Tonight’s Jacket’s 5-4 shootout win over the Washington Capitals was a game that had a little bit of everything: power play goals, response goals, injury, last minute goals, overtime, and the shootout (including the return of the dirty dangle down shift).
You certainly can’t say that it wasn’t an entertaining 65+ minutes.
Let’s take a look at the night’s superlatives.
The Good: A Lot of Things.
First. Let’s talk ’bout Anton Forsberg, because even if we didn’t want to, it was the first thing that head coach John Tortorella wanted to talk about in his post game press conference.
“The biggest thing is ‘how about Forsberg?” Tortorella said. “My god, he played well.”
Curtis McElhinney played a solid game, stopping 23 of 27 shots in regulation and then heading into overtime, before he went down with what looks to be a knee injury. More on that in a second.
So in comes young Forsberg, who only just arrived in Columbus this morning (his gear arrived later from Cleveland).
In his sixth game in the NHL, and first this season, Forsberg comes in cold, stops six shots in overtime from the likes of Ovechkin and company, and then stops two of three overtime shooters to give the Jackets the win.
According to @EliasSports, Forsberg is 1st goalie ever to earn 1st #NHL win in a game in which he didn't enter until after regulation. #CBJ
— Glenn Odebralski (@GlennOdebralski) January 3, 2016
Second. Brandon Saad. Let’s talk about him too (hashtag all the talking). Two goals tonight, six shot attempts. He’s the team leader in goals (16), has the team-leading point streak (seven games) and should now be tied for the league lead in point streaks as well.
But what everyone will remember is that game-tying goal with just over a minute left to go. Watch, and bow down.
https://twitter.com/myregularface/status/683477459640147968
Third. seeing this shot work:
https://twitter.com/myregularface/status/683484337896034304
Fourth. Shutting down Ovechkin. Washington’s #8 is a special player, and, as Tortorella said this morning, deserves respect. A team, according to the Jackets’ head coach, can only hope to contain him, because you just can’t stop him.
Well contain him the Jackets did.
The Capitals, through regulation and overtime, had 76 (!) shot attempts. Ovechkin had 22 of them. Twenty two. That’s 29% of all the shot attempts. Shy of a third. yet he stayed off the score sheet.
Fifth: Jack Johnson with a career night: two goals, one assist and a team leading 26:50 in ice time AND eight shot attempts. Good enough for first star honors tonight.
The Bad. Discipline.
Going in to tonight’s game, Cam Atkinson predicted that the best way to beat the Capitals was to not give them the man-advantage. He said 1-2 penalties tops is what the Jackets should allow themselves to take.
The Jackets took three penalties in the first period alone and six total in the game (including overtime).
The first two Capitals’ goals came on the power play.
It did seem that as the Jackets worked to curb their penalty prowess, their aggressiveness slowed ever so slightly. As penalies went down in number, shot attempts regressed for the Jackets from 66.67% in the first period to 44.44% in the second.
But the team was able to hold on, eventually.
I don’t know that much else needs to be said about the Capitals fourth goal other than let’s just hope that this is not the return of the response goal in Columbus. (Kuznetsov’s goal came exactly 30 seconds after Johnson’s second).
The Ugly. Goaltender woes.
After being activated off IR last week, Sergei Bobrovsky was put back on IR today after he re-aggravated a groin injury. And it looks like he’ll be having some company.
A little over a minute into overtime, McElhinney fell awkwardly in front of his net and was eventually helped off-ice.
Post game, Tortorella said that McElhinney would not be able to go Tuesday (when the Jackets host the Minnesota Wild) and that the new Jackets goaltender tandem will likely be Anton Forsberg and Joonas Korpisalo (who was in net tonight for the Lake Erie Monsters, in a 3-1 loss to the Milwaukee Admirals).
Even if Bobrovsky were to heal sooner rather than later, by virtue of being on IR, he cannot be activated for Tuesday’s game which means we don’t likely see either of the Jackets’ original goalie tandem until at least Friday at Carolina, or Saturday when Carolina comes to Nationwide Arena.
With a netminder-out building strategy, having such a position gutted by injury is not…optimal.
Tweet of the Night:
😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎 https://t.co/dlaVCfNIpL
— Andrew Schwepfinger (@aschwepfinger) January 3, 2016
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
