Game 64/Vancouver: My Take

Well, the Columbus Blue Jackets came back from the 16-day Olympic break and, after celebrating the impressive Olympic presence of the Boys in Union Blue....proceeded to look exactly like the Columbus Blue Jackets of late.  They stormed out to an early lead, stopped pressing, held on for dear life and lost in overtime to the Vancouver Canucks, 4-3.  A Hitchcockian performance, I tell you...

All is not lost, Jackets fans!  If we go 17-1 from here on out, we have a 75% chance of making the playoffs!

Seriously, it was a choppy game that honestly did nothing to endear (interim) coach Claude Noel to me.  With five days of straight practices, one would have thought that he could have injected a little somethin'-somethin' in the team to get them to carry the second and third periods with the same confidence that they carried the first.  That Noel had basically a week to prepare the team to look like they did...gee, Claude, I'd probably hold on repainting the coach's office until (if ever?) the ink is dry on a permanent contract.

(Mr. Howson, Kevin Dineen is on line 2...do you want to take the call?)

The first couple goals were pretty sweet, even if they capitalized on the sloppiness of the night.  Gotta love Andrew Murray's breakaway:

Antoine Vermette's never-say-die attitude probably is getting him rave reviews in the front office, and moves like this explain why:

Trivial matters aside, there's the real newsworthy item of the night: THE CRASH OF THE IGS ENERGY BLIMP!  While faithfully executing its maneuvers to deliver CBJ swag around the arena, something tragic happened, and...oh, the humanity!

Artistic recreation, not the actual blimp nor drawn to scale

The blimp went down in Section 114.  Now, I was at home, watching the game on my computer while feeding a melting-down Dark Blue Onesie, so I didn't get to witness the carnage personally.  I gather that no one was hurt in the accident, but the denziens of Section 114 apparently indulged their inner "Lord of the Flies" student and looted the swag off the crippled airship.  As the Tweeter said, "Teach your children well."  Stay classy, Section 114!

(The "photo" of the crash netted me an award from The Fan's Lori Schmidt.  I intend to display it proudly on my mantle, next to my Nikita Filatov-signed puck once the puck is back from being on loan as a backstop.)

Next up, late night on Saturday in San Jose.