The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

Not so fast, Blue Jackets!

I was actually uncomfortable watching tonight’s Columbus/Edmonton game. It’s rare that you see a game that thoroughly embarrassing from most college teams, let alone NHL teams with professional ice hockey players. Columbus may have outshot the injury-and-benching-depleted Oilers 39-19, but it was outscored a whopping 7-2. That’s right: Pascal Leclaire, apparently a professional athlete who was in fact quite good last year and not a bison friche puppy in goalie pads, gave up SEVEN goals on NINETEEN shots. To the Oilers.

I honestly cannot think of a worse night from any goaltender in the 15 years or so I’ve been watching hockey on an addictive level. At least, not one that played the entire game.

I don’t like to, and in fact I believe I never have, refered to a beat writer’s musings on a game when giving out my own, but I had to make an exception in this case. Aaron Portzline does a great, great job over at the Columbus Dispatch’s Puck Rakers blog, and his thoughts on tonight’s game were of great importance to me, in no small part because I wanted to make sure what I had actually seen was not some insane hallucination. It wasn’t, and that kind of made my soul hurt.

How could any NHL-caliber goaltender, let alone the one who was among the league’s elite in EVERY statistical category, lay an egg quite so humorously large?

Now, okay, to be fair to Leclaire, he only gave up three goals through the first two periods and the game was, at that point, still within reach, even if the Oilers had a 3-1 lead despite a 29-8 shot advantage for the Beejes. While you never want your goalie posting a .625 save percentage at any point in a hockey game, I can almost see not giving him the hook. Almost. Only two of those goals, after all, were at even strength.

But then the Oilers scored 7:44 into the third to spread the lead even wider and, I’m sure, the patience of those valiant Blue Jackets fans in attendance even thinner. It was Edmonton’s fourth goal on 11 shots. For some reason that I can only imagine involves some sort of sado-masochistic relationship between Leclaire and Ken Hitchcock, Steve Mason stayed on the bench as a fashionable hat model (pick up your official Steve Mason cap at shop.nhl.com!).

Then the Blue Jackets scored to pull within two again. No need to pull Leclaire now, there’s a game to be won! Except Leclaire didn’t stop the flow of blood that was cascading like a river from inside his crease. He instead decided to open the wounds further to facilitate the evacuation of said blood and gave up three goals on six shots in the space of just 2:03. Ballgame.

Portzline reported that after the game, Hitchcock said he didn’t give Leclaire the hook because, “it all happened too quick. If he had it to do over again, he said he would have pulled him after the fifth goal.”

The FIFTH? Why even trot him out there for the third period? Why let him stay in after the fourth goal put Edmonton up by three? How did a three-, four-, or five-goal deficit sneak up on an NHL coach? I understand that the team has little to no faith in any of its goaltenders, but Mason isn’t 12-of-19 bad. In fact, the worst he’s been is 22-of-26 bad. That’s a difference of .214 in the ol’ save percentage category on Mason’s WORST day. They fired Barry Melrose for less than this.

Not that the Blue Jackets helped Leclaire’s cause any. Their play in all three zones was poor, but they were especially woeful in their own end (gasp!). Relatively simple attacking plays were cutting through the Columbus D with surgical precision, and the penalty kill was just atrocious. Any time you give up a pair of PPGs to the Oil on three kills, two of which were abbreviated by previous Edmonton penalties (and one of those was just 29 seconds), you had a Lehman Brothers-type day at the office.

I don’t know who could have enjoyed a game like this. Even the staunchest Oiler supporter must have at least felt the slightest urge to pop in their “Old Yeller” DVD for a little bit of a pick-me-up.

It would be terribly tragic if it weren’t so goddamn hilarious.

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The Lead

What a zany night in Columbus.

Blue Jackets lead by two, Oilers score four straight, Blue Jackets come back with two goals in 54 seconds to tie and then win it with 1:09 to play in regulation. Neither team had the desire to play anything resembling defense, and the Blue Jackets won 5-4.

Not sure what I thought would happen going into a Columbus/Edmonton game featuring Steve Mason and Dwayne Roloson between the pipes, but this was weird even by those standards. If you’re like me and you enjoy a team grinding out 2-1 Ws more than a 13-12 shootout win, this clearly wasn’t the game for you headed into the night, but there was something about the game that had me intrigued.

The game also happened to be the NHL debut of Columbus netminder Steve Mason, who proved not totally incompetent in net. I’m sure that’s a welcome change of pace for the Blue Jackets after that debacle of a performance that Freddy Norrena handed in for most of the team’s overtime loss to the Islanders the other night. I mean, sure, he gave up four goals to the Oilers, who aren’t exactly running the same type of offensive dynamo as the mid-’80s iteration of the team, but most of the goals he did give up (particularly the one to Ethan Moreau, of all people) were absolutely ridiculous snipes.

At the other end of the ice, Dwayne Roloson was a trainwreck. Apart from the very pretty snapper from Kristian Huselius that drew first blood and Derek Brassard’s goal on an odd-man rush, the Blue Jackets scored on nothing but second and third chances that, in most cases, Rolie probably should’ve held onto. He made 33 saves, but if he actually held onto two or three of them, the Oil would’ve walked away with an easy win. Things are never easy in Edmonton, but this would be a much better team if their goalies’ collective goalie stats weren’t 3.00/.899. The fact that seven of their 12 games this season have been decided by one goal is incredible enough, but they’ve been fortunate to go 5-0-1 in those before tonight, and that kind of “success” (it’s luck, really) doesn’t last forever.

To be fair, though, the defending tonight was a total gong show for both teams, but especially so for Edmonton on Manny Malhotra’s game-winner. You have to watch a looooooooot of hockey to see 3-on-2 defense that’s that bad from an NHL team. Honestly, an incredible amount. Both D corps were almost criminally negligent on at least two goals apiece tonight. Kyle Brodziak’s first goal of the year came when he was left alone in the slot for what must have, to Mason, felt like an hour and the low breakdown on Moreau’s shorty was equally bad. For Edmonton, the comedy of errors was highlighted by Malhotra’s late dagger, but not to be forgotten is the standing-around in which the Oilers’ defense engaged for Huselius’ goal. Had the Souray-Staios pairing had pockets in their hockey pants, their hands would have been firmly planted in them. Despite all that stellar defense though, the power plays were still ineffective, going a combined 2 for 11.

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Earlier tonight, Columbus’ Jared Boll went on the IR with a head and neck injury that will have him miss seven to 10 days.

In his place from the Syracuse Crunch comes the No. 6 overall draft pick, Nikita Filatov, who has scored two goals and is a +1 in the two games since the AHL season began.

More to the point, he brings a certain amount of skill to the Blue Jackets that Boll, who is a fine fighter and intimidator, simply cannot. With Columbus scoring just eight goals in its first three games, and five coming in the opener, the team was clearly in need of offensive help.

Filatov’ll do okay in that role and (hopefully) stay up for good.

For some terrible reason (and I’m assuming it’s that they’re among the worst-run franchises in hockey), when Columbus made final cuts today, it kept eight defensemen. Why? Who knows.

Which would be fine, except these are the players they kept up:

Forwards (13): Rick Nash, R.J. Umberger, Kristian Huselius, Fredrik Modin, Jiri Novotny, Andrew Murray, Jason Chimera, Derick Brassard, Jake Voracek, Alexandre Picard, Michael Peca, Jared Boll and Manny Malhotra

Defensemen (8): Jan Hejda, Mike Commodore, Fedor Tyutin, Rostislav Klesla, Kris Russell, Christian Backman, Ole-Kristian Tollefsen and Marc Methot

Goaltenders (2): Pascal Leclaire, Fredrik Norrena

This means that, among the few remaining cuts was dynamic 18-year-old rookie Nikita Filatov, who has been flat-out incredible in his two games for the Jackets this preseason. On Sunday, for example, he helped Columbus beat the Leafs with a goal in the first period and the shootout winner. Said CBJ coach Ken Hitchcock after that performance:

You can see marked improvement every time (Filatov) steps on the ice. … He’s just scratching the surface on what we think is going to be a heck of a player.

This, for those who haven’t been following the goingson in Columbus particularly closely (and who can blame you?), is because Filatov had a hairline fracture in his leg that prevented him from attending rookie camp or showing up to real camp on time.

It’s unfortunate, especially for those of you who, like me, drafted Filatov for your fantasy team. Seemed like a hell of a late-round pick at the time. Handsy Russians usually do okay in Columbus, and Filatov strikes one as much less of a selfish jerk than, say, Nik Zherdev. The problem, too, is that my league is one that does not allow player movement of any kind. I have nine forwards, three defensemen and two goalies for the whole season, and now one roster spot is wasted on a kid that could spend half the year in Syracuse. Don’t they realize this is costing me money?

I now officially hate the Blue Jackets. Seriously, Marc Methot over this guy? Christ.

We’re now something like 32 days out from the start of the NHL season so I figure this is as good a time as any to start doing the season previews. This is mainly for two reasons: 1) I am lazy and there’s no way I’ll do one of these every day, and 2) This is early enough that if I just stop doing them entirely you’ll have forgotten by October anyway. Oh and I guess also to show off my near-infinite knowledge of the National Hockey League. I’ll be previewing the teams in reverse order of finish in the 2007-08 season. Please note, though, that this is the opinion of one man, however smart and handsome he may be.

Columbus Blue Jackets, you’re on the clock.

This isn’t the first time the Blue Jackets have dropped big money in the offseason in hopes of reaching the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. Right after the lockout, the team spent tons of cash on over-the-hill versions of Adam Foote and Sergei Fedorov. Fedorov was pulling down $6.08 million on the cap, and Foote was getting $4.6 million.

Money not-so-well spent. In the nearly three years both were with the team (they were traded at the deadline this year to Colorado and Washtington), Columbus won 35, 33 and 34 games. Ouch.

But with that $10-plus million freed up — along with a bunch more from letting some overpaid players go — it allowed the Jackets to either sign or trade for a number of players. It’s been a very busy offseason. Some of the moves help them now, some down the road, and some simply don’t.

The moves at the blue line seem nice. Free agent signing Mike Commodore is well-traveled and a very solid player. He’s well worth the $3.75 million he’ll get the next couple years, but by the end of this five-year deal, I’m not so sure. But maybe one of the best trades of the offseason for any team was what really beefed up the once-thin Jackets blue line. Offloading troublesome winger Nik Zherdev and promising but underperforming center Danny Fritsche for Christian Backman (eh) and Fedor Tyutin (hey!) addresses where Columbus really had problems. Flashy forwards like Zherdev make highlight reels but they don’t play defense, and that’s been Columbus’ problem, theoretically at least.

More after the jump.

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Here is a list of left wings that are currently under contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets: Rick Nash, Fredrik Modin, Kristian Huselius, Jason Chimera, and Raffi Torres.

Here is a list of centers that are currently under contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets: Jiri Novotny, Manny Malhotra, and Derick Brassard.

Here is a list of right wings that are currently under contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets: Jared Boll.

So today they signed R.J. Umberger and Mike Peca. Both centers.

The Columbus Post Dispatch also reported that they will negotiate with two restricted free agents, goaltender Pascal Leclaire and center/left wing (again, not right wing) Nikita Filatov.

Umm, does Scott Howson not see a problem with this? A center is not a right wing, and neither is a left wing. What the hell is Columbus going to do this year? The best remaining right wings in the free agent pool are David Vyborny (26 points last season), who played in Columbus last year and in whom Howson has expressed little interest, Trevor Letowski (18 points) and Martin Lapointe (13). All three are north of 30 and all three, frankly, were never especially good.

Columbus has a few very mediocre prospects to fill its right side, but any team that wants to make the playoffs for the first time in franchise history, which is ostensibly what Columbus is trying to achieve, probably shouldn’t have Adam Pineault getting second-line minutes every night.