PREVIEW: Blue Jackets look to keep rolling vs. Caps

There was a noticeable pep in the step of the Blue Jackets players and coaches as they took the ice Wednesday for a relatively short, peppy practice at Nationwide Arena.

Scoring nine goals, the second most in franchise history, in a game will do that. Columbus had one of its few stress-free victories Tuesday in Buffalo, building a 3-1 lead after one period and a 7-2 advantage through two on the way to a 9-4 victory over the Sabres.

“Everyone feels good, and the mood is a lot lighter,” head coach Pascal Vincent said. “For practice, you can sense it, right? Winning does a lot of things, but winning the right way is huge.”

Vincent was a happy camper with the way his team played, but as the coach said, it wasn’t as much the margin of victory as the way the Blue Jackets played. Of course, odds are you’ll do a lot of good things when you score nine goals, but the head coach said the success on the scoreboard came from playing the right way.

“The reason we scored nine goals is we played properly from start to finish,” Vincent said. “Even the first shift we got scored against, but the intentions were right. I thought we played really well the whole game in creating those habits, learning from the failures, learning from the success. It's a different mindset when you have some success, but we played the right way.

“We're a fast team, but we can get faster, and that was their challenge yesterday. I said, ‘I want us to get faster,’ and they did. Their tracking, the effort was there, the intensity was there, so we can do it.”

The next step becomes doing it consistently, starting tonight as the Washington Capitals come to town. The Blue Jackets have found the offense – the team’s 18 goals over the last three games ties a franchise record first set Feb. 17-22, 2022, and their 76 5-on-5 tallies are second in the league – but being able to play in all situations on a night-in, night-out basis is the next challenge to tackle for such a young team.

“How do we learn from this? How do we grow from this?” Vincent said. “It comes from, ‘How did you prepare? How did you motivate yourself that day? What was your language like, just food for thoughts in general?’

"But you learn from the mistakes, you learn from the good moments, and we move forward.”

Know The Foe: Washington Capitals

Head coach: Spencer Carbery (First season)

Team stats: Goals per game: 2.39 (30th) | Scoring defense: 2.79 (10th) | PP: 9.8 percent (32nd) | PK: 81.5 percent (12th)

The narrative: The 2018 Stanley Cup champs still boast some familiar names – Alex Ovechkin, Tom Wilson, Evgeny Kuznetsov, John Carlson – but this group has been rebuilt as a defense-first squad while trying to stay in contention in the final years of Ovechkin’s career. The organization’s eight-year playoff streak came to a close last year but the Caps have been able to gut out enough results to find themselves in the mix so far this year; how far this squad might go could depend on how such youngsters as Connor McMichael, Rasmus Sandin, Hendrix Lapierre and Aliaksei Protas develop.

Team leaders: The Caps come to town as the only team in the NHL without a 20-point scorer, as Washington has been unable to generate much both at 5-on-5 and the power play this season. Much of the consternation has surrounded Ovechkin, whose 5-13-18 line leaves him without a goal since Nov. 18 a 14-game streak, as the league’s No. 2 all-time leading goal scorer (827 tallies) chases Wayne Gretzky’s mark of 894.

Dylan Strome is the team leader in goals this year with 13 among his 19 points, while Wilson has a 10-8-18 line. Carlson has 16 points, 15 of them assists, to lead the defensemen. The Blue Jackets appear likely to see goalie Charlie Lindgren (6-3-2, 2.45 GAA, .925 save percentage), who has already beaten them twice this year, in net Thursday.

What's new: Injuries have reared their ugly head this season, as franchise legend Nicklas Backstrom left the team earlier this year, Max Pacioretty continues rehab from an Achilles’ injury while looking to make his season debut, while T.J. Oshie and Sonny Milano are currently on injured reserve. After last night’s home OT win vs. the New York Islanders, the Caps are have points in six of the last seven (4-1-2).

Trending: This contest actually concludes the three-game season series between the teams, with Washington winning one-goal games in our nation’s capital Nov. 4 (2-1) and Nov. 18 (4-3). Columbus is 2-7-1 in the last 10.

Former CBJ: Milano has a 4-4-8 line in 23 games this season but went on IR earlier this month with an upper-body injury.

Roster Report

Projected Lineup (subject to change)

Johnny Gaudreau – Adam Fantilli – Justin Danforth
Yegor Chinakhov – Dmitri Voronkov – Kirill Marchenko
Kent Johnson – Cole Sillinger – Emil Bemstrom
Brendan Gaunce – Sean Kuraly – Alexandre Texier
Zach Werenski – David Jiricek
Ivan Provorov – Andrew Peeke
Jake Bean – Erik Gudbranson
Elvis Merzlikins
Spencer Martin

Scratches: Mathieu Olivier, Nick Blankenburg, Daniil Tarasov

Injured reserve: Patrik Laine (fractured clavicle, out six weeks as of Dec. 15); Boone Jenner (fractured jaw, out six weeks as of Dec. 9); Adam Boqvist (shoulder strain, out approximately four weeks as of Dec. 6); Damon Severson (oblique, out approximately six weeks as of Nov. 19); Jack Roslovic (fractured ankle, out four to six weeks as of Nov. 13)

Roster Report: Merzlikins goes back in after two straight starts for Tarasov, while Jiricek returns to the lineup in place of Blankenburg. 

3 Stats to Know

• Kirill Marchenko notched the second natural hat trick of the season for the Blue Jackets on Tuesday in Buffalo, and his second and third goals came 18 seconds apart, a new CBJ record for the fastest two goals by one player. Marchenko now has six goals in the last seven games.
• Countryman Yegor Chinakhov’s four-game goal streak came to a close in Buffalo, but he had two assists to run his point streak to five contests (5-4-9).
• Milestone watch: Johnny Gaudreau is six points from 100 for his Blue Jackets career (27-67-94, 113 GP). … Spencer Martin is one game from 50 for his NHL career (16-24-6, 49 GP). … Zach Werenski is 10 assists from 200 for his NHL career (80-190-270, 447 GP).

Who’s Hot

With five goals and four assists in the last nine games, Adam Fantilli is third among NHL rookies with nine goals and second with 19 points. … Dmitri Voronkov also is tied for seventh among NHL rookies in goals (six) and tied for sixth in points (16). … Johnny Gaudreau notched his first three-point game of the season with a 1-2-3 line in Buffalo. … Since being placed on a line together, Kirill Marchenko, Yegor Chinkahov and Voronkov have combined for 12 goals and 21 points in nine games. … Kent Johnson has a 3-5-8 line and is plus-4 in the last six games. … With 24 assists, Zach Werenski is tied for fifth among NHL defensemen in helpers. … The team’s rookie stat line of 16-27-43 is tied for first in the NHL in goals and second in points. … The Blue Jackets have power-play goals in three straight games and are 7 for 20 (35.0 percent) in the month of December.

This Day in CBJ History

Dec. 21, 2005: David Vyborny misses his first game since Oct. 17, 2002, snapping his franchise-record streak of 194 consecutive games played. He suffered a rib injury vs. Detroit on Dec. 20.