It’s been great watching how the CBJ square up with some of the league’s best teams that are sure to make noise in the playoffs. While that’s a great measuring stick, seeing how a team plays against a lesser match up. Toronto’s had a rough year and seems pretty well settled into place for the 4th overall draft position barring a lucky lottery pick. The good news is tonight, the CBJ did what a good teams should do against a team in this scenario: beat them handily. Toronto arguably didn’t see its best scoring chances until the 3rd period and Bobrovsky played the final 20 minutes as if the Jackets held only a 1 goal lead and a wild card spot was on the line. Even though there won’t be a post-season for Columbus fans, there were smiles a plenty as the CBJ faithful headed for their vehicles this evening. Tonight’s stars include:
3rd Star: Ryan Murray
Sadly it can most likely be attributed to frequently being exposed to the scenario but does Ryan Murray ever look out of place in his first game back from injury? Some players look tentative and lack speed in their returns but Murray had no problem using his speed to throw himself of 3 shots, log nearly 19 minutes on the evening and score his first goal of the season on the power play. With the team effort exhibited tonight, arguments could be made to include Anisimov or any member of the Dano, Wennberg, Hartnell line but I’ll give the nod to the youngster with so much promise for shaking off his rust during pregame skate.
2nd Star: Boone Jenner
It’s a shame we haven’t seen Boone on the ice more this season as you can’t deny what an absolute force he is to reckon with. In his young career with the Blue Jackets, he’s averaging over 0.5 points per game and when he doesn’t make a tally on the scoresheet can absolutely wreak havoc on the opponents’ ability to establish a good rhythm and cycle the puck. Tonight was one of those evening where when Jenner wasn’t directing the puck on net (5 shots), he was a physical presence (5 hits) in his 14:13 played. That means that on average he was doing something awesome once every 1min 25sec. Yes, I just made frequency of awesomeness a stat. Deal with it.
1st Star: Sergei Bobrovsky
If there was such thing as a quiet shutout, that could aptly be used to describe Bob’s first two periods. Bob saw little traffic in the 1st period. The traffic escalated in frequency but the Toronto scoring chances didn’t seem to be of great quality in the 2nd but holy cow did he stand tall against an onslaught of quality chances in the 3rd period. What I love about Bob’s work ethic is that he played a 20 minute frame where his team had a 5-0 lead the same way as he’d play any other period. It’s comforting to know that we have a net minder who isn’t saving his good stuff for a certain scenario.
Stud: Early dominance
I’ve complained much this year about the Jackets being a slow-starting team in Nationwide Arena. Tonight that simply was not the case. They came out and dictated pace and reminded the Maple Leafs whose house they were in.
Dud: Reminders of what this season could have been
Don’t get me wrong, I love this streak that the Jackets are on but it was really brought into perspective tonight when we officially hit 500 man-games lost to injury and when Aaron Portzline pointed out that this is the first game we’ve seen Ryan Murray and Boone Jenner dress in this season. When you see the success and chemistry this team has developed it’s easy to be disappointed that they won’t be in the playoffs because you’ve got to think they could sure make a lot more noise right now than some of the teams that are still duking it out over the wild card spots in both the west and the east. Obviously it takes a complete season to make it to the playoffs so this a just result but when some of those bubble teams get embarrassed in the first round by the likes of Anaheim or the New York Rangers it’s going to be frustrating when the CBJ have matched up so well against those teams as of late.
This will be my last recap of this season but stick with us for the rest of the campaign and in the off-season for all of the latest CBJ updates. I may be getting ahead of myself but I’m already looking forward to seeing what CBJProspects thinks about the completed draft. The future is bright in Columbus, fans. This flag is sure getting a lot easier to carry.
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