The Columbus Blue Jackets continued to roll with another pre-season win, defeating an underpowered Carolina Hurricanes line-up 6-3 to improve their record to 6-1 in exhibition games. Matt Calvert notched two goals and an assist to be named the game’s first star.
It was a largely predictable win based on the two squads being iced on the night: The Jackets dressed a roster close to what we can reasonably expect to see on opening night, with only “bubble” guys being scratched, which we’ll get into in a bit. The Hurricanes responded by dressing only nine potential opening night skaters – and none of those from the top six forwards or top four d-men – and their likely opening night starting goalie. No, this wasn’t a heavy hitting line-up, and thus the Jackets should have dominated.
The top two lines for Columbus both featured some “auditions” for roster spots, as the Scott Hartnell/Artem Anisimov/Marko Dano line had a secondary tryout, while Alex Wennberg was slotted in the Brandon Dubinsky spot between Calvert and Cam Atkinson. Both lines did their jobs. Wennberg was a force all game, creating chances, fiercely hunting down pucks, and just generally being all over the place in the offensive zone. He finished with two assists, the second one being a thing of beauty: he drew four Canes defenders to him in the o-zone, yet maintained control of the puck, sliding a pass to Marko Dano, who was entering play on a line change. Dano then, in his words, “just closed my eyes and shot as hard as I could.”
Dano also had himself quite a game, notching an empty netter to finish with two goals on the night. He had a couple of memorable shifts, including one where he drew a hooking penalty – after stealing the puck, setting up a one-timer, retrieving the puck, and then nearly skating through four Hurricanes defenders. Dano finished a +15/-9 in the Corsi game, tied for fifth on the team, a reflection of just how good his line was all night.
Jack Johnson and David Savard were paired together, and each had solid games. They played a little over 22 minutes and finished with an assist a piece, and the pairing was tied for tops in the Corsi Count, with a staggering +18/-6 differential playing largely against the Canes second line of Brad Malone, Jay McClement and Patrick Dwyer.
Dalton Prout notched two assists and had some notable plays, including a solid defensive zone escape where he outmuscled a Canes defender in the dzone after a Corey Tropp turnover. He then took the puck and exited the zone himself, and carried the puck all the way into the offensive zone before handing off to Tropp, who promptly turned the puck over again and caused Prout to get caught deep. Can’t win ’em all, I guess. Prout also made some bad plays, not the least of which was a defensive zone blunder where he failed to poke a puck through a ‘Canes attacker’s legs, and resulted in a prolonged defensive zone breakdown and, ultimately, a Prout roughing penalty. His pairing with Fedor Tyutin was arguably the worst of the three defense combos, as they had trouble handling the Carolina “top” line of Nathan Gerbe, Victor Rask and Zach Boychuk.
The only line that was in negatives for possession was, not surprisingly, the fourth line of Tropp, Michael Chaput and Jared Boll. Chaput tried his best, and even scored a goal thanks to a won face-off scramble with help of Tropp, but the other two linemates just weren’t holding up their end. Boll finished a team worst in Corsi, with a +8/-12 and had about zero good moments. After a relatively impressive couple of pre-season games, this one was a real clunker for Boll.
On the whole, the team performed well, outshooting Carolina 31-26, maintaining the possession edge 47-34, and of course winning the score battle 6-3. But if this is anywhere near the line-up that is to be iced on opening night or for any length of time after, the team could be in some serious trouble.
The next game goes Saturday at Nationwide against Nashville. It’s the FINAL game of pre-season! I am hopeful to see a line-up similar to tonight except for maybe sticking Dubinsky, Gibbons and Goloubef in over Chaput, Boll and Prout. That would be an opening night line-up I could live with.
See ya!
– Jeremy
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