Boxing Day saw the Columbus Blue Jackets (13-21-3) face off against the Tampa Bay Lightning (18-15-3) for the second time this season. The first game between the two teams saw the NHL debut of last night’s starting goaltender, Joonas Korpisalo, who put on a very strong showing the first time around in a 2-1 loss. Special teams played a pivotal role in the first game, seeing Tampa Bay get a shorthanded goal that ultimately wound up being the game-winning goal from Brian Boyle. The same could be said about the Boxing Day match-up, as special teams changed the momentum of the game as Columbus did what Head Coach John Tortorella explains as them “playing well, and finding a way to lose.”
Blue Jackets Blunders Cost Them Two Points
The game started out much in the favor of the hosts as they broke the 0-0 score with a goal from Mike Blunden. However, Columbus lit a fire under themselves after that point and were able to get the score to 2-1, thanks to Rene Bourque and Scott Hartnell. Yet, that wasn’t the theme of the night, as the Blue Jackets did as the coach has said many times, and found a way to lose a game they had no business losing. The age-old saying that comes to my mind when thinking about tonight, and what seems to be the theme of the season for this Blue Jackets team, is “shooting themselves in the foot.” It’s like the team takes one step forward, to make one massive leap backwards.
Throughout the season, Tortorella has addressed, and seemingly fixed, multiple issues that have been very prevalent with this team, such as penalty killing, and a lack of motivation and grit from players like Hartnell and Ryan Johansen, who have both been made healthy scratches due to these topics. Many fans of the organization have noticed and appreciated these changes that Torts has brought to the club, but where is his trademark discipline that he brings to teams?
The recurring theme, one that stole the spotlight from any individual performances, was that the Columbus Blue Jackets spent a ridiculous amount of time in the penalty box, 32 minutes to be exact. The most important sequence of these 32 minutes saw Columbus go down to three men for an extended period of time, giving up two goals to Lightning stand-out Steven Stamkos.
The issue isn’t with getting penalties for hard hits, or things of that sort, it’s primarily the manner of the penalties that they were getting, like the face-off violation by Gregory Campbell and the following delay of game call on Jack Johnson for clearing the puck into the benches. These types of penalties are, most definitely, an avoidable circumstance and ones that you can’t keep making if you want to become a legitimate playoff contender in the future (definitely not for this season anymore). And even after these two careless penalties, veterans on the team like Hartnell go out and do something that is an unwritten rule in the testaments of hockey and skate directly into the goaltender while he was handling the puck in the trapezoid. These are the types of plays that will cause you to lose momentum, and games as well, and that showed tonight with the squandering of a 2-1 lead.
With this loss tonight, and the fashion in which Columbus lost, it brings a very simple question to mind: Should there be an offloading of certain players before the trade deadline to shake things up? The Blue Jackets are seemingly a team primarily composed of role players, and very few difference makers, and this needs to change sooner rather than later. They need to bring in disciplined players, possibly with the “veteran” tag associated with them, so that they may lead by example to get this organization heading in the right direction.
The main points that should be taken from reading this are: Tortorella is the right man to lead the Blue Jackets organization into a more prosperous era and GM Jarmo Kekkalainen needs to give him the freedom to be able to bring in the players he can work with. The other two main points are that goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky plays a much larger role in the success of this organization than many may have previously thought and will bring a massive boost when coming back from injury. And the last, and most important in popular opinion, point of emphasis for this team is that they need an imposing figure on the blueline that is both composed with the puck and has the ability to lead the younger players to develop into future leaders.
The issues at hand in this specific game are seemingly becoming the theme of this entire season with the Blue Jackets, as they continue to blow games they could easily take points from. They continually press hard on the forecheck, win battles in the corners and in important positions in their defensive zone and have been, for the most part, very impressive on the penalty kill. When all of these things fall by the wayside, which they did against Tampa Bay (both times), and other teams like Pittsburgh, they are going to find it impossible to grind out points as the season continues to roll on.
Needless to say, there are some players with great talent, combined with a good amount of potential, but there seems to be a lack of composure going across all three periods of the game, and the end result is something similar to both Tampa Bay games. For the time being, expect a few wins here and there, and just hope that Columbus gets a the first pick in this upcoming draft so that they may bolster their already impressive prospect ranks with the ever-impressive Auston Matthews.
Main Photo:
