The Columbus Blue Jackets are down to their final four regular season home games. They start a stretch of three in a row this week when they host the Ottawa Senators for the first and only time this season Tuesday night.
The Senators won both games against the Blue Jackets north of the border by scores of 3-2 and 4-0. With just one point, the Senators will clinch a spot in the NHL Playoffs.
Meanwhile, the Blue Jackets could be eliminated on Tuesday night if they lose in regulation and Montreal wins in regulation. They will be making some lineup adjustments from Sunday’s game.
Couple Expected Changes
Head coach Dean Evason did confirm that Elvis Merzlikins will start in net on Tuesday. He came in relief of Daniil Tarasov on Sunday after two early goals against.
When asked about the lineup, Evason said there would be “lots” of changes. However, he chose not to elaborate on what those particular changes would be.
“We’re trying to make the best decision for the team in order to give ourselves and not just to score goals as I’m sure there’s been a focus on that with you guys,” Evason said. “But just to have the well-rounded game that the Columbus Blue Jackets play. And if we do that, we’ll get the results that we need.”
Based on who skated late, there does appear to be two changes coming. Jake Christiansen skated with Erik Gudbranson on the third pair in line rushes. Christiansen would replace Jack Johnson in the lineup on defense. Christiansen recently came back from injury as he played in the first game against the Senators back on March 29. Then up front, Zach Aston-Reese would replace Yegor Chinakhov.
Here are how the lines looked at the Blue Jackets’ morning skate.
- Boone Jenner – Sean Monahan – Kirill Marchenko
- James van Riemsdyk – Adam Fantilli – Kent Johnson
- Dmitri Voronkov – Cole Sillinger – Mathieu Olivier
- Zach Aston Reese – Sean Kuraly – Justin Danforth
- Zach Werenski – Dante Fabbro
- Denton Mateychuk – Ivan Provorov
- Jake Christiansen – Erik Gudbranson
- Elvis Merzlikins
Dealing With Conflict Management
The Blue Jackets come into Tuesday’s game just 3-6-1 in their last 10 games. Their performances since the Stadium Series win slid them out of playoff contention.
With that comes an expected amount of frustration for everyone involved but especially with the players in the locker room. One of the challenges the Blue Jackets now face is how to deal with the fallout of potentially not making the playoffs this season.
Evason opened up about how he tries to keep things even keeled despite the current circumstances looking bleak.
“It gets difficult sometimes with that with just trying to manage the personalities individually and then collectively as a team,” Evason said. “You want to try to keep it as upbeat as you can, but yet you don’t want to go to the point where it’s not business-like. So it’s a fine like and we talk about all the time. We talk about individuals. We speak to individuals and then as a coaching team, we talk about how we want to deliver that message to the team that we can get the best game that we possibly can in order to give ourselves a chance to have two points.”
“There’s different voices that deliver the message that we want. Obviously, there’s individual meetings that are conducted by one-on-one staff and sometimes that’s me. Sometimes, it’s other coaches. And same as the message in the room. Just because the message gets delivered by somebody, it 100% means that it’s coming from our team of coaches and extended that with Don (Waddell) and his crew. Obviously, we communicate with them and hopefully deliver the right message at the right time in order to get the best out of our team.”
With seven guys that have to sit out each game, these are conversations that happen frequently. The Blue Jackets have overcame a lot of things in 2024-25. Now they have to find a way to make the most of the end of this season even if they won’t make the playoffs.
Conflict management is expected to be a big part of things down the stretch.
Side Dishes
- Evason said Tuesday that they feel they are doing good things despite not getting the results. “I don’t get too deep into the analytics but obviously we have it, our projected goals, how many we’ve actually scored. You go over the last 10 games and it’s like we haven’t scored and we’re averaging over three goals a game (expected) but you don’t score. And it’s let’s work on our goal scoring. So yeah, it’s frustrating.”
- Former Blue Jacket Anton Forsberg will start Tuesday against his former club.
- Per Nat Stat Trick for perspective, the Blue Jackets were expected to score 4.44 goals between their last two goals. They suffered consecutive shutouts. Meanwhile, they were expected to allow 5.69 goals in that span. They gave up a total of nine. It shows the Blue Jackets have had chances. But the combination of not being able to finish while allowing more than expected have contributed to a frustrating set of circumstances at the end of this season.