Another Tuesday, another loss for the Columbus Blue Jackets. After what seemed like a promising summer for the team, landing a couple of top-four defenders and the reigning Hobey Baker Award winner, has turned into another blunder of a start to the year. Their Dec. 5, 2023, game against the Los Angeles Kings was a microcosm of the team’s past several seasons and a sign that things aren’t getting any better.
It was a home game for Ohio’s team and they got off to a pretty decent start. They held even in shots with the Kings, who are a top-five team in the standings, through the first two periods and were even able to get ahead on the scoreboard. They notched three goals and started the third period with a 3-0 lead. Los Angeles only needed 23 seconds in the final stanza to dent the twine. That signaled the breaking of the levee, as the second goal was four and a half minutes later and a third another minute and a half after that. While Columbus was able to hold even with the Kings long enough to make it to extra innings, future Hockey Hall of Famer Drew Doughty secured the win with a clean slapshot 33 seconds into the fourth frame.
There were some positives in this game. The struggling Johnny Gaudreau put up a goal and an assist. The Blue Jackets’ 27th-ranked powerplay capitalized on its only opportunity and looked great in getting set up and passing the puck around the offensive zone. They were also able to hold off the red-hot Kings through the rest of the third period to pick up the extra standings point and now sit in 15th place in the Eastern Conference (even though that’s only one point ahead of the Ottawa Senators who have seven games in hand).
Despite those positives, there were also a lot of learning moments for the team and a few takeaways from the game. We’ll look into a few of those issues that are plaguing the team, particularly those which reared their ugly heads in this one.
The Blue Jackets Still Cannot Be Trusted With A Lead
There is now too much history with this core of Blue Jackets to suggest that they can be trusted to hold a lead, no matter how big. It hasn’t been a few weeks of struggle, this has been a several years-long problem for the franchise. The one key example that comes to my mind is the Jan. 1, 2022 game against the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Jackets were coming in with a 15-14-1 record to challenge a division-leading Hurricanes team with a 23-7-1 record. They started with confidence and got ahead early with four goals in the first half of the game. They were heavily outshot but showed they were in the game on the scoreboard. Then for whatever reason, they ran out of steam. The Hurricanes scored two goals to close out the second period, then another five in the third, for a comeback of all comebacks with seven consecutive goals.
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Ten players who were on the ice for that 7-4 shelling on New Year’s Day 2022 were dressed for the Jackets in this game against the Kings. We’re coming up on the second anniversary of that fateful affair and where is the progress? Management talks about daily growth and accountability, but this game was nearly identical to that gong show nearly two calendar years ago. They’ve blown through two new coaches since then and still, there’s been little growth and little accountability. This core of players is proving that they’re incapable of being trusted with a lead.
Merzlikins Confidence is Still Shaky
One key question coming into this season revolved around Blue Jackets’ starting goalie Elvis Merzlikins. After an abhorrent 2022-23 season, would he be able to bounce back? The answer so far is: maybe. He’s certainly gotten closer to returning to the player that earned a five-year contract extension at a $5.4 million cap hit, but his confidence is still shaky.
After a perfect couple of periods to start the game with 23 saves, he let in a tough deflection goal from Phillip Danault right at the beginning of the third period. For anyone who has watched this team for long enough, you had a pretty good idea this could be a watershed moment. Maybe all the times that Columbus has given up leads in the past are starting to become a self-fulfilling cyclical prophecy for the team. More importantly, it could be one for Merzlikins because his body language seemed to change after that goal.
From then on, the goals got less easy to explain than the ones before it. To be clear, I’m not putting this loss on the shoulders of Merzlikins. However, it was clear to see that he, along with the team in front of him, lost the wind in their sails after that first Kings’ marker. The second goal could have been stopped by better defensive positioning of player and netminder to get better control of the crease. The same could be said of the third goal since defender Ivan Provorov was knocked out of position and the puck actually went in off of Merzlikins’ back as he was spun around and out of position. The game-winner too, a clear line of sight on a cross-crease laser beam shot, could have been preventable.
Clearly the 29-year-old netminder is still trying to get his mojo back. It’s been a long process, but he’s been one of the few players who has seen actual progress this season. In several games aside from this one, the feisty Latvian has been the team’s best player. If he can continue to grow and find more unconditional self-confidence, he could still prove that he is one of the better goalies in the league.
Blue Jackets’ Fourth Line Cannot Be Their Go-To
There were a couple of interesting stats in this game that blew me away. Generally a fourth-line winger, Justin Danforth led all Blue Jackets’ forwards in time-on-ice (TOI) with 18:33. Third on the list was fourth-line center Sean Kuraly, with 17:12 TOI, and not too far down the list was another fourth-line winger, Eric Robinson, with 16:43 TOI.
All three of those players are 28 or 30 years old and have found their ceilings as bottom-six role players. To be frank, they have absolutely no business playing that many minutes over the young players who will make up the future of this team. It’s not like any of those players had a particularly excellent game, either. None of them showed up on the scoreboard and they were all minus-1 or minus-2.
Each of those three players played significantly more than Johnny Gaudreau (16:37 TOI), Dmitri Voronkov (15:25), Adam Fantilli (10:11), and Kent Johnson (8:06). When going through a crisis in confidence, as many of the Blue Jackets best skill players are, what kind of message does it send to someone like Gaudreau, who scored a goal and an assist in this game, when the coaches are playing Danforth two minutes more than him?
I get the accountability factor, but it seems like head coach Pascal Vincent, just like his predecessor Brad Larsen, is trying a little too hard to show how much he approves of the fourth line’s work ethic. In doing so, he’s starving the rest of his lineup and his young players of valuable ice time in key situations when they could learn and grow their confidence in their game.
It’s like how every company seems to want six years of experience for an entry-level job. How do you expect those young players to get that experience, on a non-contending “entry-level” team like the Blue Jackets, if they’re never given an opportunity? They’ve got to stop relying so heavily on their tried and true fourth line for every tight game and allow their younger guys to make some mistakes and learn from them.
Blue Jackets’ Next Outings
The Blue Jackets play next on Long Island against the New York Islanders on Thursday, Dec. 8, before a two-game homestand on Friday, Dec. 9, against the St. Louis Blues and Sunday, Dec. 10, against the Florida Panthers. While they may already seem out of the playoff race, how they perform in the next eight contests before the Christmas break will be key in finding out how late in the schedule they’ll be playing meaningful hockey games. As of right now, it doesn’t look promising.
