The Blue Jackets took their best effort on the road last night, playing a very hard game against the Minnesota Wild. Unfortunately, they were unable to focus that energy in the right direction, and wound up losing a tight 2-1 game.
It's pretty tough to complain about the team's energy last night. It was their second start in just 23 hours, and I thought they did about as well as we could expect them to do skating against a well-rested Wild team.
The first period was easily the best period for the Blue Jackets last night. Though they coughed up an early 5-on-3 power-play to the Wild, they held tight and got it killed off. It took them a little while to get going, but excluding that big advantage, the period was played mostly even.
Soucy dished up a pizza.
Minnesota struck first, thanks to an honest-to-goodness brutal turnover by CBJ defenseman Carson Soucy. I'm not sure why the plan was to dish this puck 90' across the ice and back towards his own end (into the pressure, no less), but the Wild stick-checked him and forced the turnover. Then, they made no mistake off of the rush.
I'll state the obvious: if this were Jake Christiansen or Emil Andrae, we wouldn't see them on the ice again until December. I'm not sure what this team's love affair is with Soucy, but he's clearly been the worst defenseman over the last couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, Guillaume Richard is seemingly ready to go...
They didn't break.
The most encouraging news from last night, is that the Blue Jackets didn't completely fall apart when that goal happened. They got right back to work, and on the very next shift, Conor Garland showed us a glimpse into the kind of player he can be.
A hard working shift by #83 drew a penalty on the Wild, and with the goaltender pulled thanks to the delayed call, the Jackets got on the board. Once they were set up, they passed around the perimeter a bit to open up space.
What made this play however, was Sean Monahan making a more dangerous pass. He put the puck right through their defensive scheme to Zach Werenski, which broke down the coverage and allowed Adam Fantilli to walk in and fire the puck through a Valeri Nichushkin screen and into the net. This would be a good tape to show them as they work on improving their power-play.
From low to high and in the back of the net 💥
— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) October 18, 2026
CBJ x @FanaticsSports pic.twitter.com/MBJlqVEyxj
Okay, now the bad news. This was the only highlight of the night for this team offensively. After this goal, the Jackets managed just 8 more shots the rest of the way, and I can't recall a single one of them really challenging Wild goaltender Jesper Wallstedt.
Cam Talbot did a fantastic job at the other end, making 32 saves on the night-but he could not stop them all. Kirill Kaprizov fired home the eventual game winner early in the second period, and the Wild essentially locked the game down from there on out.
Defense at the expense of offense?
The Jackets split their weekend back-to-back, while allowing only 2 goals. A week ago, I think a lot of us would have been happy with that outcome. Unfortunately, they only scored twice themselves, which now has us wondering if this team has become too defensive.
It is worth noting that a lot of this team's offense is going to come from the back-end, and it's really tough to generate scoring from the blue line when those guys are being held more accountable. It's even tougher to ask for more offense out of a guy like Zach Werenski, who played half of all of their minutes this weekend.
The next step in this team's development is finding a solid balance between both ends of the ice. They have shown us that they can defend. Now, they have to find ways to score more goals. Lets see if they can do it tomorrow night against Toronto.
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