For all of the good that came from the opening night win by the Blue Jackets, there is a glaring elephant in the room. Defenseman Jake Christiansen was benched once again, and for a team that is shorthanded on the blue line, that is very concerning.
With Damon Severson, Ivan Provorov, and Dante Fabbro all on the injured reserve (IR), the Jackets need everyone on the blue line to pitch in and take on a larger role. Unfortunately, Christiansen just cannot seem to earn the trust of head coach Rick Bowness, an issue that dates back to last season.
He started with a regular shift last night, playing 4:34 in the first period (7 shifts, one for just 1 second). But as the game wore on, his ice time dwindled. He got just two shifts in the second (1:39, one for 4 seconds, another for 9 seconds) and one shift in the third (52 seconds), giving him a grand total of 7:05 on the night.
Christiansen was once again buried in the depth chart, behind a guy who was a late training camp signee off of a PTO (professional tryout agreement), and a guy who was literally thrown into the trade to make money work for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
That PTO signee, Carson Soucy, played 20:15 last night. Emil Andrae-traded twice in the last four months-played 15:37, all at even strength. This is very telling of how the Jackets feel about Christiansen's game. If you do the math, they view him as roughly their 9th-best defenseman...behind two guys who weren't even under contract with the team last week.
What is the problem?
I went back and watched through each of Jake's shifts in last night's game, and there wasn't one specific "A-HA" moment. However, if you pay close attention to him when he's on the ice, it's also not really difficult to see where the issue lies.
In the first period, I thought he made some good reads, especially at the offensive end. He did have one glaring turnover on his second shift, which led to a 1-on-1 rush the other way, against his D partner Erik Gudbranson. One mistake isn't a big deal, and certainly didn't lead to his benching.
But the issues he had were in his own end, and those add up-even when small. On his third shift of the game, the Jackets and Sabres were playing 4 on 4 hockey. Notably, on Buffalo's first goal of the game, he looks completely lost. It's not necessarily his man that scores the goal, but it's worth pointing out that he is guarding air-not even covering the guy closest to him on the ice. Where is he going?
On another first period shift, he lost a physical battle, and then hung back in front of the goal crease, leaving ample time and space for a Sabre to dust the puck off and fire a shot on goal from the right circle.
His worst shift (probably the one that sealed his TOI fate) came late in the second period. The Jackets get hemmed into their own end for much of that shift, and early on, you can see Gudbranson directing traffic, trying to put him in the right spot. But as the shift continues on, he stick-checks a Sabre clear across the ice, leaving the lane he's supposed to be covering wide open.
This results in a drive to the net, with Kent Johnson taking a hooking penalty to avoid giving up a quality scoring chance. While it's hard to pen this all on Christiansen, it's another example of him simply not understanding the task at hand. He takes himself well out of position and doesn't defend the right part of the ice.
It's also worth noting that, as the game wore on, there were more and more special teams opportunities. Jake isn't going to get a shift on the penalty kill, and he's well down the depth chart as far as potential power-play time.
All of this tells me the obvious: the Jackets would be better off bringing someone more capable of playing defense in, and sending Jake back the other way. They have a guy in the AHL that seems like he would be a step up, at least on the defensive side of the puck.
Either way, when bodies start to come back into the lineup, the writing is on the wall here. The Blue Jackets need to end the Jake Christiansen experiment, once and for all.
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