Bethany's Hockey Rants

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Three games in, let’s talk about it…

by Bethany on 10/16/08 at 02:34 PM ET
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The Blue Jackets have now played three games and are getting ready to open up at home tomorrow night, against the Nashville Predators. Let’s talk about the things that are working for the Blue Jackets.

The “goat” line, I am a huge fan of that name for the record. Chimera, Brassard, and Voracek are absolutely tearing it up for the Blue Jackets, that line is working, and they look great together. Brassard has two goals and one assist and is a plus-3. Chimera is leading the team in assists, and is a plus-2, and Voracek has a goal and an assist and is a plus-1.

Rick Nash has taken it upon himself to carry the team, the only problem is he can’t score. He has had four breakaways and has been unable to capitalize on them. Knowing Nash and how his goals tend to come in spirts, He has scored one goal, and has sixteen shots on goal. Against San Jose the Nash, Umberger, and Huselius line had 19 shots, the team as a whole had 33. They are bound to get hot and start scoring.

Fedor Tyutin. He is leading the team with an average time on ice of 23 minutes. He has one assist, but I don’t think that’s saying much, he’s entertaining to watch and I think he and Rusty Klesla make a great pair.

Christian Backman has been great for us also with one goal and two assists. Kris Russell is his defensive partner and has shown significant improvements and seems to be more comfortable this season.

I could go on for a while about all the guys and what they are doing well, let’s talk about our struggles.

Obviously our power play needs some work. After being embarassed by having two shorthanded goals scored on us, I think it’s pretty obvious that we need some work.

Chemistry, that’s a huge one, you can tell that with all the off season acquisitions we are having a hard time building that chemistry, I think we are definitely getting there, but it’s something that just takes time.

Pazzy hasn’t been spectacular. I think he’s trying, but he hasn’t been spectacular, maybe he is still a little hurt from the injury that he received in the pre-season against Minnesota?

Our work in the defensive zone. Obviously, the two shorties helped to point that out, but it’s not just that, we need to be solid, and we’re not. To Hitch, that’s completely unacceptable. Here’s what he has to say about it,

“Our problem has been from the red line back,” Hitchcock said. “We have to get better under pressure in our own zone. We can’t be giving away the puck coming out of our zone.”

Now, onto the game against Nashville tomorrow night. Puck-Rakers is calling for a tough guy since Jared Boll is out. I think Derek Dorsett would be an acceptable replacement, however Tootoo is a tough cookie. Unfortunately Mirasty is only signed to a Crunch contract so he can’t be called up (it’s a tragedy as I have yet to see him ~~fight~~ play, and you know I have been wanting to see how he would do against Tootoo), my guess is they just keep Dorsett in and just let him handle it. I would like to at least see Ole-Kristian Tollefsen in the lineup, but the more I think about it, the more I hate the fact that we would be changing our lineup simply because we’re playing Tootoo and the Preds. And, according to Puck-Rakers Marc Methot or Tollefsen will be in the lineup Friday.

I will post more later when I get information about Michael Peca’s hearing.

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