Week Seven: Buckeye State Hockey Mailbag

Another week, another mailbag. We’ve got a good group of questions, so let’s get to it.

https://twitter.com/frickindannie/status/666706027623129088

I don’t, but I am really unsure what he is going for with his haircut. I have seen it mentioned (and I am unsure if it was from Dannie, also) that he has a haircut that resembles Lucy from the Peanuts comic strip (and I guess movie now). Johansen can have any haircut he wants if he keeps up his current pace of three points in the last two games.

@BuckeyeStHockey Futurespeak- what do the Jackets look for in a defenseman? (Stay at home, attacking, dancing)

— Nate Beougher (@NateBooger) November 17, 2015

I absolutely love this question. If I take a look back at what the Blue Jackets have drafted it is an interesting smorgasbord of players. Zach Werenski is more of an all around defensemen who can score with the best of them but also play well on the defensive end. Gabriel Carlsson is more of a stay at home defender. Going back even farther you will see that the Jackets are alternating between offensive defensemen and more stay at home defensemen. Ryan Collins and Dillion Heatherington immediately come to mind in regards to the stay at home types. Meanwhile players like Veeti Vainio and Blake Siebenaler are more offensive. The league is moving towards more offensive types but it looks like for now that the Jackets are interested in hedging their bets and not focusing on one type of defensemen.

https://twitter.com/Boogalu/status/666803573251026944

Ahh, dump and chase. Old school hockey lovers could go on for hours about the merits of it. I, on the other hand will keep it brief. Dump and chase is when a player dumps a puck into the offensive zone and forecheckers chase after the puck and use their body to free them from the puck and create a scoring chance. Many people associate dump and chase as the last refuge for unskilled teams but it does have its merits depending on how your team is built. The Jackets have talent but they also have some big bruisers too, it makes sense for them to at times go to a dump and chase style of offense. Most stats point to carrying the puck in the zone as the better option as you don’t lose possession of the puck. Eric T formerly of Broad Street Hockey and now of the Carolina Hurricanes wrote more about that subject here.

https://twitter.com/AgentJoloBanks/status/666780092278927364

For the uninitiated, Dirty Frank’s is a restaurant on 4th st in Columbus that serves some of the best hot dogs in town. While going over the menu, I would have to say the dog most similar to the Blue Jackets is the “Dog from Hell”. The toppings are: Satanically spicy Giardiniera pepper mix & soothing cream cheese. The pepper mix represents the truculent players on the team that give the other team a hard time or in this case your stomach, while the soothing cream cheese is the skilled offensive players that make sure the team gets on the scoreboard.

https://twitter.com/musdig/status/666784719279890432

At its core, offside is a call designed to prevent an attacking team from getting an unfair advantage when entering the offensive zone by having a player be in the offensive zone (below the blue line) before the puck is in the zone.

That is the definition courtesy of icehockey.isport.com.

“If any member of your team has both skates within the attacking zone while the puck crosses over that blue line, the play is considered to be offside. The linesmen are in charge of enforcing offside calls. Depending on your league rules, offsides will likely be dealt with in one of two ways:

• Immediate offside: In this variation, the linesman will blow the play dead directly following an instance of offside play.
• Delayed offside: In this variation, play is allowed to continue until the attacking team touches the puck. This rule is in place so that no possession is stripped from the defending team if it gets the puck while its opposition is offsides. In this case, the attacking team is allowed to, and essentially must, completely regroup in the neutral zone to clear the offside call.”

Thanks for writing in and until next week. BYE.