So DBJ went to CBJ Game 4: Boston

Boston 3 - Columbus 1
2-2-0, 4 pts, 4th in Metropolitan Division, 9th in the Eastern Conference

The Columbus Blue Jackets hosted the visiting Eastern Conference champion Boston Bruins during a Saturday matinee at Nationwide Arena.  While the Blue Jackets put up a spirited effort, the Bruins simply wore down the CBJ en route to a 3-1 win.

Jack Johnson had the only Blue Jackets goal, a power play shot.  Sergei Bobrovsky turned aside 27 of 29 shots (the third goal was an empty netter), a .943 save percentage; I really liked his composure throughout the game.  And, of course, 5'7" Cam Atkinson tried to post up on 6'9" Zdeno Chara, providing a wonderful memory that I'll not soon forget.  If only I had a camera on him when it happened!

I'm not upset about the loss.  As I said in...ummm...some blog post recently, average teams should be expected to beat bad teams.  Good teams should be expected to beat average teams.  Great teams should be expected to beat good teams.  The Blue Jackets, coming off a season where they just missed the playoffs, are not a great team.  The Bruins, coming off a Stanley Cup Finals appearance, probably have to be considered great.  Thus, I wasn't expecting the CBJ to beat Boston.  They didn't.  Columbus did, however, put in the effort.  The box score was reasonably even (score excepted).  The Blue Jackets didn't get their rear ends handed to them, and they lost to the defending conference champs. And it's not like the CBJ blew a huge lead, melted down or was outclassed by an obviously better team.  How can one be upset?

But I get that out of the way to share my personal experience of the game, that of a loving parent who...well...does his best to be a good parent.

East Hatred: Boston Bruins

The first of our new Eastern Conference foes to visit is the Boston Bruins. Now we can finally start to work up a little anger. Still, not because our teams have much history, but because this is the BROOOONS!! Old time hockey, defending Eastern champs, Bobby Orr, etc, etc, etc...

Oh the reasons to dislike the Bruins...

Let's start with the easy one, Jeremy Jacobs. Architect of Lockout '12. (No, not lockout number 12, we're not that far along in the NHL yet.) Jacobs didn't shy away from being the band leader of last year's Owners Lockout. Big market and big money already, he needed more. He even went all big, bad bully on one of the Jets' alternate governors during the lockout informing the "new kids on the block" when they would be allowed to speak in the NHL board room. All teams in the league were equal in the lockout, some were more equal than others.

Enough lockout...but, thanks for that, Jeremy!

As you may or may not have heard the Bruins are a member of the ORIGINAL SIX. Not a Bruins specific gripe, but they are the first ORIGINAL SIX team that the Jackets face this season. Ah yes, the NHL Marketing Machine which has trouble marketing itself most of the time has no problem marketing the ORIGINAL SIX. The history of the league should be celebrated, and these six franchises are clearly the cornerstone on which the current league is built. Regardless of the debate as to whether or not they are the original six franchises in the NHL, they are the ORIGINAL SIX. The league has now had more than six teams for 46 years, so some 12 year old in a Bruins jersey this afternoon gets to spout, "We're an ORIGINAL SIX team!" even though at best his grandfather is old enough to remember it.

Another reason we're going to get annoyed by the Bruins will be their fans. "This is Boston, BABY! Red Sox Nation!!" Oops, wrong sport...but still applies. They love their teams, they're loud, and they are in your faces about it. They're an old, established hockey market, too. So they automatically know the game better than you ever will. (But even Bruins Fan has less hockey knowledge than a new born in Canada, but that's a different subject.) And there will be plenty of transplanted Bruins fans at the game today. I know a few myself. They've lived in Columbus for years, they even sound midwestern now. The Bruins show up, they get this strange look in their eye, and the Boston accent comes rushing back to them.

Finally, we landed one of their players in free agency. With the Horton signing, we get a little bit of history with the Bruins and their wonderful, well spoken fans. The reaction after the signing was of course predictable as it was a long term, big money deal that media members love to pick apart as the first one of its kind. Internet commenters have a rich history of being at the top of the writing world, and Horton going to little Columbus brought out some of the finest. "What is he thinking?" being one of the kinder ones. Others such as, "Columbus has a team?" or, "Columbus should just fold already," were some other great insights from the mouth breathers who all have the login name Anonymous.

So with the Bruins visit to Nationwide, we will finally feel like we're in the Eastern Conference. Even though we have played ORIGINAL SIX teams fairly often in the old Central, Bruins Fan will act as if this is the first time it's ever happened to our little team, and that we should be grateful for it.

Enjoy the matinee, Jackets fans!

So DBJ caught a little bit of CBJ Game 3: Buffalo

Columbus 4 - Buffalo 1
No overtimes, no shootouts.  Just a clean, regulation win.

The Columbus Blue Jackets, after four days off (which I maintain makes zero sense in a supposedly Olympic-condensed season), flew into HSBC Arena and blew the doors off the place - including the $8 million home team dressing room highlighted in my preview post.  A 3-goal first period apparently led to a game of keep-away and clock-killing, and the host Buffalo Sabres were ready for the game to end when it was decided at 4-1.

Blue Jackets goals came from Marian Gaborik (nice start to the season, Mr. Magic Stick), Cam Atkinson, Nick Foligno and Brandon Dubinsky.  Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 26 of 27 shots.  Minutes were reasonably evenly distributed.  Jared Boll, apparently healthy enough to play, swapped in for rookie Boone Jenner and did what the team pays him to do: Fight.  Rookie Ryan Murray notched a +3 on the night, something I think pretty respectable even if plus/minus is a discredited statistic.

I won't lie to you folks.  I was on tap to do this recap, and the evening got away from me.  I tried following the game on my phone and listened to most of the third period on the radio while hanging out at the airport waiting for my guests to arrive.  The feelings I inferred from the game were that of, say, an Ohio State football game: Guns a-blazing in the opening stanza, then everyone in the stands sit back in their seats and smokes victory cigars while drinking gin and tonics for the balance as they catch up on the latest news from each others' families.

This is good.

East Hatred: Buffalo Sabres

With tonight's game against the Sabres we get our next edition of why we should hate this-team-we-barely-know.

With the Sabres comes a team that we have a little bit to build on to get to hatin' them. Mainly due to the bus loads of drunken Sabres fans that have spilled onto Front St. for their few visits to our fair city.

Before we go full on "DIE SABRES!!" this evening, some notes on their fans: These people are loyal to a fault. Unlike some other fan bases that we'll get to later in the season, Buffalo fans don't jump on and off the bandwagon with each win or loss. These people love their Sabres and have for years.

Credit where it's due is over...

Six hours of drinking on a bus for a road game is a lot of fun, I've done it. Buffalo fans have it down to a science and arrive at maximum inebriation an hour or so before puck drop. The last time they visited, it lead to some very interesting, um, encounters in the concourses.

But, drunken visiting fans isn't enough to go full hatred on them. A good start, but every team has drunken fans.

Hating the team itself will take some work, and some time. But, we have a few places to start.

1999's "Toe in the Crease." They didn't call it, changed the rule the following year, and we're still hearing about it 14 years later. It was Game 6, so it wasn't like the Sabres would have skated the Cup that night. Besides, if you're going to be upset about inconsistent officiating in this league, you won't have time to do anything else. No, this isn't a Blue Jacket specific reason to hate the Sabres, more a general thing, but we need something to work with here.

OK, maybe this is a good reason to dislike the Sabres...

Since RJ is now a Blue Jacket, we'll count this as a good reason. Even though...GET YOUR HEAD UP RJ!!! And Campbell is long gone. Either way...that's former Sabre crushing current Blue Jacket, work up some disgust folks.

Finally, the biggest stretch of all to dislike the people of western New York, they were probably the biggest beneficiary of MacLean's bone head draft pick in 2003. You remember the 2003 draft, right? The one where you couldn't make a bad pick? Yeah, that one. The one where MacLean made the brilliant choice of Zherdev. Falling directly into the Sabres lap was Thomas Vanek. You're welcome, Buffalo.

Which brings us to...

TWO captains? Really? This is more of a reason to laugh at them than hate them, but we'll add it to the pile of shenanigans we're compiling here. Why not.

So, easier to hate than the Islanders at this point, but still tough to work up some good bile against the Sabres. This move to the East is going to need some extra help to really get upset with our opponents.

Oh, look, there's the Bruins on the horizon...

Put me in coach, I'm ready to win

The 2013-2014 NHL season is about a week old.  The Blue Jackets season in particular is only two games old, playing their third game Thursday night in Buffalo.  To make any long term predictions about the team based on the meaningless preseason and two regular season games is asinine.  But looking at the coach, and how he's managed his team in that same time span, does lend itself to the ever-so-subtle eyebrow raise.

There hasn't been any earth shattering roster moves in the off-season.  The team from last year is still largely intact.  The only new faces of note are Murray and Jenner, while the 30 year-old rookie McElhinney backs up CBJ life blood Sergei Bobrovsky.   "Horton hatches a bone graft" is still a couple months away.  As a coach, you know the skill set you have on your team early on.  You know who is going to work hard, you know who you can trust in each situation, and you know who takes being a professional to heart.  You know who can handle speed, you know who can play physical, and you know who doesn't turn the puck over.  Most importantly, you know who can do the scoring.

On "League of Denial"...and the NHL

I watched PBS' two-hour "Frontline" documentary, "League of Denial," last night.  If you haven't seen it, the whole show is available for streaming here.

Not surprisingly, seeing my interest in the growing story of traumatic brain injuries in contact sports, I have a few thoughts to offer.  This is a blog largely dedicated to offering thoughts and opinions, so I can't think of a better place to do so.  

If you've come this far only to hear an alarm go off in your head screaming, "HOW DARE YOU INTERRUPT MY ENTERTAINMENT WITH REAL LIFE?"...well...not sure I can help you.  You might want to move along.  If you're interested in what hopefully will be a reasoned discussion of a serious topic with a number of different aspects, read on.

"Frontline" on NFL/CTE airs tomorrow

I'd be remiss in not bringing this up, fellow hockey fan.  Tomorrow night, on PBS's "Frontline" news documentary show, the National Football League is going to get raked over the coals for the manner in which it has (or has not, depending on how you look at it) handled the issue of traumatic brain injuries.  Here's the trailer for "League of Denial":


It's a two-part series, and you can go to this link if you want to see a few more teaser videos about the subject matter.  The doctor who analyzed the late former Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster's brain and Leigh Steinberg, agent for oft-concussed Troy Aikman, offer particularly compelling first-person commentary on the state of affairs in football.

Game 2 in Review: CBJ vs New York Islanders

Columbus Blue Jackets 3- NY Islanders 2 Shoot Out

The Columbus Blue Jackets earned their first win of the 2013-14 season, as well as their first win in the Metropolitan Division of the Eastern Conference in a third period comeback shoot out win.  A character win for sure, because they looked 'stick a fork in 'em they're done' cooked in the second period.  As much as the Islanders skated them off the ice in the middle of the second period, they stopped the bleeding trailing 0-2.  Then at the midway point of the third period, Mark Letestu punched home a power play goal to get the Jackets on the board, and the team gathered momentum throughout the second half of the third period.

Letestu, not Gaborik

Offensive cycling which had been nonexistent in the second period began to emerge, and then the tying goal came on an RJ Umberger rush, where he put the goal on net, and Nick Foligno bumped the rebound back at the net, and it rebounded off an Islander crashing the net, and the game was tied.

The teams traded chances down the stretch, and both teams had power plays in the last two minutes of the game.  The Islanders power play persisted into Over Time, but the CBJ seemed to have momentum.  OT remained scoreless, and the game went to the shoot out.

That's when 'snow-gate' happened.  Fox Sports did a good job of capturing the CBJ bench, as Craig Hartsburg noticed that the zamboni left all the snow in front of the Islanders' goal.  Todd Richards got the attention of referee Paul Devorski, and the officials inspected the ice.  The then made the zamboni come back out on the ice, and a HUGE pile of snow was removed from in front of the Islanders' goal.  Thus, the shoot out conditions were rendered fair.  Matt Moulson scored for the Islanders in the shootout, but Letestu and Cam Atkinson scored for the CBJ to secure the win.

My take is that this was what will be a typical Metro division game, a back and forth affair.  The Islanders scored on a heavily screened Bobrovsky on a power play that they earned with sustained offensive pressure.  On their second goal our weak side defense was mesmerized by Tavares' puck handling, and Moulson came all alone on the backside and Tavares hit him with a beauty of a pass.  But the CBJ shut down the rushes they were giving up at that point, and the game turned for them.  Once the CBJ got some offensive cycling below the goal line started, instead of launching pucks at the net from the perimeter, they eventually drew a penalty, and got the power play goal that turned the momentum.  Dogged hard work paid off in the win.  That bodes well for this team recapturing the spirit they had at the end of the season last year sooner rather than later.

The CBJ are on the  board for the 2013-14 season, with 2 Metro division points.  A good response from last night's disappointment.

Game Haiku:

First win in Metro

Tavares is the real deal

The test tube strikes

GO JACKETS!!

East Hatred: New York Islanders

Here we go!

We're finally in the East, and as promised in my first post, I'll try to get us Eastern Conference n00bs primed for hating a whole new slate of teams.

Since the NHL Schedule Gods opened us with the familiar Calgary Flames, we have to wait until game two to get to hating one of our new Metropolitan Division brethren: The New York Islanders.

OK, let's be honest, what is there to hate about the Islanders? That logo? Their four Cups? They won those back in the early 80s, those are historical now, not annoying. All those years chanting "Nineteen Forty!" at the Rangers? Hell no, that was AWESOME. (And sadly came to an end in 1995.)

Their owner? Their GM? Um, no...they've been more comic relief than anything else. Even through the MacLean and Howson debacles here, when Jacket Fan had to defend themselves, they could always come back with, "Yeah, sure...but did you see what Wang/Milbury/Snow did with the Islanders?!? Can you believe it??"

It is certainly not because they beat up on the Jackets over the years. We didn't lose to the Isles until December 23, 2006, our 8th meeting with them. Overall the Jackets are 9-4-1 against the Islanders and have lost to them in regulation since...wait for it...December 23, 2006. (If you're scoring at home, the Jackets have gotten a point out of every game against the Islanders in franchise history except for that one sad day on December 23, 2006.)

So, historically speaking, it's really, REALLY hard to hate this team. They've been so nice to us since we came into the league. I have a feeling truly hating the Islanders is going to take some time, and a few more losses to them. Maybe a playoff series against them. Though if the Jackets and Islanders are in the playoffs in the same year, it may be akin to crossing the streams.

I don't know if those losses will start with tonight's game, but the chances are there. First off, we'll play them a lot more now. Secondly, they're on the rise just like your beloved Blue Jackets. The Islanders got into the playoffs last year with 55 points...

Wait, wait, wait...they got IN with 55 points? We missed out with 55 points! OK, we have a slight glimmer of a reason to be marginally perturbed with the Islanders.

Continuing...

These guys play an exciting game. They skate hard, they skate fast, and they come at you in waves. It's not always defensively responsible, but it is fun to watch. Their first round with the Pens last year was some of the best hockey of the playoffs. They just kept coming. Over. And over. And over. It was great to watch.

So we open our Eastern Conference play against a team that I'm not sure any of us can really hate at this point. Guess we'll have to let this one simmer for a while and see if we can work something up.

Seriously, can ANYBODY share a reason to outright despise the Islanders?

Game One in Review - Columbus Blue Jackets vs Calgary Flames

Columbus Blue Jackets 3 - Calgary Flames 4

Western Canada, home to Atlanta's last two NHL's franchises.  One of those two teams paid a visit to Nationwide Arena Friday Night - the Calgary Flames.  The Flames were playing in their second road game in as many nights.  Ever the good soldier, enduring Home opening events as visitors for a second night in a row.  The Flames played spoilers to the Blue Jackets home opener, beating the home team CBJ 4-3 in regulation.  The League was kind enough in welcoming the Blue Jackets to the Eastern Conference by scheduling us with the Flames.  Thanks Bettman.

If I were a blogger, I would sum up tonight's game for the Blue Jackets in one word as 'sloppy.'  Your older brother's Blue Jackets were on the ice tonight.  But, I'm not ignorant enough to say this one game defines the fate of the team this season. I watched the game in total seclusion at BW3 in Dublin.  I did not want to hear a broadcast of this game as to make my own observations on the team.  So here they are, my observations