NHL Grind Down: Thursday, December 17th - Page Three
Columbus Blue Jackets at Arizona Coyotes – 09:00 PM EST
| Columbus Blue Jackets | Arizona Coyotes | ||||||||
 | Sergei Bobrovsky |  | Mike Smith | ||||||
| Record | Record | ||||||||
| 11-19-3 | 14-14-2 | ||||||||
| Stats | GF/GP | GA/GP | PP% | PK% | Stats | GF/GP | GA/GP | PP% | PK% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team Stats | 2.30 | 3.00 | 18.60% | 82.10% | Team Stats | 2.70 | 3.17 | 14.70% | 81.30% |
Since the injury to Sergei Bobrovsky the Columbus Blue Jackets have gone 0-3-2 and have given up a total of 17 goals in those five games. It is clear to me that the Blue Jackets just don’t have the fire power to keep up with teams when either Curtis McElhinney or or Joonis Korpisalo is your goaltender. Coach John Tortorella continues to try to make up his power play unit from three different lines and it’s really no wonder that they have only scored just four goals with the man advantage in their last 14 games. Hockey is a game of chemistry where players need to skate with each other to know where they are going to be on the ice, not just throw together units from across three different lines and hope for the best. Scott Hartnell has three of the team’s last ten goals to go along with an assist in his last five games while both Ryan Johansen and Nick Foligno have accumulated three points over that same time frame. Now it seems that Tortorella has decided to bench his star player in Johansen for tonight’s game and cites and I quote “He’s an important guy to our organization. This is a reset for him, in understanding what we’re looking for’. With this recent news I can only recommend Columbus as a GPP play at this juncture.
Arizona had a rough go of it on their recent five game road trip but came home to not only defeat the Minnesota Wild by a score of 2-1 in overtime, they also scored four goals against Carolina albeit in a losing effort. Their record of 7-4-1 at home would indicate that head coach Dave Tippett is efficient at matching up lines and shutting down the opposing team’s top line. Both Shane Doan and Antoine Vermette came back from injury last game and were reunited on the top power play unit. It’s hard to believe that Arizona won’t score tonight so we have to look at the top line to do the damage. Vermette skates with Mikkel Boedker and Tobias Rieder and all are found on the top power play along with Doan and defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson. We can even dip to the second line and go with team scoring leader Max Domi along with the very streaky Anthony Duclair, who scored two goals to go along with an assist in their last game.
Elite Plays
CBJ: None
ARZ: None
Secondary Plays
CBJ: Scott Hartnell
ARZ: Max Domi, Mikkel Boedker, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Antoine Vermette, Anthony Duclair, Tobias Rieder