On beating Colorado
After winning their 11th game in 14 outings the Blue Jackets are now just eight points behind the Maple Leafs for the final wild card spot, and Columbus has three games in hand.
They still have to pass a few teams to get up there - notably Florida, who are six points ahead with the same amount of games - but there is still over half of the season to so.
Regarding last night's game, it was nice to see David Savard get the game-winner after having a rough go early in that game. That was a huge goal and win for the team, especially considering Sergei Bobrovsky had a much needed day off and the team still picked up two points.
Possession
Here are the shot attempt numbers from last night's game.
A few thoughts:
1) You don't love the 4th line exclusively starting shifts in the offensive zone because that takes away opportunities from top players, but at least they didn't get their teeth kicked in as has been the case all too often this year.
2) One game possession numbers don't mean all that much because matchups, zone starts, etc. all factor in heavily and it's possible to just have a good/bad game relative to usual, but last night was a good example of how Alex Wennberg needs more development time. He was on for a couple goals against, won 40% of his faceoffs and was the worst possession player on the team. I still think he'll be a very good player, but the NHL isn't a place for a kid to try and find his way; especially when that team has playoff aspirations.
3) Jeremy Morin is very, very good. He was on the ice for 10 scoring chances for, and just four against at even-strength. That was the best differential on the team.
Scoring Chances War-on-ice.com added a new feature that uses shot location to track scoring chances for/against individual players, teams, etc.
Below are Columbus' leaders in on-ice scoring chances for (left) and against (right). Minimum 20 games played.
I wasn't surprised to see Atkinson leading in scoring chances for given his speed, creativity and ability to make plays with the puck, and the rest of the top-4 are about what you'd expect to see.
As for preventing scoring chances, Jack Johnson and David Savard cracking the top-5 was a bit of a surprise for me. Nick Foligno and Boone Jenner were the two players among the top-5 in both categories, which speaks volumes to how good they've been this season. Gibbons leading the charge in scoring chance prevention shows just how good of a value-bin signing he was, which I wrote at the time of the signing.
It'll be interesting to see how these numbers fluctuate the rest of the season, especially if/when Columbus tightens up defensively and starts to play as they did last year.
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