With less than a minute remaining in the game against the Canucks on Tuesday, Henrik Sedin was camped out in front of Sergei Bobrovsky waiting for a pass/rebound. As the Jackets gained possession of the puck and looked to move it out of the zone, Sedin managed to get his stick up and into/through the mask of Sergei Bobrovsky, hitting him directly in the right eye. After viewing the play on several replays it began to look like, and speculation started to spread, that Henrik might have done it intentionally/maliciously.

I was surprised to see there was almost no fuss about the play today and no videos of the incident on YouTube so I decided to put one together. The full video of the incident is below:

The question is… did he do it on purpose? At the time I was fairly confident a player of his skill level couldn’t have done that accidentally if he tried.

But one of the replays may have changed my mind.

Here are several GIFs of the incident: Continue reading ‘Did Henrik Sedin intentionally spear Sergei Bobrovsky in the eye?’ »

The Blue Jackets are 5-0-2 in their last 7 games and have as many points (12) as they did in the previous 19 games combined…

Remember when Jackets, teetering on the brink of playoff contention elimination, rode on the backs of strong goaltending and opportunistic play by guys like Matt Calvert? When they increased their odds of making the playoffs by an order of magnitude in the double digits? When they went on a tear through the NHL that included a 3-0 shutout win over the Detroit Red Wings?

I of course speak of January & February of the 2010-11 season. Following a loss to the Phoenix Coyotes, the Jackets were looking at a pretty bleak 2.52% chance of making the playoffs. Steve Mason began playing out of his mind in net, posting two shutouts and 7 games of .925+ save %. By the time their run would end, the Jackets playoff chances had climbed all the way up to 29.24%. A win the next day against the Nashville Predators would have improved their chances of making the playoffs to over 40%.

Instead this happened:

Up 2-1 in the 3rd period against Nashville, a goal that was clearly fished “out” of the net could not be determined to have gone “in” the net (yay logic!). What would have put the Jackets up 3-1 instead left the game 2-1 and the Predators would end up scoring twice in the 3rd period to win the game (including a goal in the last 2 minutes, yay Scott Arniel prevent defense hockey!). The playoff chance would drop 10 points down to 19% and never recover. The Jackets went on to lose 7 straight after posting a 11-3-3 record during their run. In all they would only win 3 more games the rest of the season, closing out with a 3-12-7 record including the loss to Nashville. Calvert’s offense dried up and Mason’s save % seemed to go along with it.

As we stand now, the Jackets are on a 5-0-2 run. Bobrovsky is the netminder that’s putting this team on his back with 0.95, 1.00, 0.97 and 1.00 sv% games in 4 of his last 5 outings. Matt Calvert is back in the NHL and is setting the pace for the rest of the team. 13 days ago the #CBJ % chance to make the playoffs stood at a league low 0.39%. Yes, that’s right, less than half a percent. It now stands at 5.5%. While 5.5% is still low, that’s an improvement of over 14x. The road ahead is dark and full of dangers. To have just a 58.3% chance of getting the 8th seed in the playoffs the Jackets will have to finish the season with a 13-6-3 record. To improve that to 95% they have to go 14-6-2. 6 regulation losses in the next 22 games. That’s quite a tall task.

The one thing I think we have going for us that we lacked in 2010-11 is the guy behind the bench. Todd Richards has yet to lose a game when leading after two periods behind the #CBJ bench. The 2010-11 team seemed to lose all of their momentum after losing that game to Nashville. I think this team is learning how to win, but more importantly they are learning how to respond in the face of adversity. We’ve seen it all season long, games that the Scott Arniel coached teams would have given up, this team is fighting back. The Dallas game was a great example, and in my opinion a real turning point for this team. The Jackets fought back from 4 different 1 goal deficits to tie the game every time. They’d ultimately go on to lose in overtime but the heart they showed in fighting back has set the tone for the current streak they are on.

When I looked ahead at the schedule this past Wednesday and saw our next 5 opponents were: Vancouver -> Detroit -> Detroit -> Vancouver -> Chicago, I said to myself “well, guess we don’t have to worry about losing that lottery pick!”. But in the back of my mind I thought, and even mentioned to a co-worker “… if we can win just 3 of those 5 games … we’re going to open a LOT of eyes” Little did I know we would win the first 3 of those 5.

Is this sustainable? I honestly don’t know. The advanced stats guys keep telling me no. But the LA Kings couldn’t score a goal to save their lives in the regular season last year but somehow managed.

To me the two most important factors that will determine how this team finishes the season are: trades made on or before April 3rd and the fact that 12 of the next 22 games are on the road including a dreaded 6 game road trip to California in the final 7 games of the season. After this upcoming 5 game home-stand, we’re only back in Nationwide Arena for 5 of the final 17 games. Going to be very hard to only lose 6 games.

I wanted to take a step outside of the normal #CBJ chatter to share a story from my local adult league hockey game from last night:

Sign from the #CBJ dressing room (borrowed from @Canadan82‘s twitter)

My team, B-Dubs Hockey Club, faced off against another team, The Lucky Pucks, at the Chiller North last night at 10:40pm. Yes, 10:40pm. The weather forecast for last night was looking pretty bleak earlier in the day so I was expecting a rough drive in. I was surprised to see the roads were fine and I was able to make it to the rink without any problems. The combination of the late start and the weather forecast had me wondering how many people on our team would be out. I was one of the last to arrive at the rink for my team and was happy to see that we had a full roster on hand. A full roster for us means 3 full lines of forwards and defensemen, or 15 total skaters. In fact we even had an extra sub on hand just in case anyone got hurt so we had 16 skaters.

The Lucky Pucks? They were not so fortunate. As we were waiting for the Zamboni to finish cleaning the ice we noticed there were only a handful of skaters on the other team waiting by the door. Right before puck dropped I checked their bench and confirmed that they had a total of 6 skaters dressed. That’s 5 on the ice and one on the bench.

A CAHL (Chiller Adult Hockey League) game consists of three 12 minute periods. We scored our first goal just 30 seconds into the game and by the end of the first period the score was 5-0. We changed strategies after the first period, moving some offense to defense and some defense to offense. We self imposed a “minimum of two passes before shooting” every time we entered the zone. They were already tired and we weren’t about to run up the score even more by having our top scorers scoring on breakaways. We would end up coring 2 more goals in the 2nd period making it 7-0.

With the score already 7-0 to start the 3rd period we asked the ref if they wanted to switch to a running clock (meaning the clock doesn’t stop with the whistle). The Lucky Pucks were clearly exhausted by this point and we figured everyone just wanted the game to be over. Unfortunately, it seemed, the refs didn’t hear our pleas and kept a normal clock. Despite being exhausted The Lucky Pucks fought on. We would end up scoring 4 more goals in the 3rd period (including goals by a player playing in his first game and another scoring their first goal in 28 games).

The final score was 11-0. Had the game not ended at close to midnight we were going to invite them out for beers after because they’d definitely earned it.

Fast forward to today where we found out today that one of our players (who wasn’t at the game) happens to work with one of the refs that called the game. When asked about the running clock:

…he said he continually asked the other team if they wanted a running clock and the “two oldest guys hes ever seen playing” said no, they want to get their money’s worth.

So, here was a team with 5 skaters and 1 sub, down 11-0 with 5 minutes left in the 3rd period and when asked if they wanted to take an easy way out they flat out said no way, they paid to play 36 minutes, they were going to get their 36 minutes.

There is a sign hanging up near (or in) the Columbus Blue Jackets locker room that says “60 minutes. No excuses. No regrets.” These guys were the living embodiment of that mantra. The Blue Jackets played a much better game on Saturday than they have all season. It remains to be seen if they can do so on a consistent basis (but I do have my hopes up). If they’re looking for inspiration I know of 6 guys and a goalie on an adult league team here in Columbus that could probably show them a thing or two.