Tuesday night saw the Vancouver Canucks (7-4-5) travel to Columbus to play the Blue Jackets (4-12-0) at Nationwide Arena. Earlier it was announced that Jacob Markstrom, Vancouver’s relatively untested backup goalie, would be starting in net for the Canucks. Now, this normally would come as good news to a Columbus team who seems to be finally finding their footing, both offensively and defensively. However, that didn’t seem to be the case as Markstrom showed a little glimpse of what he has to offer against a team who produced 45 shots on goal.
Bobrovsky and Markstrom: A Tale of Two Goalies
Markstrom started out the first period and a half looking nervous and making some fairly reckless plays that, on any other night, could’ve resulted in more goals for the opposing team. However, he got every bounce he wanted and two of the three goals scored on him came off of face-off losses, which are always hard to make a save against, even for the most elite goalies out there. Aside from those two goals, he looked extremely impressive saving 34-of-34 even strength shots.
On the other end of the ice from him was Columbus fan base favourite Sergei Bobrovsky, who has had his fair share of negatives this year and they don’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Other than one empty-netter at the 18:21 mark of the third period he made 25 saves on 29 shots from Vancouver, giving him an extremely lackluster save percentage of .862, and yet, is it really that surprising?
So far this year, Bobrovsky has a 4-9 record with a save percentage of .884 that would fail to impress even some of the most loyal of Blue Jackets fans. Yet another game that Columbus seemed to have in the bag was blown away by minor mistakes finished off by poor goaltending.
If you go back and look at the four goals Bobrovsky let in against the Canucks you’ll notice two major flaws in his goaltending ability: Lateral movement and tracking the puck. When watching him play it seems that, most of the time, he doesn’t seem to know where any of his multiple rebounds are at and, if not for solid defensive play, would probably be getting punished even more than he already is (I know, that’s hard to imagine!). His lateral movement seems to be stuttering at times as he is unable to make a second lateral movement across the net to even make an attempt at a save.
I ask myself, is he really the answer to the problems in Columbus? Unfortunately for all the Blue Jackets fans, I don’t think so. All they can do is cross their fingers and hold their breath as they hope he gets back to what he used to be. Until then, the Jackets shouldn’t expect to win many games if opposing goalies play like Markstrom did last night.
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