Columbus Blue Jackets Doomed by Momentum Changes in Game 5 Loss
After being knocked out of the playoffs last night, the Columbus Blue Jackets have many reasons to be frustrated.
Sergei Bobrovsky struggled again, special teams weren’t great, and they didn’t find a way to score goals on the road. These were the biggest factors in the Columbus Blue Jackets taking an exit from the Stanley Cup Playoffs Thursday night.
Momentum changing plays dug the Jackets into a hole that they couldn’t escape throughout the series. The most notable being Alexander Wennberg’s goalie interference penalty. A call deemed poor by many on the CBJ side, Pittsburgh scored on the ensuing power play and again shortly after to put the game out of reach.
The call on the ice was questionable to say the least. As Tom Reed pointed out on Twitter, the referees could have instead ruled incidental contact instead of a minor penalty.
Should the Blue Jackets blame the refs for changing momentum in the series?
No, they should not. Even though one could make a compelling argument with examples like Wennberg’s penalty and Evgeni Malkin‘s flop after a Josh Anderson push, blaming the refs is always a bitter look. It’s also an incorrect one in this case. The Jackets were simply outmatched by a better team.
That being said, momentum changes were a big factor in the series against the Penguins. Sure, the refs made some bad calls, but it goes both ways.
The Columbus Blue Jackets are a talented team that just had their best season in franchise history. That’s not to say that nobody should care about a first round exit, but rather that building an organization doesn’t happen overnight, or in one season.
Bad calls are, unfortunately, part of the landscape of sports. Let’s not make fools of ourselves by blaming the refs for a first round exit. If able to build off of this season, the Jackets should be able to continue to make the playoffs for the foreseeable future. A playoff series win will happen sooner rather than later, no matter what the refs do.