The Columbus Blue Jackets winners and losers is back again, this time a few days late. November was a successful month, and it has the Blue Jackets off to one of the best starts in franchise history.
Columbus Blue Jackets Winners and Losers: November 2017
The month started off with a high scoring 7-3 win over the Florida Panthers, but quickly went downhill thereafter. Despite losing four straight towards the beginning of the month, the Jackets were able to win seven of their last eight games to go 8-5-0 on the month.
Here are the Blue Jackets winners and losers of November 2017.
Winners
Josh Anderson
It isn’t all that surprising to see Anderson’s name on the list of winners for November. He continued his hot scoring touch to push himself to the top of the Columbus goal scoring list. He currently has 10 goals on the season, and six of those came in the month of November.
On top of his goal scoring ability, he has been dishing them out as well with seven assists on the season so far. Two of those assists came in back-to-back games at the end of November when playing the Montreal Canadiens and the Ottawa Senators.
His hard-hitting, high paced style of play has him playing on a line with Pierre-Luc Dubois and Artemi Panarin, a line that performed quite well in the latter half of November and into early December.
Anderson is also rocking a 7.19 Relative Corsi-For Percentage (Rel.CF%) on the season. This is third to only Panarin (9.71) and Dubois (10.19) on the season.
Anderson’s play throughout the season, and in November, makes him more than deserving of being one of the winners on this list.
Zach Werenski
The young defenseman continues to make his case as one of the best in the NHL. The month of November was no exception to this statement.
Werenski has eight goals, second on the team, and seven assists on the season. Of those he had four goals and four assists respectively during the month of November. This includes two multiple-point games against Florida and the Carolina Hurricanes.
He was listed as one of the top 20 defenseman in the NHL in the off-season by NHL Network, and he continues to justify this selection. At only 20 years of age he has quickly proven to be a true first pairing defenseman, and November was another strong point in what looks to be a bright future ahead.
Artemi Panarin
Another beneficiary of the Panarin – Dubois – Anderson line, Panarin is looking to get his feet underneath him. He has 20 points on the season, tops for Columbus, and six of them came during the month of November in the form of one goal and five assists.
While the Fifth Line faithful were expecting Panarin to be the elite sniper they have been longing for, that’s no reason to write him off by any stretch of the imagination. The 21-goal pace he is currently might be a bit underwhelming, but there is every reason to believe his 9.2 shooting percentage will increase as the season goes on and will get closer to his 14.3 career mark.
While he didn’t score many goals in November, he continued to create chances for his teammates. The 13 assists he has on the season are the most on the Columbus roster, with only Seth Jones (10) also in the double digit assist mark.
If you need any more proof of his value this season, Panarin has the second highest Rel.CF% on Columbus (9.71). What’s more, he is sixth in Primary Points per 60 (1.38) and has the most takeaways (28).
Losers
Nick Foligno
The Columbus captain is struggling on the season, as if that isn’t obvious. These struggles followed through the entire month of November and earned him a spot in the loser list for November 2017.
While it can be argued that he has as many points as Dubois, one of our winners, this is a whole different story. Where Dubois spent the beginning of the season adjusting to the NHL and gradually getting better, Foligno has struggled from the get-go and hasn’t seemed to find his footing.
Sitting on 11 points through 27 games this season puts Foligno on pace to have a 33 point season over an 82-game campaign. After finishing with 51 points in 79 games last season, this is looking reminiscent to his 2015-16 campaign when he was only able to muster 37 in 72 games.
The analytics fall in line with the point totals. Foligno is sporting an atrocious -5.54 Rel.CF% on the season, only better than three other Blue Jackets. The even more disappointing fact is that his 100.46 PDO is just above the 100.00 that constitutes average luck. This points more to the season being poor play rather than bad luck.
David Savard
Another player performing well below expectations in November, and the season as a whole, is Savard. While you should certainly never expect him to be a huge point producer, his seven goals in 26 games this season is bad, relative even to expectations for him.
This is compounded by only having three points, all assists, in 12 games during the month of November.
As has been the case with every other player on these two lists, the analytics agree. Savard’s -7.95 Rel.CF% is the second worst on the Blue Jackets this season. And for a player expected to be the more reliable of the two on the second pairing, this has not been the case whatsoever.
As is the case with the aforementioned Foligno, Savard has a PDO above the average of 100.00, coming in at 100.87. Another point against him is he currently sits fifth in giveaways on with 11 on the season.
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