After a very uninspired effort in St Louis on Saturday night, the Blue Jackets returned home with a lot to prove against the Florida Panthers. Last night, they came out firing on all cylinders, but only for about 25 minutes total. Outside of that? Yikes.
The first period was sure promising. The Jackets controlled the pace of the game, outshooting the Panthers 10-8 and netting the game's first goal thanks to some nifty hands from Kent Johnson. I thought it was one of this team's best periods of the season so far.
After two days off, our confidence that they could keep up this pace was pretty high-especially considering the fact that the Panthers played yesterday afternoon. However, this is Blue Jackets hockey, baby. We should have known what was headed our way.
It started with one dumb mistake.
Believe it or not, the Panthers rally was started with a faceoff won by the Blue Jackets. Just to the right of Cam Talbot's goal, Charlie Coyle was kicked from the dot, but have no fear: Cole Sillinger can take draws, also. And he did well, winning the faceoff clean, which resulted in the puck going exactly where we wanted it to go: behind the net.
Which is exactly what makes Carson Soucy's decision here so puzzling. The breakout works perfectly. He has three passing options, with only one of them (the long pass) unavailable. He can send the puck up the boards to an uncovered Coyle, or dish it to his defense partner in the middle, opening up different options.
Instead, he tries to flip the puck to the neutral zone (in football, we would call this a punt), which is effectively turning it over. Only, instead of turning it over outside the blue line, he messes up the flip and turns it over to Matthew Tkachuk, who finds his brother Brady to tie the game. Of note: Soucy did this without any forechecking pressure. The forward coming at him was peeling off to back-check.
It all snowballed from there.
After that ugly mishap, the entire game went Florida's way. The most aggravating part of this if you're a Blue Jackets fan, is that it was all self inflicted. Five minor penalties and one major gave the Panthers too many opportunities.
Like a kid who keeps sticking a fork into an electrical outlet, the Jackets decided to keep testing the Panthers power-play. Of the six penalty kill opportunities on the night, they managed to kill off only two of them. Brady Tkachuk scored a natural hat trick in the second and added an assist in the third, while Matthew picked up 5 helpers on the night.
The frustrating thing is, if the Jackets could have just stayed out of the box, or killed off one or two more of those penalties, they were right in this thing. At even strength, they out-shot the Panthers 24-19. Per MoneyPuck, the expected goals were actually in favor of the Jackets at 5 on 5.
But those penalties took away their ability to roll four lines, which sat too many guys on the bench for too long and broke up the game flow. Even though they were able to score a couple of goals in garbage time, this game was well decided because of this team's lack of discipline.
After the game, head coach Rick Bowness mentioned that he hopes they were embarrassed by their performance. As a fan, I hope they were, because that's exactly how we feel this morning. Embarrassed by our team's play.
We're still waiting for that culture change, Rick.
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