A hard fought, but possibly costly win came tonight versus the Tampa Bay Lightning. An ugly first period led way to a very good second period and a mish mash of a third. But more importantly, the Jackets finally do NOT crap the bed on a night when I do the three stars! Whoopee! All is well in Jackets-land, minus all the injuries and inconsistency and all the other things wrong. Anyway, ignore that for now and revel in a shutout victory.
3rd Star: Sergei Bobrovsky
He was good. Very good at times. Let’s be honest, that one save is where this is going. It was a good save. It was also the classic Patrick Roy move where the big arm/wrist movement post save makes it look MUCH better than it actually was. Watching it live, it looked spectacular. On replay, it was clear that Brown did not get the puck up very much and it was a fairly routine glove save. Then there is the bad part of that save. Let’s keep our fingers crossed this is nothing serious, as relying on Curtis McElhinney for more than a dozen games in an entire season is a losing proposition.
2nd Star: Blake Comeau
Yes, 11 hits is a gaudy statistic. But hits are a terrible and useless stat. Know who racks up a lot of hits? Players who never have the puck. Comeau wasn’t terrible tonight, but he wasn’t three stars good. He got some fairly easy zone starts (only 20% of his shift started in the defensive zone), although he was a positive player in every facet of the game. Solid, but again he’s here for those 11 hits and I could not object to that reasoning with any more gusto. Oh wait, there was that one time a player was voted first star for committing an assault on another player. Go Philadelphia media!
1st Star: Nick Foligno
I don’t need to say too much here. Dirty, dirty goal, along with solid all around play.
Dud: The breakout/Everything around that penalty call
I’m doubling up on the duds here, as there are two things I really want to talk about. Regarding the team and actual play, is the breakout. It is freaking ugly. They just can’t ever seem to connect on passes, and more often than not end up just chipping it out and chasing it down. Turnover after turnover at their own blueline is what led to the terrible first period. They started chipping it out and winning races, and the game turned around for them. That is fine and all for this game, but this is not a recipe for long-term success. They need to get the defense activated more in the breakout. It worked for them last year, and skating the puck out on the breakout is one of the few things Jack Johnson does well. Add in Ryan Murray, Fedor Tyutin and James Wisniewski, and you have a solid group able to handle this. And it’s not a new thing either, as they had tremendous success with this last year. I think the defense just doesn’t trust the revolving door of forwards and are playing more conservatively. That is burning them.
Dud number two is that terrible call. However, I don’t exactly want to talk about the call itself. It was a very understandable miss by the refs. You have a guy fall, surrounded by two opponents, and stick very clearly got caught up with his foot. Sucks that it was at a brutal time in a very close game. But Rimer, COME ON, that was a brutal call. I was literally yelling at the screen for him to just stop talking about how it was Johansen that tripped him, and that everyone was pissed off that they got the wrong guy. You saw the replay, how the hell do you miss that it was Palat’s OWN STICK. It was obvious on just one replay. But Rimer would not stop talking about it. Serves me right I suppose for actually listening to the Jackets broadcast. You have Rimer not even able to see something very obvious in a slow motion replay, then calling the game a win for the Jackets with the puck rolling through the crease and time on the clock. You also have Davidge telling people that if Hedman would ‘bear down’ on a shot, then maybe he’d have scored on a shot Johansen blocked. In other words, Davidge is saying that if Hedman shot it harder, it would have gone THROUGH Johansen somehow? Don’t even get me started on Jody Shelley, so happy we were spared him tonight. I usually watch the opposing broadcast (thank you Game Center Live!), and tonight was a great reminder why.
Stud: Ryan Johansen
Oh man. His play on Foligno’s goal was probably more impressive than the beautiful finish. It’s not often a guy can just take the puck from an NHL player like that, beat two guys to a puck, and thread it through someone to a guy alone in the slot. He just takes over shifts in almost every way. The aforementioned shot block on Victor Hedman legitimately saved a goal. He’s become a positive player on faceoffs (although only 50% tonight), dominates the play with and without the puck, and just makes things happen. Oh, and he’s still only 21 years old. The Johan and 20-year-old Ryan Murray is the kind of foundation 90% of the league would kill to have.
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