He’s the guy that shows up, puts the work in, is prepared and is on time. He says the right things. He leads by example. No one can really fill those shoes and the void we have in our room right now, but it’s definitely different without him.”
Bringing Along the Youngsters
The refrain is there, and it makes a lot of sense.
Play the kids.
With the Blue Jackets winning just 10 of their first 31 games and sitting at the bottom of the Eastern Conference in points percentage, that’s been a prevailing thought among CBJ fans on social media. With the playoffs looking unlikely, the fans want to see the Adam Fantillis, Kent Johnsons and David Jiriceks of the world unleashed.
And don’t get me wrong – this is a chance for those young players, the future of the franchise, to grow, and Vincent understands it. He's repeatedly said since taking over that he views those players as key pieces of what the Blue Jackets are trying to build, and he expects them to be excellent NHL players as they continue to grow.
But he’s also the man in charge of a lot of their development, and as a coach who has spend a lot of time leading junior and AHL teams – development leagues, essentially – he also doesn’t want to throw the young players to the wolves, either. Getting these players to the top of their craft usually isn’t a linear journey but one filled with ups and downs, great successes and growing pains.
In other words, the kids are playing and will play more as they grow. But there is also a balance that the coach wants to strike considering Fantilli, Jiricek and Sillinger are three of the 20 youngest players in the league.
“You want to build positive experience in their game,” Vincent said. “Experience can be a negative experience or it can be a positive experience. Experience is not only positive. You can be doing the wrong things over and over and over, losing habits, and then you have experience, but as a loser. So we’re trying to build those young players up with accountability, winning habits, in order to do that.
“When it comes to managing ice time, it’s trying to shelter them a little bit. If I put the wrong guy against the wrong player and that’s over five, 10, 15 games, he’s not successful. If he’s not successful, he’s failing, he’s failing, he’s failing. Now we’re creating doubt, we’re creating lack of confidence, we’re creating a bunch of negative things that are not helping the player.”
Much of the discussion on social media has centered on Fantilli, especially after he played a season-low 10:11 last week vs. Los Angeles. Vincent noted that the number was low in that game partly because of matchups and partly because of the lack of CBJ power-play time in the game. Fantilli also had just come off of a game in which he’d skated 17:22 at Boston, one of his highest totals of his season.
In all, after Thursday’s career-best ice time, Fantilli’s average mark of 15:18 is tied for sixth among rookie forwards in the NHL, and let’s also remember he’s a 19-year-old playing center and earning power-play time at the highest level. For his age, he’s in a pretty good spot, and more is likely be coming in the wake of the Jenner injury.
And, as Vincent says, ice time isn’t the only component to this. It’s shepherding the young players through the roller coaster of emotions, grind of travel and everything else that comes with being in the NHL at their age.
“In order to build those guys up, we have to put them in winning positions as much as we can,” he said. “It’s not about points at this point in their career. It’s about the right habits. The points will come. They’re so talented. We know they’re going to be leading our team at some point, but how do we build them up so they’re not just good hockey players in the NHL, they’re the right players for the Blue Jackets so we can make the playoffs and contend for the Stanley Cup? That’s the whole process.”
Recchi Gets Caught
Blue Jackets assistant coach Mark Recchi is a Hall of Famer, not to mention 13th all-time in points in NHL history.
Well, tied for 13th, and likely soon to be 14th.
Sidney Crosby caught Recchi on Wednesday night with his 1,533rd point, and the Pittsburgh star could move ahead as soon as tomorrow night in Toronto. It’s a testament to both the greatness of Crosby – who needed 400 fewer games to get there – as well as Recchi, who was a consistent scorer for more than two decades of NHL hockey.
Next up, Alexander Ovechkin has 1,501 points and is next in line to catch Recchi. And then ... there’s no one.
Well, Evgeni Malkin has 1,253 points and Patrick Kane 1,239, but they won’t get to Recchi’s total anytime soon. After that, you might have to go all the way down to Connor McDavid, who has 890 points in 594 games and still has much of his prime to go, to find someone who has a strong case that they’ll reach the 1,500-point mark.
It’s just an interesting thing to think about. When you look at it, the Blue Jackets have a pretty unique player on this coaching staff.
