Post Battle Pre-Season Games #2 and #3 vs. St. Louis Blues  (Blue Jackets)

This is a new feature that I plan to run after every game. It will include a summary on the game, including my thoughts on what happened.

It will also include what I like to call the Stat of the Night. This will be a stat that highlights a particular Blue Jackets player or the team as a whole. I'm really excited for this and hope you get enjoyment from it as well.

If you have any suggestions for this, something you want to me to add or change don't hesitate to leave a comment or tweet me.

*** Final Score: Blues - 5 Blue Jackets - 2. Blue Jackets - 3 Blues - 1

Game Summary

Again these games were not broadcast so we have to look through the game sheets to get a feel for how they went. The Blue Jackets played the Blues twice last night and while the scores differed the games looked to be very similar.

In the Columbus game the Jackets won 3-1 but we're out shot 36-16. In the St. Louis game they lost 5-2 and again were outshot this time 36-23. It's not good being outshot like this, but it's pre-season so we can't read anything into it. We don't know what the team is trying or experimenting with.

It was the pre-season debut for Ryan Johansen and he did not disappoint recording a goal, an assist and a team high four shots. He was on a line with Nick Foligno, who had two assists, and Sonny Milano who scored on the power play.

Sergei Bobrovsky was rock solid in net stopping all 24 shots he faced through two periods. Anton Forsberg was good also allowing just one goal on 12 shots.

The second game did not go as well albeit it was against a much better St. Louis team, that included Vladimir Tarasenko, Paul Stastny and Alex Pietrangelo among others.

Boone Jenner scored for the Jackets and played a forward high 17:41. Brandon Dubinsky was right behind him playing in 17:38. Oliver Bjorkstrand and Kerby Rychel both played in this game and put up an identical -1 with two shots. Bjorkstrand however played almost four minutes more in this game than Rychel did (16:28 vs 12:57).

If those players are in fact competing for that third line RW spot I would saw Milano is in the lead followed by Bjorkstrand and Rychel.

After the game the Jackets made 14 cuts, majority of which were re-assigning players back to Junior. Paul Bittner, Keegan Kolesar, and Sam Ruopp were retunred to their WHL clubs, Olivier LeBlanc and Julien Pelletier were returned to the QMJHL and Blake Siebenaler and Kole Sherwood were returned to their OHL clubs. Veeti Vaino was returned to his team in SM-Liiga.

Seth Ambroz, Ryan Craig, Peter Quenneville, Brad Thiessen and Trent Vogelhuber were assigned to the Lake Erie Monsters. Dustin Carlson was released from his tryout contract.

You’ll notice Dante Salituro was not among those cut from camp. It’s no secret I’m a big big fan of his. I hope we get a chance to see him in an up-coming preseason game.

I missed this yesterday but Brandon Saad was hit in the mouth with a puck and the team will be holding him out of pre-season games. It sounds like nothing serious but better to be safe than sorry. Remember Johansen played exactly zero games last pre-season and he had a pretty good year if I do say so.

Stat of the Night

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