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Positive Signs

March 17, 2019, 11:36 AM ET [4 Comments]
The Fan Blog
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By Tom T

With 4 games and 8 points at stake, last week was an important week for the CBJ. A pair of back-to-back games, all against playoff teams would tell us a little bit about who our Jackets are heading into the playoffs. An early week shutout loss to division foe NYI could have started a disastrous week, but the next 3 games yielded 5 points for the Union Blue. If I had one sentence to describe each game, it would be as follows:

v. NYI – Columbus had a solid offensive performance but failed to crack hot goaltender Greiss in a 2-0 loss on the road.

v. BOS – All that hard work on offense starts to yield dividends as secondary scorers put up goals including a hatty by Boone in a 7-4 victory over visiting BOS.

v. CAR – Wild Card dogfight dominated by Bob who made 46 saves on a night that the CBJ put forth a lackluster offensive performance but skated to a 3-0 victory.

v. BOS – BOS squeaks out a 2-1 OTW on a bad turnover in an otherwise evenly matched game that featured strong goaltending performances on both sides.

To quote the immortal Meatloaf five-outta-eight-ain’t-bad… or something like that.

Where They Stand:

Our beloved CBJ have 40 wins out of 72 games, 84 points in the standings and sit in the final playoff spot with 10 to play. While finding their way into the playoffs for a 3rd consecutive season would be a nice start to a winning tradition here in C-Bus, it would produce a very unfavorable 1st round match up against the most dominate team in the league, the TBL.

To avoid the Bolts, the CBJ need to find a way to move up to either the 1st Wild Card spot or 3rd place in the Metro. Even the victory over CAR didn’t move Columbus past them because the Canes have played less games and they won on Saturday earning 2 points to CBJ’s 1 point for an OTL against BOS.

PIT’s loss to STL gave the Jackets an opening, however only one point was gained in the standings leaving them 3 points back of the 3rd place spot in the Metro.

Focus on The Next Game, Not the Standings:

While the CBJ sit in the not-so-favorable-final-playoff-spot they do have an advantage over the teams chasing them. They control their own destiny. MON (81 pts), PHI (76 pts) and FLA (76 pts) all need teams ahead of them to lose in order to move up. CBJ and CAR on the other hand just need to take care of their own business to keep their playoff spots.

Columbus embarks on a three-game western Canadian trip Tuesday with the first stop at the Western Conference leader CGY. The next two are @EDM and @VAN, two teams that seem to be out of the playoff race unless you are using the HockeyBuzz predictor and some fuzzy math that gets EDM into 3rd place in the Pacific. Recent history has proven that CBJ has a hard time handling ‘lesser’ teams and has a bad habit of ‘playing down to the competition’.

Anything less that 4 points on this road trip puts C-Bus in a bad spot in the standings. If they are going to be a playoff team and be successful in the playoffs 4 points on this trip is the minimum.

Do the Jackets come home with more or less than 4 points from this trip?
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