The Columbus Blue Jackets finished the pre-season with a much ballyhooed 7-1 record, tops in the NHL, and something to hang their hat on when people point to the lack of Ryan Johansen being a potential cause of downfall. But with these wins came some troubling issues, namely shot suppression and puck possession.
While the team may have the important results from their games, wins, the repeatability should be brought into question with just how lucky they’ve been to have one of the top goalies in the world behind them. Relying on your netminder, even one as fantastic as Sergei Bobrovsky, is not something that a team should be aiming to do as a mission statement.
The numbers are ugly. All situations Corsi For % was an abysmal 40.7% [+341 attempts for/-495 attempts against]. That’s not just bad, but would be “worst in recorded history” if you were extrapolate it over a full season. But, okay, let’s just focus on 5v5 play. Oh, that was also disgusting: 43.1% CF [+267/-352]. That’s worse than any team in the league not named Toronto in 2013/14.
Score effects certainly play a part in these numbers. The team held leads into the third periods, and spent the final 20 minutes sitting in their own zone giving free reign to the opposition to take shot attempt after shot attempt on net. This isn’t anything new, teams do it all the time. But it’s also bitten the Jackets in the ass repeatedly in season’s past, and proven time and time again that it just is not a successful way to run a team. Maybe it’s time for head coach Todd Richards to figure out a way to get through to his guys that hey, if it worked in the first two periods, maybe you want to keep doing it in the third!
After eight games, the Jackets came out on the positive end of the final score seven times, but on the positive end of the possession battle just once, and that was the game where Columbus dressed 15 regulars and five bubble guys compared to just nine regulars [none from the top six forwards or top four dmen] from their opponents, Carolina.
Columbus Corsi Kings
Just six players finished with a Corsi For % above 50 at even strength in the pre-season. Five of the six would fall into the category of “the Usual Suspects”.
The team leader was Matt Calvert, who put down a 56.9% [+41/-31] in his four games. Matty Hustle has always been a positive differential guy, and he continued to show why: ferocious skating, always in the thick of things, sneaky wristshots, driving to the net. He’s one of those guys that defines “Blue Jackets Hockey”. He plays both powerplay and shorthanded minutes, and he should not be overlooked because of his modest point totals. He is a guy you win with.
Mark Letestu [55.1% CF, +59/-48] finished second, while frequent linemate Nick Foligno [53.6% CF, +59/-51] was fourth. These two are likely to start the season together, with one of [ahem] Marko Dano, Alexander Wennberg, Jack Skille, or Corey Tropp as their right winger. Their line with Wennberg performed admirably, and I’d personally annoint him for the gig, but it’s unfortunately more likely to end up awarded to waiver wire claim Jack Skille.
Finishing third, with a 55% CF [+55/-45] was newcomer Scott Hartnell. Hartnell has, for the past few seasons, played on lines that were above water in creating shot attempts. Many pointed to his linemates Claude Giroux and Jake Voracek as the reason why, but as our Matt Souva uncovered, Hartnell may have had more of a driving force than people thought. He showed it in the pre-season, playing largely with Artem Anisimov and a rotating cast of auditioning right wingers.
Speaking of Anisimov, Arty posted a 51.7% CF [+58/-54] playing on arguably the team’s first line. He faced top six competition from most teams and showed that he can take on an increased role in the absence of Johansen. Anisimov is not a guy you’d like to see handling first/second line duty over the course of a full season, but until this contract situation gets figured out, he should perform well in that role.
The other Corsi King was Ryan Craig, who played sparingly over two games in a third/fourth line role, on for just 32 shot attempts [+17/-15] and throwing out a 53.1% CF. I won’t say much about him, except that he’s going to be captaining a damn good Springfield team this year.
Columbus Corsi Oh God Why Guys
Much like the above, this category is filled with the Usual Suspects, but a few guys are certainly worse in this regard than I’d expected to see. But first, let’s get the Crap of the Crop out of the way first: the scrubs, the also-rans, the “happy to be here” guys.
Nick Moutrey played two abysmal games against St Louis, garnering 22:03 of total 5v5 icetime, was on the ice for just six shot attempts for. Six! In 22 minutes! He was also on the ice for a staggering 26 attempts against, for a cool 18.7% CF. Ouch. Dana Tyrell, who somehow survived until the final week of camp and was one of the final cuts, and who amazingly got into three games, put up a gross +15/-46 differential [24.6% CF]. That’s not good.
Other guys in the sub-40% club who were longshots for roster duty, but who played multiple pre-season games: Jaime Sifers, Josh Anderson, Sean Collins, Austin Madaisky, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Kerby Rychel, Brett Ponich, and TJ Tynan.
Now, looking at those names, can one figure out a common bond among the majority of them? If you said “spent a lot of their 5v5 icetime with Jared Boll”, then YOU WIN THE PRIZE.
Boll was, OF COURSE, the worst “regular” CBJ player in terms of possession, putting together a line of 28 attempts for compared to 55 attempts against, a 33.7% CF. This is a regular NHL player, against fourth lines largely made up of AHL fodder. Sure, Boll may not have had world beaters as linemates, but he’s supposed to be a leader, a guy who gives the team spark, a guy who IS EXPECTED TO PLAY ACTUAL NHL GAMES, and yet he looked lost on the ice against guys who were lucky to even have an NHL team jersey handed to them. Oh, but he scored two goals, so I’m wrong and Boll is awesome or whatever.
Brian Gibbons also sucked spectacularly, with a 34.9% CF [+23/-43]. He’s another guy who played a lot with Boll, but he certainly wasn’t showing much to Richards or the higher ups to justify keeping him around.
Fedor Tyutin was the main concern of mine after finalizing these rankings. He played in a “shutdown” role, primarily with Dalton Prout. I had reservations about sticking two slow, immobile guys with the inability to make consistent breakout passes together and telling them to do much of anything, and they responded by… well, proving me right, pretty much. Prout seemed to want to get into the offense a bit more, leading a few rushes over the past couple of games, but it was ineffective, as the pair were outattempted by large margins: Tyutin’s 39.7% CF was second lowest amongst projected regulars, behind only Boll, and Prout’s 40.9% wasn’t much better. A 40% third pairing is not something to build on.
Columbus Corsi Other Dudes
Cam Atkinson finished seventh on the team with a 50% CF [+48/-48], but he looked very good through most of the pre-season. He’s got a bit of that jump back that he seemed to be lacking last year. He’s slicing and dicing through defenses and creating some serious chances, chucking everything he can at the net.
The defense pair of Jack Johnson and David Savard is likely the top pairing for the regular season opener and, to be honest, I’m not really down on them too much. They were consistently good in the pre-season taking on some tough assignments, and they came out close to even. Two third period breakdowns aside, and they’d have been well above 50% on the pre-season. As it was, Johnson put up a 47% CF [would’ve been 50% even if not for the third period against Nashville] and Savard an even better 49% [would’ve been 52.7% if not for that damn third period]. Will I be glad when Ryan Murray returns, so that some pressure is lifted off of their shoulders? You bet your ass. But if these two continue to play as well as they have during pre-season, it bodes well for the team.
James Wisniewski disappointed. He was generally paired with Tim Erixon [three games worth], and they failed to capture the magic that the Murray/Wisniewski pairing created last season. Wisniewski finished with a very weak 45.7% CF [+58/-69], while Erixon fared slightly better with a 47.4% CF [+37/-41]. Neither marks are great, especially considering that they faced secondary and tertiary assignments for the most part, and perhaps this combo is not exactly long for regular season work. Wisniewski in particular may be starting to show some wear and tear, as after he was maligned as “slow” during the play-offs, he sure as heck didn’t look any faster in the pre-season.
All in all, there were far too few positives on the team’s possession charts in these eight games. It’s always more fun to cheer for winners than losers, and I’m happy and excited that the team won these games. But the way in which the games were won reminds me far too much of the team I used to cheer for, the Toronto Maple Leafs. Let that sink in for a bit.
Go ahead and thumb your nose at the idea of “fancystats” or their usefulness or whatever, but when the majority of teams that can’t win the Corsi War are non-playoff teams, are you sure you’re picking the right side of the battle? No, possession may not be everything – as evidenced by this pre-season win/loss record – but the team is certainly living dangerously if they can’t rectify what’s ailing them.
If you’d like to take a look at the Corsi chart, I’ve assembled all of the reports as well as the “Raw Totals” and the total results into a ten sheet Google Doc spreadsheet, which you can view here!
Thanks for reading!
– Jeremy
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