Columbus Blue Jackets Prospects Dominate in First Game at Traverse City

Although the NHL season isn’t here yet, the Columbus Blue Jackets have began play–sort of.

The brightest youngsters in the Columbus Blue Jackets organization took the ice in Traverse City, Michigan Friday to take on the Dallas Stars as part of the Traverse City NHL Prospect Tournament.

Many knew that the play of the CBJ’s forward corps would be a huge factor in a victory, but nearly nobody could’ve predicted what went down in Friday’s game.

The trio of Vitaly Abramov, Paul Bittner and Pierre-Luc Dubois showed off their scoring as each put two pucks in the net to combine for six goals. Bobby MacIntyre added another goal to top the scoring effort out at seven.

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The Stars were not so big on scoring. Niklas Hansson and Nick Caamano tallied a goal each, but that was all that came from Dallas’ side in a 7-2 shellacking.

Goaltender and 2016-17 USHL Player of the Year Matiss Kivlenieks had a pretty solid game. It was probably one of the easier games he’ll have in the tournament with the Jackets’ forwards being so aggressive and successful with the puck. He did allow an easy goal off a misplay, but things should get better as he becomes more comfortable.

Following the win, we put out a poll on our Twitter, asking the fans who they thought deserved Most Valuable Player honors. We gave three players and an ‘other’ option, but it was really a landslide for one player.

Vitaly Abramov took 85% of the votes while Dubois came in at second with just 13%. Bittner received something at least and nobody thought that anybody outside of these three deserved it.

Some people are skeptical of Abramov because of his size–he’s really tiny–but so is Cam Atkinson, and he seems to be pretty good at scoring. As long as Abramov has some beef out on the ice with him to somewhat shield him from some hits, he should be fine.

The Columbus Blue Jackets’ next game will pit them against the Minnesota Wild, who came back from 5-1 to defeat the St. Louis Blues 6-5. The teams will square off at 7:30pm ET Saturday.