Columbus Blue Jackets News Clips March 2-3, 2020 Columbus Blue Jackets PAGE 02 The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Blue Jackets veterans know playoff opportunities can’t be wasted PAGE 04 The Columbus Dispatch: Jody Shelley believes the Blue Jackets will stay in playoff chase PAGE 06 The Columbus Dispatch: Blue Jackets’ Ryan Murray adept at dealing with setbacks PAGE 08 The Columbus Dispatch: Blue Jackets 5, Canucks 3 | Jackets roar back with third-period charge PAGE 09 The Athletic: A late surge, power play shines, Ryan Murray returns, and other observations PAGE 13 The Columbus Dispatch: Blue Jackets’ Josh Anderson has shoulder surgery, is out four to six months PAGE 14 The Columbus Dispatch: Blue Jackets 5, Canucks 3 | The 3-2-1 breakdown Cleveland Monsters/Prospects NHL/Websites PAGE 18 The Athletic: The Athletic’s NHL Power Rankings: New leader emerges for March to the playoffs PAGE 26 The Athletic: How the spreading coronavirus is impacting the NHL PAGE 29 The Athletic: DGB weekend power rankings: Sorting through trades, streaks and one major injury PAGE 35 Sportsnet: 'The process works': NHL opts not to crush EBUG dreams at GM meetings 1 The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Blue Jackets veterans know playoff opportunities can’t be wasted By Brian Hedger – March 1, 2020 The longer guys stick around the NHL, stacking one season on top of the last, there gets to be a point where the perspective changes. They get older, see the picture with a wider lens and begin to realize something that drives every single veteran currently playing for one of the league’s 31 teams. Careers, they begin to see, do have a shelf life in the NHL. Games and seasons can pass with a blur, and there are only so many opportunities in a player’s life to compete for the Stanley Cup. “I remember when I was young and it was definitely a different viewpoint than what I have now, knowing what I know now,” said Blue Jackets forward Riley Nash, whose past three seasons in Columbus and Boston were his only postseason appearances in a nine-year career that started with the Carolina Hurricanes. “You don’t get many cracks at it. The first four years of my career, we missed the playoffs every year and we weren’t even close. You never really know how many opportunities you’re going to get.” Welcome to the stretch run of the Blue Jackets’ season, which was teetering precariously on the edge of a proverbial cliff going into a game against the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday night at Nationwide Arena. The Jackets clung to the second wild card in the Eastern Conference, a single point ahead of the Hurricanes (75 points) and two ahead of the New York Rangers (74), but they’d lost 10 of 11 games (1-5- 5) and had played two more games than both teams nipping at their heels. Coming off their first consecutive regulation losses since early December, both to the Minnesota Wild last week, the veterans inside the Blue Jackets locker room knew better than anybody what exactly was at stake. “At this point in the season, it’s the older guys who need to show the way and show how we need to play,” said defenseman David Savard, who has helped the Blue Jackets qualify for the playoffs four times in his nine-year career with the team. “We’ve got to treat every game right now as a playoff game if we want to get in. “It’s the older guys who’ve been in that situation before, who need to lead the way.” Things could spiral downward in a hurry if they can’t, which would be a bitter way to end an otherwise impressive season. Despite leading the NHL in man-games lost, a metric that tracks the league’s most injured teams, the Jackets somehow managed to climb back into the playoff race. Even as their injury list rose to double figures, they went 19-2-5 between Dec. 9 and Feb. 7 to claw back from an 11-point deficit into a playoff spot. But losing defenseman Seth Jones and forward Cam Atkinson on Feb. 8 against Colorado sent them reeling, and then their leading goal-scorer, Oliver Bjorkstrand, suffered a fractured ankle Feb. 20 against Philadelphia. 2 Belief in the Blue Jackets is low to nonexistent outside the team’s parameters, as it’s been most of the season, but remains high among those healthy enough to play. The Jackets are saying all the right things, but their actions need to speak even louder in their final 15 games. “We just need to have that urgency,” Nash said. “We need to know what’s at stake. We’re right in the thick of things right now. There’s no time to have a pity party or wallow in what’s going on. “It’s the playoffs, basically, this time of year. It’s just having the intensity each and every play from the drop of the puck and realizing what’s at stake.” Gerbe out with groin injury Blue Jackets forward Nathan Gerbe will miss one to two weeks because of a groin injury, it was announced Sunday. 3 The Columbus Dispatch: Jody Shelley believes the Blue Jackets will stay in playoff chase By Michael Arace – March 1, 2020 Jody Shelley, the television analyst covering the Blue Jackets, has a certain quality that is increasingly rare in his profession. He is a former player with a trove of knowledge, including the knowledge that he doesn’t know everything. Also, his voice smiles, which is a wonderful quality to have over an 82-game slog. Shelley picked up the phone when Cannon Fodder called Friday morning, and per usual, he had some pearls to offer to our hockey podcast. The Jackets are entering the boggiest patch of this season’s slog, and their work boots are looking heavy. Yet Shelley remains sanguine when it comes to the Jackets’ playoff chances. “This is a team you can get behind because they won’t quit,” Shelley said. “I think it’s going to come down to the final (two games), home with Tampa and on the road at Carolina. I think that’s what kind of end it’s going to be to this season. That weekend (April 3-4) could be the weekend.” Note: This analysis was delivered Friday morning — before the puck dropped on an ugly 5-0 loss to the Minnesota Wild at Nationwide Arena. If you polled the standing-room patrons among the crowd 18,955 — the fourth-largest gate of the season — their level of confidence might not have been as high as Shelley’s. These Jackets have handled more injury problems than Elk & Elk. That they are still in the playoff hunt with 16 games to go is a remarkable testament to their character. The question now is what they have left. The Jackets have lost 10 of their last 11 games (1-5-5). Their one irreplaceable player, defenseman Seth Jones, suffered an ankle injury Feb. 10 and had surgery. In 10 games without him, the Jackets have allowed 39 goals. That’s 3.9 per. Contrast: In their first 57 games, they allowed 2.43 per. “I think every team thinks they have a No. 1 defender until they get one and they lose him,” Shelley said. “I feel like Seth Jones, he conducts the play when he’s on the ice and there’s no one else in this organization that can do that. He controls the game.” He has a little Nicklas Lidstrom in him? “There’s definitely a little Lidstrom in him, and you can say that confidently,” Shelley said. “(Losing Jones) is the biggest loss they’ve ever had — by far.” Lidstrom is among the 10 best defensemen of all time. Top three, probably. Jones has that kind of talent. Next contract, he should be making that kind of money. (San Jose’s Erik Karlsson, who carries an annual salary cap hit of $11.5 million, is the highest-paid in the league. Right now, I’d take Jones.) Now, getting back to Shelley’s sanguine take on the Jackets’ playoff push, and it coming down to the last two games of the regular season … it’s looking like a best-case scenario. 4 Take out Jones and a raft of other injured veterans and patch up the roster with rookies and American Hockey League players, and the margin for error and matchup problems can proliferate. This is especially true on the road, where opposing coaches have the second change and can better target the Jackets’ younger forwards and lesser defensive pairs. “You can get exploited if you’re not careful,” Shelley said. “That’s why that hole is even bigger with Jones out.” The Jackets, beginning with a game Sunday night against the Vancouver Canucks at Nationwide Arena, have 16 games remaining, including 10 on the road. They head for western Canada this week. In the final stretch, they’ll play six of their last eight games on the road — all but one against playoff teams or teams in the playoff race. On Saturday, April 4, the last day of the regular season, they will sit idle as the Philadelphia Flyers, New York Islanders, Carolina Hurricanes and New York Rangers, among others, decide the fate of the wild cards in the East. It ain’t over yet but, golly, it doesn’t look promising. More optimistic fans might think of it this way: Philly has five sets of back-to-backs left, the Islanders have a wicked trip at mid-month, Carolina has no goaltending, and as for the Rangers, they just lost Chris Kreider.