On Tuesday the Jackets added another player for training camp signing veteran defencemen Marc-Andre Bergeron to a professional tryout contract.

Marc-André Bergeron will be at #bluejackets training camp on a tryout. He played the last in Switzerland. Great story. #tvasports

— Renaud Lavoie (@renlavoietva) September 6, 2016

Bergeron has played nine seasons in the NHL, playing in 490 games amassing 82 goals and 153 assists. He spent the past three seasons played in Switzerland on the ZSC Lions (the same team as Auston Matthews), and had success with 78 points in 135 games.

Much like with Jarret Stoll Bergeron is just a body for camp and pre-season games. The Jackets have three key defencmen away at the World Cup of Hockey in Jack Johnson, Seth Jones, and Ryan Murray. They need guys who can fill in for the pre-season while those players are away.

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Speaking of the World Cup of Hockey, pre-tournament games got underway yesterday. Of interest to Jacket fans would have to be Team North America as they have three Blue Jackets on the team: Jones, Murray, and Brandon Saad.

Team North America is by far the most fun team at the event. Every player is so fast and so skilled. They all think and play the game at such pace and high level. They ran circles around Team Europe who outside of the Anze Kopitar line couldn’t do anything to slow them down. The game was close for the first period before Team North America exploded for three goals in the second. They cruised from there to a 4-0 victory.

Saad was on the second line alongside Jack Eichel and Johnny Gaudreau. He played 15:36 in the game and picked up an assist. Jones and Murray played on the second pair and looked very strong. The chemistry they showed while playing for Columbus has carried over. Neither had the flashiest game, but both played quite well particularly in their own zone where it looks like they will be relied upon heavily. They were the only two defencemen who played over two minutes on the penalty kill. They were also very strong from a possession standpoint. Murray was the team’s leading defencemen with a 52.8% Corsi, while Jones was third at 51.4%.

If anyone is interested, here is the 5v5 Corsi For and Against for each player from the Team NA vs. Team Europe game pic.twitter.com/mAfHRsWzgZ

— Prashanth Iyer (@iyer_prashanth) September 9, 2016

Up next Team North America will have a rematch with Team Europe on Sunday at 6pm. Tonight it’s Team USA, featuring Brandon Dubinsky and Jack Johnson, up against Team Canada, from Nationwide Arena. That game gets underway at 7pm.

You can follow me on Twitter @PaulBerthelot

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