There’s no getting around it – the Blue Jackets might have played their worst game of the season Tuesday night in Nationwide Arena.
There are going to be games in a season when a team just doesn’t have it, and that was true of the 5-3 loss to Philadelphia in front of a Nationwide Arena crowd that had largely filed out by the time the Blue Jackets scored twice in the final 10 minutes to make the score seem closer than the balance of play.
For whatever reason – including potentially the fact it was the first home game after a five-city, eight-day road trip – the Blue Jackets admittedly couldn’t find their legs.
“We just started slow and never really found ourselves,” Zach Werenski said in the locker room postgame. “It’s tough to come out like that after a good win in Winnipeg (on Sunday). It is what it is. ... You have to work for it. I just didn’t think we worked for it tonight. Most of the time, if you play a team like that and you don’t really work for it, you’re not going to get much and that’s gonna be the result. We got what we deserved, I guess.”
For Dean Evason, the frustration came in part from how the Blue Jackets responded to whatever ailed them. The head coach said Wednesday that there are ways to make the most of a game in which you don’t have your best stuff, but he didn’t see his team adapt as the game got away from them.
“We talked to the guys this morning that we compounded it last night by making the game difficult,” Evason said. “When you don’t have your best stuff physically – which we didn’t, we didn’t have the jump – we compounded that by playing slow, playing east-west, throwing pucks back instead of going north. If we did that, we wouldn’t have got caught from behind, we wouldn’t have turned pucks over. It’s a learning process for us.”
Evason and his staff went over video and met with the team Wednesday morning before a 35-minute practice designed to get the team puck touches and get the legs moving. With all the travel across Western Canada last week and the return trip Sunday night from Winnipeg, the Blue Jackets hadn’t had a full team practice since Monday in Calgary, and Evason thought it was good to get back to basics.
“We wanted to get on the ice today and have a quick spin, just get our legs going,” Evason said. “We hadn’t practiced in a while. You play a lot of hockey games, you don’t really practice. You don’t touch the puck a lot in a game. It’s nice to carry the puck through the neutral zone or snap a bunch of passes or shoot the puck in the net, feel good, and for goaltenders to stop the puck.
“It was a good practice. It started a little bit slow today because players were probably thinking just like you – ‘What’s gonna happen?’ – but it’s a learning experience. We worked. We weren’t out there very long, but hopefully it sets us up for tomorrow.”
The Blue Jackets also made a notable roster move Wednesday, calling up goaltender Jet Greaves from AHL Cleveland. The league’s goalie of the month in November, Greaves has posted an 8-4-2 record this year with a 3.21 GAA and .902 save percentage for the first-place Monsters, and Greaves has made 10 NHL appearances the past two years with the Blue Jackets.
Evason said Greaves will play tonight vs. Washington and has earned the opportunity presented to him. For the rest of the squad, it will be about getting back to their game against the Capitals.
“We have to move on from (Tuesday) and just be better on Thursday vs. the Caps,” Werenski said. “Just move forward and try to learn from it.”
Know The Foe: Washington Capitals
Head coach: Spencer Carbery (Second season)
Team stats: Goals per game: 4.04 (1st) | Scoring defense: 2.74 (7th) | PP: 21.2 percent (16th) | PK: 83.7 percent (4th)
The narrative: Washington hasn't won a playoff series since capturing the 2018 Stanley Cup – hey, nothing wrong with that; flags fly forever – but they have made the postseason five of the six seasons since winning it all. The team addressed some needs on an aging roster this offseason, and it appears to have paid off, with Carbery piloting a squad that ranks second in the NHL in points percentage.
Team leaders: The NHL’s No. 2 all-time leading goal scorer, Alexander Ovechkin, was in the midst of a tremendous season with 15 goals in the first 18 games before suffering a leg injury that has kept him out since Nov. 18. Though he’s nearing a return, it appears he’s unlikely to play in Columbus.
Without him, the Caps have kept on humming along, led by Dylan Strome, whose 9-26-35 line puts him sixth in the NHL in helpers. Young wings Connor McMichael and Aliaksei Protas have come into their own this year, with McMichael tying Ovechkin for the team’s goal lead with 15 among his 26 points and Protas adding 9-15-24. Tom Wilson has added 11 goals and 11 assists, while John Carlson has a 3-17-20 line in his 16th season.
In net, Logan Thompson and Charlie Lindgren have split the games, and it appears to be the latter’s time to get the start in Columbus. He’s 8-5-0 in 13 games with a 2.80 GAA and .894 save percentage.
What's new: The Caps were one of the busiest teams in the NHL this offseason, bringing in Thompson along with forwards Pierre-Luc Dubois, Andrew Mangiapane, Taylor Raddysh and Brandon Duhaime to remake the front line. Add in Jacob Chychrun in the back end and there’s very much a new look to the Caps. It hasn’t taken long for the team to come together, placing in the top 10 in the league in both scoring offense and defense and on a 9-2-1 run in its last 12 games despite the injuries to Ovechkin, T.J. Oshie, Nicklas Backstrom and others.
Trending: Columbus lost all three contests to its division rival last year and fell 7-2 in Washington on Nov. 2 in the first game this season. The Blue Jackets are just 2-8-2 in the series over the last three years.
Former CBJ: The Jackets’ first-round pick in the 2016 draft at No. 3 overall, Dubois was acquired from Los Angeles this offseason and has a 4-15-19 line on the season. The team’s first-round pick in 2014, Sonny Milano, also has landed in Washington but is out with a long-term injury and has played in just three games.
