Columbus Blue Jackets Fall to Blues in Second Preseason Game
The Columbus Blue Jackets played their first road preseason game of the year Wednesday evening against the St. Louis Blues.
A night after taking a shellacking from the Chicago Blackhawks in the preseason opener, the Columbus Blue Jackets were back on the ice to play the Blues in St. Louis. The Jackets looked tired and unfocused in their 5-2 loss to Chicago, so there wasn’t much reason to believe that they would be an entirely different team about 24 hours later, but they were.
The Jackets were expectedly rocking a different lineup from Tuesday’s with the likes of Cam Atkinson, Jack Johnson and Oliver Bjorkstrand making their preseason debuts.
Other than the well-known faces mentioned above, the CBJ’s lineup consisted mostly of young guys that will see much more time in Cleveland than in Columbus this season. On the other side of the ice, the Blues decided to put in some of their best and brightest such as Vladimir Tarasenko and Jaden Schwartz.
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That ended up being the difference as Schwartz scored one and assisted on one while Tarasenko added two goals for the Blues, including the game-winner in overtime. Zac Dalpe was the man for the Blue Jackets as he scored both of the team’s goals off of assists from Sonny Milano.
Penalties ended up being a big focus of the game again with the teams combining for 15 power plays and 30 PIM. The Blue Jackets were once again not very successful on the man-advantage as they went scoreless in their eight attempts while the Blues–and more specifically Tarasenko–scored twice in seven chances on the power play.
The CBJ also struggled again on faceoffs. After only winning 46% of the faceoffs against the Blackhawks on Tuesday, the Jackets failed to even hit that mark as the Blues gained 58% of the faceoffs.
Once again, we can criticize the guys’ play in the preseason. BUT DON’T JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS AND WRITE OFF THE SEASON!
The Blue Jackets will have the day off Thursday and will be back at home to face the Pittsburgh Penguins in Nationwide Arena on Friday for their third preseason game.