The 5-Hole: Blue Jackets News and Notes – 1/12/10

Every Tuesday, WFNY’s The 5-Hole brings you up to date with the goings-on of the CBJ…

The Week That Was

This Week: 3-1-0, 6 points
Overall: 18-20-9, 45 points (4th division; 13th conference)

The week started with an embarrassing thud in Vancouver, and then a strange thing happened. The Jackets of the last six or seven weeks disappeared, and the team from the second half of last season showed up for three straight games. After a nice slump-buster against lowly Edmonton, the Jackets went on to win two more against much tougher opponents, and looked more like the team I thought we were getting early in this season. I’m not ready to say “all is well” just yet, but it was definitely nice to see them take a big step forward. Though, it begs the question: where the heck have those guys been for the last two months?

Tuesday, 1/5 in Vancouver – Canucks 7, Jackets 3 (Box Score) – Highlights
Thursday, 1/7 in Edmonton – Jackets 4, Oilers 2 (Box Score) – Highlights
Friday, 1/8 in Calgary – Jackets 3, Flames 2 (Box Score) – Highlights
Sunday, 1/10 in Columbus – Jackets 2, Stars 0 (Box Score) – Highlights

Last week’s column began with: “Any playoff hopes are gone. Mathematically, not so much, but the Jackets would basically have to win at least 25 of their last 39 games to make a legitimate run, and anyone that’s watched this team so far this past six weeks knows that just ain’t happening.” And, most of that is still true. The Jackets need probably 47-50 points in their last 35 games to have a realistic shot, which would mean at least 22 wins with a few OT/SO losses sprinkled in along the way. Not impossible, but they need to win about five more in a row before people should start thinking seriously about a return to the playoffs.

That said, it’s only fair to note the impressive string this week from the team. It started out with what looked to be a coffin nail, as the Jackets jumped out to a 2-0 first period lead in Vancouver… only to lose 7-3. They appeared to almost give up after the Canucks tied the game within 90 seconds of falling behind 2-0, and after the Jackets narrowed the edge to 4-3 in the second, they never recovered when Vancouver scored again.

And then a funny thing happened. Tied 2-2 in Edmonton—home of an Oilers team that was at that time the only team worse than the Jackets in the conference—in the third period, the Jackets scored what Ken Hitchcock would call a “season changing” goal. While I find that a bit hyperbolic, there is something to what Hitch said (see below); the Jackets were sitting there waiting for the inevitable “bad thing” to happen (usually, finding a way to choke late in the third), and that goal showed them that it doesn’t always have to. They added another, and haven’t looked back since.

They went into Calgary the very next night—a place where they hadn’t won since –and played a tough, tough Flames team. I fully expected to see a let-down, given that the opponent was tough and that it was the second night of a back-to-back. But the Jackets stood tall, and despite letting the Flames get from 3-1 to 3-2 in the third period, they managed to hold off the Flames in the third period by that score.

After a quick turn-around to get home from Calgary and suit up against the Stars in the span of two days, I wondered if the Jackets would have enough in the tank to do battle with Dallas. But the Jackets not only did battle, but all but neutralized the Stars to the tune of a 2-0 shut-out. The Jackets played solid defense, and limited the Stars’ scoring chances. Mathieu Garon was stellar, making some very solid saves, including two break-aways by Dallas. And with that, three wins in a row and a breath of fresh air in the dressing room and in the arena as a whole.

Up Next

Another long four-game week that is all Central Division, all the time. And, thankfully the Jackets are almost done with all of their Western traveling. They have one more Pacific and Mountain time zone trip (each), and then everything else is in the East or Central time zones. The Jackets look to extend their winning streak on the road against struggling St. Louis (18-19-7, 43pts) on Tuesday, and then head to Chicago on Thursday where the Blackhawks (31-11-4, 66pts) are playing well and leading the Central Division. Then, in the palindrome schedule that it is, they host Chicago on Saturday at Nationwide, and then St. Louis comes calling on Monday. It’s impossible to really assume they will beat St. Louis twice, but they’ll need to—and need to find a way to beat Chicago at least once—to have any real chance at keeping their slim playoffs hopes on life support.

Full Schedule

Team Rankings

Since I haven’t been able to do a ton of game previews so far this year, I wanted to add this new section to highlight the different performance of the various units on the team, and to compare them to last week, last season, and the league-at-large.

Offense:
Current: 2.60 gpg (22nd)
Last Post: 2.56 gpg (23rd)
2008-2009: 2.68 gpg (21st)

Defense:
Current: 3.11 gapg (26th)
Last Post: 3.14 gapg (25th)
2008-2009: 2.72 (t9th)

Power Play:
Current: 36-for-175, 20.6% (8th)
Last Post: 34-for-160, 21.3% (6th)
2008-2009: 41-for-322, 12.7% (30th)

Penalty Kill:
Current: 159-for-193, 82.4% (12th)
Last Post: 145-for-178, 81.5% (15th)
2008-2009: 282-for-346, 82.1% (13th)

The good news is that the defensive improvement actually continued, numbers-wise, despite the seven goal stinker in Vancouver as the Jackets only allowed four goals in the other three games. Likewise, they raised their scoring just a bit, by finally getting more than one or two goals all week (12 goals). The Penalty Kill has continued to look sharp and improve, and while the Power Play continues to level off at around 20% it’s still a large improvement from last year’s anemic unit; through 47 games they’ve already scored just five fewer PP goals than ALL of last season (82 games).

Who’s Hot, Who’s Not

Hot: Mathieu Garon. The Jackets still aren’t scoring as much as is really needed, but it’s hard to give this award to anyone other than Garon right now. As part of Ken Hitchcock’s “win and you’re in” goalie strategy, Garon has seized the reins in the short-term by winning three straight, including a shut-out of Dallas on Sunday. This doesn’t mean that Steve Mason isn’t still the team’s long-term answer/plan in goal, but it means that right now Garon is playing much better than the sophomore. In his past nine games, Garon has a 2.02 GAA and a .919 save percentage.

Not: The Jackets’ Offense. Hard to harp on a three game winning streak in which the team finally cracked the 2-goal plateau all four games, and scored 3 or more in three of them. But, other than Raffi Torres and Antoine Vermette—who both had solid weeks—there wasn’t a lot of scoring to be seen. Honorable mention to Jan Hejda, who scored in successive games for his second and third goals of the year. But still…

Injury Update

Jared Boll, Andrew Murray, and Raffi Torres are all back and playing. Mike Commodore is also back, after originally being scratched indefinitely due to his continuing conditioning issues. Marc Methot (shoulder) has been out for a few games, but looks to be close. Derek Dorsett (hand) may be back on Tuesday night in St. Louis. Kris Russell (lower body) missed Sunday’s game against Dallas, but isn’t expected to be out for long. Rostislav Klesla is still out, and is still targeting an early February return. I will still be surprised if the team plays him before the Olympic break, though.

And finally—and this might shock you—Fredrik Modin is injured. I know, I know… so shocking. But this one was less of a freak injury (you know, the kind he usually has), in that he blocked a shot with his foot and has been out for awhile because of it. Nothing appears to be severely damaged (x-rays last week showed no break, and an MRI Sunday came back showing now serious damage), but he’s still walking with a limp.

Captain Obvious Quote of the Week

3 wins in a row has happened before… it’s called a winning streak.
–Random fan sign at the Jackets/Stars game on Sunday evening

I don’t know how anyone could say it any better than that.

Regular Quotes of the Week

I said, “Oh my God, Commie, I forgot how easy this was.” That’s when it started feeling right to me, finally. That’s when it started feeling like last season.
–Defenseman Jan Hejda, talking about an epiphany he had early in the second period against Calgary. Hejda was reunited with last year’s partner Mike Commodore. The two formed the team’s top defensive pairing last season.

Those 25 games or so, it was just a roller coaster we couldn’t stop. Now we’re getting back to our style of hockey. … There is some smiling in the locker room again. When we lose, we feel it the most of anybody. We’re the ones doing the losing. But we can breathe again now. We can have fun again. We can get back into this. We don’t want to just win a few games. We want to get back into this.
–RJ Umberger, after the Dallas win.

I don’t see any reason we can’t play like this for the rest of the season. We’re grinding it with really good teams now. We’re more than keeping pace. We’re more than holding our own. Rather than look for space, we’re fighting for space. And we’re creating more scoring chances than ever because of it. … The whole season changed with the third goal in Edmonton. It made a difference on the bench, a difference in the locker room, a difference in the feel. The tension was everywhere. Oh, no, here we go again. Something bad is going to happen. When we scored the third goal in Edmonton, the whole season changed.
–Coach Ken Hitchcock

I don’t know if I’m ready to say this team is back to where they need to be—let’s not forget they jumped out to a 2-0 lead in Vancouver and got blitzed 7-3—or that the season has changed. But, those ugly games were more the norm in the midst of this slump, whereas now it seems to be more of a defensive aberration. Holding off Calgary and Dallas in successive games with one-goal leads in the third period is definitely a stride in the right direction. That’s what the Jackets of last season were able to do so well—protect late leads—and that the Jackets of this year have struggled so mightily with. But, let’s not forget also that they got 40 shots on Dallas goalie Marty Turco… and scored only once (they did get an empty netter with under four seconds left in the game on their 41st shot).

Again, I’m not ready to say that all is well again and that the team is back on track, but they certainly look ready to take off a bit and get back to the kind of team many fans thought they were going to be all season. The playoffs are still a stretch (cue Jim Mora: “Playoffs? Playoffs?! Don’t talk about playoffs! Playoffs?!? You kiddin’ me??”), but if the team can build off of this last three-game winning streak and continue to play like this, there’s no reason to think they can’t work their way back up the standings just a bit.