The Columbus Blue Jackets pulled off a come from behind victory this afternoon, taking down the Florida Panthers 4-3 in a shootout. After a lackluster first period (don’t worry, we’ll get to it), the Jackets played a couple of pretty solid periods, and controlled most of the overtime. The Jackets were paced by Scott Hartnell, Seth Jones, and Brandon Saad, who scored his 24th of the year to set a new career best. The Panthers picked up goals from Aleksander Barkov (his 7th goal in his last 6 full games) in the first, Vincent Trocheck in the second period, and Logan Shaw late to send it to OT. Brandon Dubinsky was the only player to find twine in the shootout, burying after he lost the puck, which I’m sure he totally meant to do on purpose and was part of his strategy to throw Roberto Luongo off his game. In net, Joonas Korpisalo picked up 28 saves for his 11th win of the season.
Bad: Michael Paliotta’s first shift with the CBJ
He was chasing the play the entire shift, made two bad reads to let an attacker behind him and wasn’t able to recover, which nearly led to two scoring chances. He then capped it off with a cross-checking penalty. That’s about as bad as a shift can get without leading directly to a goal. Things didn’t get much better for him, as he was stapled to the bench for much of the game, playing only 7:32. To be fair to Paliotta, he wasn’t the only Jacket who wasn’t ready for the start of this game.
Ugly: The First Period
Bill Davidge said it best during the first intermission: “That was the worst first period that we have watched in this building in a long time….That was a no show. Period.”. Through one period, the shots were 13-1. The Jackets as a team were -16 in Corsi. The only individual players with a positive Corsi were David Savard and Greg Campbell at +1. Two players were even. The rest were -3 or worse. Let’s say no more about the first frame.
Good: The Rest of the Game
Because after that turd of a period, the Jackets really turned things around. Over the final two frames and overtime, the Jackets outshot the Panthers 24-18, outscored them 3-2 (plus the extra in the shootout), and out Corsi’d the Panthers by 8. With Paliotta only getting a handful of shifts over the last two periods, we saw ourselves an awful lot of Seth Jones (29:10 TOI) and Ryan Murray (28:54). While Jones scored his first goal as a Jacket (on knucklepuck no less!), Murray had himself one heck a game too. Not much on the traditional statsheet (+2, 1 SOG), but he was a fancy stat monster. Murray was -5 in the Corsi’s after the first period, but managed to go a whopping +15 over the remainder of the game. After being on the ice for 9 shot attempts against in the first, the Panthers only got 8 attempts off with Murray out there over the remainder of the game. That is pretty impressive, but even more so when you factor in the 21:09 Murray played. The ice was seriously tilted towards the Panthers end when he was out there.
Also Good: Scott Hartnell’s patience
Hartnell picked up his 20th of the year, and 48th goal as a Blue Jacket. It was a beauty.
Could that be his final goal in a CBJ uniform? Stay tuned.
Tweet of the Game:
BREAKING: I can confirm that Scott Hartnell will have to leave the penalty box at some point. #CBJ
— Buckeye State Hockey (@BuckeyeStHockey) February 27, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsTweet of the Day (Not really game-related but I think it’s the bees knees):
From a strong source, Hartnell traded to the Celtics. pic.twitter.com/oYBCtzuW2b — Patten (@auquf) February 27, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
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