You know things aren’t the best for the Columbus Blue Jackets when both the head coach and their best player both admit they’ve never gone through anything like they’re going through now. After yet another blown third-period multi-goal lead, both Dean Evason and Zach Werenski conceded that fact.
The Blue Jackets held a 3-1 lead after 40 minutes. They allowed the next three including Kris Letang’s overtime winner to lift the Pittsburgh Penguins to a 4-3 win in front of a Black Friday sellout crowd at Nationwide Arena.
The topic of late blown leads is something that as Werenski said postgame, they’re sick of talking about. He also said the media is sick of asking about it (he’s right) and the fans are sick of seeing it (also right.)
Here’s Werenski from Friday night on not going through something like this before: “I’ve never gone through something like this but I think after talking to him (Charlie Coyle), teams go through all different stuff, different adversity, whether it’s this or maybe bad starts or whatever it is. So how many games we’ve won for a period it’s…I’ve never gone through this before. But it is adversity. And if you do resolve it, you usually come out stronger on the other side. And, you know, it’s tough to do this right now. I do think it’ll make us a stronger, better hockey club once we figure it out.”
Now here’s Evason: “I’m sure there’s been situations late in games that there’s been spells where we squeeze it a little bit tight or we get down or whatever on ourselves as a team. I can’t recall any exact comparison to this.”
What the Blue Jackets are going through is more than a couple-game trend. It was their way of life in the month of November.
When all is said and done looking back at this, the Blue Jackets are truly not that far off. They are .591 in their last 11 games which is crazy to consider (4-2-5 record, 13 of possible 22 points.)
But what the Blue Jackets are doing is overthinking. That has caused them to fall down the NHL standings. They woke up Saturday morning in last place in the Metropolitan Division.
It’s a Team Problem
Overthinking is a team problem. While there are some individual performances that could certainly be better, both the players and the coaches are overthinking what’s going on.
Let’s look at the two sides of this. From the player’s standpoint, the third period of the game Friday night puts this into perspective.
Werenski scores at the end of the second period to make it 3-1. More often than not, those last second goals are back breaking to the team that allowed it.
Not here though. It only took the Penguins 13 seconds to cut the deficit to one.
13 seconds.
Especially given how much of a trend this has been, that’s the very last thing the Blue Jackets needed to do was to allow a goal at the start of the third. The Penguins did it in 13 seconds.
The whole dynamic of the third changed.
It wasn’t the same Blue Jackets’ team who played well in the first 40 minutes to build a 3-1 lead. As soon as it was 3-2, it only felt like a matter of time before the Penguins tied the game.
Thanks to a great individual play by Sidney Crosby, they did just that.
Here’s what ironic too. The Blue Jackets actually weren’t as bad in the third as you would think. They had more attempts and scoring chances in the period but Tristan Jarry made saves when needed.
Here’s Evason on the mood after the 3-2 goal: “We felt a bit of a…not necessarily a sag. It’s not like we change our game. Like tonight those two goals, they weren’t systematic mistakes. We didn’t say okay, let’s sit back or let’s be a little more aggressive. We got on the wrong side of people in key times, right? And key people. And they got two glorious opportunities because for whatever reason, we were moving forward as opposed to defending.”
That’s where the overthinking part comes in for the players. The Blue Jackets have had their chances to score. They haven’t buried as many as they’d like.
It’s natural for a player to perhaps cheat a little searching for offense. That’s where even when things aren’t going well, they have to stay within themselves and their systems.
Evason himself said his team was moving forward and not defending in those moments Friday. Collectively, the Blue Jackets need to stop overthinking.
The team has demonstrated they can play with anyone on most nights. Case in point? In the first 25 games this season, the Blue Jackets have really only had two games that would be considered true clunkers. The 4-1 loss to the Avalanche and the 5-1 loss to the Capitals last Monday. Every other game, the Blue Jackets had a chance to win at some point.
Mistakes are usually the result of a missed assignment or lack of execution. If they can take overthinking a situation out of the equation, that should set them back on course.
Play the last 20 minutes like they do the first 40 minutes. The Blue Jackets are more than capable of this. In November especially, they couldn’t do it consistently. They have gone 19 straight games not outscoring an opponent in the third period. Nineteen. That’s completely unacceptable for a team that has the talent it has.
But the coaches can do a better job too.
Coaches Too
Let’s look back at the start of overtime Friday night. The Penguins deployed Crosby, Bryan Rust and Erik Karlsson. The Blue Jackets countered with Werenski, Sean Monahan and Luca Pinelli.
Wait, what?
Pinelli, playing in just his second NHL game, opened overtime. It wasn’t Adam Fantilli. It wasn’t Kent Johnson who would thrive with all the extra open ice. The Blue Jackets opted playing Pinelli. He got caught on a long shift and was on the ice when Letang scored the winner.
What’s going on here? This is overthinking a situation. Evason was asked about this postgame. Here is what he said.
“He’s got a skill set,” Evason said of Pinelli. “He’s got some speed. He got caught out there obviously too long and he’s tired at the end clearly. There’s other things that go into it. Rust and Crosby aren’t the biggest guys so we start with (Monahan) and him and then we know they’re going to come back with Malkin and somebody, Hayes or whatever. So we were going (Coyle) and (Sillinger) against them. So we tried to match up a little bit as well. It was the same thing the other night when we started them. It was Tavares and Nylander maybe. So anyway, that was our thought process.”
Let’s give Pinelli credit for putting himself in that conversation. He’s been fine the first two games of his NHL career. We discussed that prior to Friday’s game how impressive he was in his debut.
But under no circumstances should it get to this point where the Blue Jackets aren’t sending out their most skilled players available to start overtime.
The Penguins played Crosby and Malkin. The Maples Leafs played Nylander and Auston Matthews. Meanwhile, the Blue Jackets left Fantilli and Johnson on the bench. It was multiple shifts before they saw the ice Wednesday against the Maple Leafs. They didn’t see the ice Friday. The game was over before they could get out there.
Why? And we haven’t even discussed the lines used during the third period. Pinelli played 1:29 more in the third than Fantilli Friday night. And Pinelli got the first crack in overtime too.
Again, why? What kind of a message does this send to your first line center who’s been on a tear of late? Even if there’s a trust issue in certain situations, let them play and get that experience.
Other teams are putting their best players out in key situations. The Blue Jackets haven’t of late. That’s coaching overthinking a situation. This time, it’s costing them points.
Remember how long it took Fantilli to crack the first power play unit? This has been going on for some time.
The Blue Jackets have talent. Yes, some of that talent is out of the lineup. But they’re good enough to get leads. We are not having this conversation if they can’t get a lead to start with.
But at the end of the day, keeping it simple works wonders. The third-period collapses is a symptom of a bigger problem that the team has full control over.
Stop overthinking every situation, especially later in games. If they can do that, they’ll be winning a lot of games again. How soon that happens is now up to them to figure out.
