The Columbus Blue Jackets finished the month of October with a big thud Monday night in Dallas. Despite leading 2-1 at one point, they couldn’t hold off the Stars attack. The 5-3 loss gave the Blue Jackets an October record of 3-4-2.
Monday’s performance caused head coach Pascal Vincent to hold a practice on Tuesday. He admitted to the media on Tuesday that it was his intention to give his team a surprise day off. However he couldn’t do that after saying everyone paid the price for the performance of some guys.
That game wrapped up an interesting month of October for the Blue Jackets. The loss marked the team’s fourth in a row with two of them coming in overtime. But yet a win on Thursday against the Tampa Bay Lightning would put them at 4-4-2 or hockey .500.
The question to consider today is how did this October performance compare to last October? On the surface, it seemed like there were some areas of improvement. A closer examination reveals a mixed bag of results.
Numbers Overview
Here is how the Blue Jackets fared in October 2023.
- Record 3-4-2. 8 of a possible 18 points. Points percentage of .444.
- 23 goals for, an average of 2.56 goals/game.
- 30 goals against, an average of 3.33 goals/game.
- Power play was 5 for 31 in October for 16.1% including just 2 for 21 on home ice. The 16.1% ranked 18th in the NHL.
- Penalty kill allowed 5 goals on 31 chances for 83.9% kill rate which ranked 10th in the NHL.
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Now here is how the Blue Jackets fared in October 2022.
- Record of 3-7-0. 6 of a possible 20 points. Points percentage of .300.
- 26 goals for, an average of 2.60 goals/game.
- 44 goals against, an average of 4.40 goals/game.
- Power play went 0 for 25 last October. The Blue Jackets didn’t get their first power-play goal until November when Jake Voracek scored in the first game of the Finland series against Colorado.
- Penalty kill allowed 6 goals on 32 chances for 81.3% kill rate.
Offense Slightly Worse
Despite getting the likes of Alex Texier back and having Adam Fantilli make the team out of training camp, the Blue Jackets saw a very slight drop in offensive production. One look at the stats and it’s easy to see why.
Johnny Gaudreau did not score a goal in his nine October games, a first for his career. Texier didn’t record a single point in the month. Kirill Marchenko also went goalless after scoring 21 last season.
The Blue Jackets’ top guys haven’t performed the way they had hoped they would. Especially in the case of Gaudreau, it’s reasonable to expect some correction there. He won’t keep a 0.0% shooting percentage all season. He has the most shots on goal in the NHL that hasn’t scored yet.
Also Patrik Laine has missed the the Blue Jackets’ last five games after he took a high hit from Rasmus Andersson. This has caused some shuffling of lines. Consistency is something the team is still looking for. Laine hasn’t started skating yet. Vincent said last Sunday he thinks Laine was more week-to-week so the team will have to find ways to score without him for the time being.
The biggest issue though on tape is not getting enough high-quality looks. The Blue Jackets are at their best when they are driving the net and creating chaos in front of opposing goalies. While it’s happened in spurts, it hasn’t happened enough where it’s translated to more offense.
The power play was better this October connecting five times, but yet overall goals was down. This points to the need for improvement with their five-on-five play. Guys are still adjusting to the new system Vincent is trying to implement. It’s expected that until there is more of a comfort level there, scoring could suffer a little bit. It has so far. However that should start trending upward with more experience and comfort.
The team is playing faster. That should lead to more opportunities to score in the future. Couple that with the top guys eventually finding their game and the Blue Jackets are primed to show improvement in the goal scoring department. Although it may take some time to get there still.
Defense is Improved But…
The big thing that jumps out for the Blue Jackets is that they’re allowing over a goal less per game than last October. That was expected given the blue-line makeover they had.
Adding two NHL caliber defensemen in Damon Severson and Ivan Provorov will lead to an improvement from where the Blue Jackets were at last season. The question was how much of an improvement?
Dropping from 4.40 to 3.33 is a good start. But the Blue Jackets won’t win many games if they continue to average 3.33 goals every time they play. There is still plenty of room for improvement especially given they average just 2.56 goals per game.
The Blue Jackets have kept their six defensemen together of late. That’s Werenski playing with Severson, Provorov playing with David Jiricek and Jake Bean playing with Erik Gudbranson.
Until Monday’s game, the Werenski/Severson pair were playing well together. They got crushed in Dallas on Monday. That pair in particular makes over $15 million combined. They have to lead the way for the Blue Jackets to see continued improvement defensively.
“I think we just see the game similarly,” Werenski said of Severson. “We both have an offensive minded thought process. We can make plays, find each other and find the forwards. We can read off each other well. So it’s been going good so far.”
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Provorov and Jiricek have been an effective pair since Vincent put them together. Jiricek in particular continues to make strides in his game and is at a point where his play is keeping him in the lineup over both Andrew Peeke and Adam Boqvist.
The goaltending started well but has slipped some of late. Elvis Merzlikins slipped under .900 after Monday’s game and has a season save percentage of .898. Meanwhile Spencer Martin has a .922 in his three starts. The team has a combined .908 save percentage this season. It was .872 in October 2022 so that is encouraging. Still Merzlikins needs to be able to prove he can play at a number-one level moving forward.
Mixed Bag of Results
In all, the Blue Jackets have improved from last October. Their defense and goaltending are off to better starts but their offense needs to start picking it up the way they can. Their -7 goal differential is tied for the worst in the Eastern Conference entering Wednesday night’s action.
There’s reason to be both optimistic and worried at the same time. The offense should correct itself once the top guys break out of their slump. But will they do it in time to stay in the playoff race? And can the Blue Jackets get continued improvement keeping the puck out of their net?
October was a good start for the Blue Jackets. But they still have a long way to go in order to make something out of this season.