Blue Jackets Vs. Blues: Two Streaking Teams In The First Game Of A Home-And-Home
Columbus has been playing surprisingly good hockey as of late, now that they have no pressure on their shoulders. The most pressure the Blues have is to finish the season with home ice advantage and preferably a Presidents Trophy.
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Tomorrow night in Columbus should be fun. As this period wore on, more cheap shots were given, more scrums were started, and the more upset Ryan Reaves got. Ryan Johansen shouldered Andy McDonald in the head to knock him flat down, causing a massive scrum that wound up with added penalties for the Blues that was a pretty good exclamation point on the third period and this game in general.
Adding more fuel to the fire was one more goal that looked to have gone in off of the stick of Patrik Berglund, but was deflected by Alex Pietrangelo:
The Blues had the shot edge in the 3rd nine to seven, and led overall SOG 25 to 20. What the game lacked in shooting excitement it more than made up with physical play.
Tonight’s fairly easy win tied a franchise record with 29 home wins. To put that in perspective, the Columbus Blue Jackets have 22 wins total, and now the Blues have 44 wins and 95 points on the season. Detroit lost to the Nashville Predators tonight 3-2, so the Blues lead on Detroit for the division (and for now conference) lead is up to four points. They’re also three points up on the Vancouver Canucks (for now) and four points up on the New York Rangers for the lead spot in the NHL.
Playing against the Blues always brings out some oomph in Rick Nash’s game, which in return brings out the Blues’ desire to get physical with the Blue Jackets. For two teams in the same division who don’t really have much of a rivalry aside from that stuff about a soccer game, they sure do seem to get into it when they play each other.
The second fight of the game, between B.J. Crombeen and recent call-up Dane Byers, was a wake-up call to a Blues team that came out of the gate like they were skating through molasses. The Blue Jackets scored seconds before, as Cam Atkinson wristed one past Brian Elliott thanks to a bit of not paying attention to who was near the goaltender.
Coach Ken Hitchcock criticized the team’s intensity level in an interview with Bernie Federko during the game, and almost immediately Chris Stewart decided to make his coach’s disappointment go away. He, on a breakaway, backhanded roofed the puck over Curtis Sanford in an amazing play:
The goal woke the Blues up, who started playing much more physically for the rest of the period, especially Barret Jackman, who seems hell-bound and determined to go after Rick Nash all night long.
About five minutes after Stewart’s goal, Oshie netted another power play goal for the team via an outstanding feed from David Backes.
The Blues have killed off 37 penalties in a row, and Oshie’s PPG was the 2,700th in Blues history. The Blues are also holding the shot edge 20-15, but were outshot nine to five in the second.
There’s no reason for the Blue Jackets to play with any urgency except to save face, but there’ve been a few good looks by them in the first period. It’s tough to say that one person leaving can feel like a weight’s been lifted from a team’s shoulders, but this team looks like a huge burden’s been lifted since Jeff Carter got traded to the LA Kings for Jack Johnson and a first. Johnson had nothing but nice things to say about being in Columbus, which was a pleasant difference from Carter, who didn’t want to be there and made it obvious. That kind of thing can be poison for a team.
That being said, a sharper looking Blue Jackets squad is still the Blue Jackets. The Blues have 15 shots on goal so far to Columbus’ six. One of them, this excellent and emphatic wrister by David Perron, made it past goaltender Curtis Sanford:
The Blues had three power play chances in the first period, but could not convert on any of them. Hopefully those missed chances won’t come back to bite the team later.
Columbus has been playing surprisingly good hockey as of late, now that they have no pressure on their shoulders. The most pressure the Blues have is to finish the season with home ice advantage and preferably a Presidents Trophy.
