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Ovi and The Washington Capitals visited Columbus in a mostly meaningless game. The Jackets are just playing for pride at this point, though they should be throwing the games away in order to get a better draft pick.

CBJ completely shut down Ovechkin in typical Jackets style. Ovi never does well against Columbus. There’s no doubt that he’s one of the best of all time and probably the best of this generation. Somehow, CBJ has his number everytime they meet.

The game really came down to goal tending. Garon didn’t look comfortable from the get go. After Chimera was taken out of a play in the first, he hit Garon who took a headshot on the left post. He looked dazed after the play and after letting another goal past, he was pulled like a tooth tied to a door knob. Mason let one goal past, but then settled in and played like a champ from there on out.

Theodore was really the star, though. Time after time he stopped shots from everyone except Antoine Vermette. He looked sharp and likely solidified the starting goal tender spot for the Caps in the playoffs.

In his post-game press conference, Claude was disappointed with the outcome, but pleased with the effort. The power play was lacking (pretty common lately) but the comeback was good (which is not so common lately).

The season winds down for the Jackets this week. I wonder how soon we will hear an announcement about Noel’s position. Finishing the season gracefully and with a few wins should just be more fuel for the fire that should get him the job.

How could you not love this game?? Oh yeah: if you are a Blackhawks fan.

@Commie22 started off the scoring fest just 30 seconds into the first on a lucky bounce off Huet. The scoring would continue with Huse and Vermette each getting two and Blunden (first NHL goal!), Murray, and Voracek each getting one. The latter goal was on a penalty shot in which Jake became the first Jacket not named Nash since David Vyborny to score on a penalty shot. Awesome effort, Jake.

Mase did an incredible job tonight, stopping 29 of 32 shots. He’s going to be a legend some day. If not in the NHL, he will at least be a god in Columbus. It will be great to see him consistently out of his sophomore slump.

I’d like to see the top line play a lot better in the defensive end. For Huse and Vermette to have four goals and one assist between them and to only be +2 each seems ridiculous.

Blunden got the hard hat tonight as he picked up his first goal in the NHL. He also stood ready to mix it up with some dirty Blackhawks, showing his committment to a team that is all but eliminated from the playoffs this year.

In an intelligent move, Noel stated in his press conference that he never felt comfortable in the game. Despite being up 5 goals, he knew he and the team shouldn’t enjoy it too much and get cocky or loose with their play. That’s when the game would get out of hand in Chicago’s favor. The Jackets did sit back in the third and allowed two goals while tallying two more of their own. AMP said at the end of the TV broadcast that he is very pleased with the personnel. And it didn’t sound political. It didn’t sound like he was saying it to kiss Howson’s ass to hopefully get the permanent job. He genuinely is happy with the players and the progress they are making.

I have to say that the team appears to be making progress. At least they aren’t regressing as they appeared to be under Hitch. If Howson decides to look elsewhere for a head coach, I think he would completely ruin all the progress that Noel has been working on for the past two months. What would the point have been of firing Hitch that late in the season if they didn’t want to have something to build off of. Dismissing Noel would crush that momentum and the Jackets would be right back to where they were months ago. We jus can’t afford that right now. Go Jackets.

The Jackets were supposed to make a rare trip to New Jersey, but only a few of them apparently made the flight. The Devils stomped Columbus 6-2 on Tuesday in Steve Mason’s first game against his childhood idol, Marty Brodeur.

The Jackets only showed a few signs of life with a couple hot shot, one-timers by Vermette and Voracek. Think AMP was pushing that one in practice this week?

Aside from those brief moments of brilliance, CBJ looked lousy. The defense must have been holding a grudge against Mase for not buying them all matching bling after Mase’s last great game.

Claude’s comments after the game seemed intentionally curt. He (rightfully) had a scowl on his face the whole time he discussed the terrible power play and lack of early effort. I don’t have anything to back this up, but I think Howson is going to name Noel as the coach over the summer, if not before then.

I give him props for sticking with it despite the Jackets being out of the playoffs and also not having a secure title in front of his name. Even though Hitch always said he believed in and liked playing the younger players, I don’t think he practiced what he preached. Kudos to Claude for giving them a chance in the waning games of the season. This is the experience they need in order to change from the future of the Blue Jackets to the stars of the Blue Jackets.

Correction: Oops! Corrected the CBJ score from 2 to 3.

From what I could tell about the previous few games, Noel needed to keep the jobbers up on the top line and keep the stars on the bench. Any spots available in Syracuse? If anything, it might at least make the Crunch’s team on NHL 2K11 damn awesome.

The stars showed up at home tonight against the Wild, however. Rick Nash spent a few games on the scratch list after not performing well following his gold-medal Olympic appearance and then supposedly coming down with the flu. Questions arose throughout the #CBJ community as to whether or not Nash should remain the captain and if he was a leader on and off the ice. Nash’s interview as chronicled by Jackets beat writer Tom Reed goes a long way toward re-affirming Nash’s role as captain:

Guys are playing for a lot of different reasons, but I’ve got to make sure these guys are playing for the pride of the city… They can’t just worry about personal stats and that. We are trying to build a fan base and maintain a fan base, and to do that we need them excite them. I’ve got to get that point across to the team… The guys who are here long-term are the guys who have to stand up right now… Those guys have to be committed to the city and committed to the team.

Nash showed up in the third period and showed that he can be a leader as well as score goals. There have been countless times this year when the Jackets have given up two-goal leads. It was refreshing to see the team play an outstanding third period especially when that third period was led by Nasher.

CBJ’s scoring started off with Huselius, who finished with another multi-point night. I’m still not going to stop dogging him for bad passes. Never. Russell pushed one through half-way into the third with the help of Huse and Stralman.

Then The Nash Show started. Less than 30 seconds after Russell added one to his tally, Nash showed off how good a little time off can be. He fancy-pantsed the puck past Harding, which is how I’ve always said he scores most consistently. Remember the shoot-out goal earlier in the year when he almost lost his balance and scored from one foot? Priceless. Nash’s first goal tonight will never make a highlight reel of hardest shots, but it will definitely make Nash’s reel for the year.

His second goal for the night was an empty-netter with 38 seconds left. Harding was technically still on the ice, as his teammates turned the puck over as he was heading off. He didn’t know whether to keep going to the bench or back to the net. By the time he made his decision to try to stop the puck, it was too late.

Crazy-ass hats off to Umby who was perfect in faceoffs and who fired off 6 shots (second in the whole game right behind Nash). He only got one point on an assist to Huse, but he’s playing with the kind of heart that Raffi brought. Filling gaps better than Rocky and Adrian.

There’s always one of two common themes in my posts: These Jackets stink or This is what the Jackets could be. Hitch proved to be unable to bring consistency to the team this year and AMP hasn’t done it either. AMP has definitely shown that he can motivate (or at least he can inspired the team leaders to motivate). There have been way more positive signs and glimpses of brilliance under Clowed during his short reign when compared to what Hitch was able to do this year. I’ll have more on this topic in an upcoming feature article.

In the mean time, welcome back, Rick. You’ve been missed.

During the CBJ/ANA game, a Twitter poster recently pointed out CBJ’s recent polarity, referring to the terrible game played against LOS which was immediately followed up by the stellar CBJ/ANA game. I’m about to propose a new theory of magnetism that is sure to turn the physics world on its ear: a third pole.

Wuh wuh WHAT?? That’s right. The Jackets are playing in huge swings. One game they are playing lights out and everyone is nearly ready to call Claude Noel the second coming of Scotty Bowman. The next game will be terrible and everyone is ready to declare Claude Noel as the second coming of Tom McVie. Once in a great while, the puck drops to find the Jackets somewhere in between.

Thursday’s game at Nationwide against Atlanta caught Columbus at exactly that point. Nothing looked too fantastic compared to the last game, except perhaps Mathieu Garon, who completed another brilliant game tonight despite not have as many flashy saves as he had in the previous game.

Umby started off the scoring on a bingo-bango-bongo play down low during CBJ’s first power play opportunity. (I miss you, Danny Gare!) The puck ended up going off of Chelios’s skate and into the net. The poor old guy probably didn’t apply enough Icy Hot to get his old joints working in this cold Northern air. See what happens when you get people to crash the net, Jackets?

The second score came on a messy series of passes, pokes, and slaps. Huse eventually was credited with the goal that pushed the Jackets to 2-0 during the second period. Garon let one slip by in the third and that’s all she wrote.

All-in-all, it was a rather boring game. It went very quickly and at one point in the first, Jeff Rimer mentioned that the game had gone over 9 minutes without stoppage. Bananas. The second period ended about 80 minutes after the initial faceoff, which I think almost has to be a record. The game was over in about two hours and 15 minutes. I think MLB could learn a lot from hockey. Speed up the game!

Claude was candid and blunt in his post-game comments, openly calling Atlanta’s game “cheap” and criticizing some Columbus players by name. That is certainly not the most recommended management style, which is something Howson really needs to take into account.

The Blue Jackets team who got off the plane in Anaheim was not the same team who got on the plane in Los Angeles. After taking one on the chin at LOS, the Jackets came back with authority at ANA even while their top two players (arguably) were scratched from the get-go.

Vermette, Tyutin, and Voracek all finished with three points (1 goal, 2 assists each). To make things even crazier, nine different Jacket players had points in the game. Did Earth’s magnetic poles switch or something?

I didn’t get to see any of the game, so I’m keeping this short. I’m also writing it after the ATL game on Thursday, so I know which CBJ shows up for the next game (hint: it isn’t one I’ve mentioned so far in this post!).

Claude’s future is still in the balance as far as I’m concerned. If CBJ could string together three games just like this one, I think Howson would have good reason to remove the Interim part of AMP’s title. It’s not that those three games would prove anything other than that one game isn’t luck and two in a row isn’t a fluke.

Right from the get-go Monday, Columbus proved to be no match for Freddie Modin’s new team. The LA Kings added Modin to their lineup just before the March 3 trade deadline. Modin scored LA’s 5th goal just to rub it in. Modin adds depth to the Kings’ power play, shutting down all 5 of CBJ’s powerplay opportunities.

The Jackets looked awful Monday night against the Kings. I turned it off as Mason was being pulled from the net. Normally I watch or listen through the good and the bad, but given that it was a late one on the west coast, I decided to call it a night once things became ridiculous, a la Canada’s women’s olympic hockey team vs. Slovakia.

It didn’t take long the next day to come to the conclusion that the Jackets were embarrassed by their performance. Winger R.J. Umberger had this to say regarding CBJ’s performance: “That was embarrassing.” Nuff said.

After this loss, the Jackets are statistically eliminated from the playoffs. It was a poor showing, especially for a team that held their own fate in their hands. This game was also the only NHL game on TV Monday night. Way to represent, CBJ!

The Jackets battled the San Jose Sharks in HP Pavilion Saturday, a place where CBJ has only won a single game in its history. Columbus would play hard and start off with yet another 1st goal (9th in a row!), but would come up short after giving up two goals in the third period.

Mase played well tonight. He stopped 42 shots, which really is a lot for him (or any goal tender for that matter). The defense really helped him out, too, with 17 blocked shots. Defenseman Jan Hejda blocked 4 of them himself and in effect backed up his smack talk, while Danny Heatley had four shots blocked. Zing? I dunno.

Andrew Murray has played very well and might fill in some of the gaps left by Buffalo’s latest acquisition, Raffi Torres. I’m going to miss Raffi a lot. Good thing I didn’t commit to getting his jersey number. I honestly don’t think we have someone who could immediately step it up to the level that Torres was playing. Several guys could individually pick up different aspects of Raffi’s game, but obviously even getting back to that level wouldn’t do it for CBJ this year.  Murray’s goal was his second of the year and makes for two games in a row with a goal. Keep it up, young man. Keep it up!

CBJ really screwed the pooch with penalties tonight. We had 21 minutes of penalties that actually totaled just over 9 minutes of being short-handed. It was during a 5-on-4 opportunity that SAN scored their go-ahead goal. All of the penalties were stupid and preventable, too, except for Boll’s 5-minute major when he thumped Staubitz in the first as well as Paetsch’s holding minor. Tyutin needs to get his skates sharpened a bit better so he can stay standing up instead of falling down and taking an opponent down with him for a tripping minor.

Back to Boll’s fight: Not the prettiest fight he’s seen, but not the worst, either. Staubitz seemed to have a better grip on Boll at first, but once Boll landed a heavy fist on his right eye, Staubitz readjusted and Boll got the upper hand. Staubitz had to leave the ice to cry on Mama’s shoulder and have her kiss his booboos byebye.  Great job, Boll. Your effort in this one picked the team up and gave us a chance.

Noel said after the game that he thought we played hard and despite that effort, we just couldn’t come out with a win. He noted that it’s obvious why SAN is the best in the west. I couldn’t agree more with this.

Did anyone else notice that the top line was completely non-existent tonight? I assume they were out there at some point, but I know they didn’t start. I honestly can’t remember Rimmer or Davidge mentioning any of them tonight. I’ve been sober, too. Honest.

I need a widget for a countdown to the start of next season. I need another Olympic break. I need a drink.

Update: I forgot to mention the return of defenseman Mike Commodore after a long battle with a charley horse. I didn’t realize those lasted so long for athletes… they always go away in 30 seconds whenever I get one. Despite his extended time away, he put in 26 shifts and spent 17 minutes on the ice in his return. With two hits and two blocked shots, its a more-than-solid return to the ice for Deuces. Welcome back!

Battling the Mother Canuckers at home tonight, the Jackets clearly looked like they had just returned from a two week break. Vancouver entered the game tied for 3rd in goals/game and 8th in goals against/game. Comparatively, CBJ is 18th in goals/game and 26th in goals against/game. It should be a blowout, but the Jackets had a few things going in their favor tonight: 1: Raycroft was in goal for VAN as Luongo was resting up after Sunday’s gold-medal Olympic game. 2: Torres is playing well in hopes of more money or a trade. 3. We’ve got Noel.

No joke on that last one. I won’t get delusional and try to convince anyone that CBJ has a chance in hell of making the playoffs this year. (While it may be possible, it would take a miracle of beating DET in all three of our final games against them as well as having several other teams take a giant dump here at the end.) Noel has a big responsibility to make these players work as a cohesive unit during the last 19 games of their ‘09-’10 season so that the team can have something positive to work with over the summer. Noel also has to do one of two things: prove that he can be the next head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets or prove this team is good enough to whatever coach Howson might bring in.

From everything I have heard and read about him, he’s making great strides in the locker room that are directly translating to CBJ success on the ice. He’s challenging the younger players to be leaders. He’s giving informal quizzes to everyone to make sure they are prepared to face their next opponent. He’s proving leadership points by not showing up to practice (I wish I could get away with that one in my workplace). He even won over a Pens fan at Arena Grand during Sunday’s gold medal game. The season ticket holders had him in there to talk about the game and the Jackets in general during the breaks and after the game. The Absent Minded Professor apparently really showed through, but that made him all the more likable. I hate to say it, but I’m becoming a fan!

Back to tonight’s game. Grant Clitsome played in his first NHL game tonight and he certainly made it a memorable one. He started with two points in the first period and followed it up in the second with a beautiful heads-up pass off the wall (off the wall!) to Voracek who dished it to Torres who passed it along to Dorsett for the score. This is the CBJ I love to watch.

The first period was a nightmare for the first ten minutes. The Jackets couldn’t make a pass to save their lives. It’s like Huselius was teaching a passing seminar over the break. Terrible. VAN dominated the shots in the first period, but scored no goals. CBJ dominated shots in the second, but could only put one in the basket compared to VAN’s two. How many times have CBJ blown a two-goal lead this year? A few too many, for sure.

Torres’s assist on the Dorsett goal further proves he’s an incredibly valuable member of this team. His point totals this year aren’t quite where they were a few years back when he was with the Oilers, but he could be close to those numbers before the end of the year. Torres shows up to play hard every night. He’s hitting hard, skating tough, and willing to get in the middle of things if one of his teammates is getting into some extra-curriculars. That may sound like standard hockey, but he’s doing it at a different level than most others. I hate seeing him as trade bait. I really don’t know that we’d get anything better in a trade.

The third period was highlighted by tense moments and heavy play. Huse took a wicked spill into the boards while trying to nullify an icing call. He didn’t seem any worse for wear and, in fact, made it back on the ice to work on the power play that CBJ was on after his fall. I couldn’t tell if he was dazed or just being himself when he was hanging out down low and had the puck fed to him with a great scoring opportunity, but he wasn’t able to touch the puck, much less capitalize with a goal. Even a shot would have been nice. Huse: If you’re playing in front, keep the stick on the ice.

Unfortunately, I have to dog on Clitsome now. After a great first two periods, he made a bone-headed turnover on which VAN was immediately able to capitalize. This pushed the game into OT. Good god, more OT. Couldn’t one of the many pipe shots have just gone in??

So sad to say, but I saw this one coming. Mason was bound to bite on a shot and fall over. The defense was bound to be heavy on the side where the puck was and be light on the side where the puck was going. Classic CBJ.

Congrats on the 3rd star, Clitsome! Welcome to the NHL. Hopefully we’ll see more of you soon.

The division-leading Chicago Blackhawks came into Columbus after an extended home game against Atlanta that ended 5-4 in a shootout. Little did they know that they would be in for another long game ending with the same result.

For the seventh game in a row, CBJ started off the scoring. Huse actually scored one instead of passing the puck off. They continued the scoring with a backhand from Raffi Torres off his own rebound. He did a hell of a job concentrating on the puck when his first attempt was blocked by Niemi.

Chicago then posted four unanswered points. They started the streak with six seconds left in the first. They finished it with 6:01 left in the second. It was quite a streak of pathetic by the Jackets. Huse had a perfect scoring opportunity somewhere in there, but in classic Huse style, he tried passing it. He was far too close to the goalie (and the defenders) to make the pass work.

Nash scored a wrister with 2:16 left in the second to bring the Jackets within one. There were some signs of life at that point and during the third, but they were few and far between.

I’m not even going to bother mentioning OT.

The shootout started and ended in classic CBJ form: Huse is the only one who made it and the Jackets walk away with just one point.

When I wrote the post for Friday’s game, I was ready to call the season based on this game. The possibility of a tie in the game against CHI never even entered my mind. At this point, I am close to being ready to call the season a bust. I’m terrible at predicting these things, so I certainly hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.

Now we have to wait for two weeks to see if the Jackets stall out or get a jump start. Hopefully the Olympic break will be good for the Jackets and not just a preview of what April 10 – October 8 will be like.