Columbus Blue Jackets News Clips Mar. 21, 2019 Columbus Blue Jackets PAGE 02: Columbus Dispatch: Time running out for Blue Jackets to fix offense PAGE 04: Columbus Dispatch: Flames 4, Blue Jackets 2: Five takeaways PAGE 07: Columbus Dispatch: Blue Jackets: Top line hashes out issues over dinner PAGE 08: The Athletic: Mythbusters: Are the Blue Jackets just unlucky? Cleveland Monsters/Prospects PAGE 12: Columbus Dispatch: Blue Jackets: At 5-7, Trey Fix-Wolansky growing larger in team's plans PAGE 14: The Athletic: Blue Jackets’ plans for Elvis Merzlikins hit a snag; top goalie prospect won’t play for AHL Cleveland PAGE 16: The Hockey Writers: Elvis has left Switzerland. Have the Blue Jackets found their replacement for Sergei Bobrovsky? NHL/Websites PAGE 18: AP: Karlsson, Panarin and Bobrovsky can close strong and cash in PAGE 20: The Athletic: Analyzing 16 years of NHL draft data to see which teams have done it the best (and worst) PAGE 24: Sportsnet.ca: NHL Power Rankings: Your Team's Celebrity Fan Club Edition 1 Time running out for Blue Jackets to fix offense By Brian Hedger, Columbus Dispatch – March 20, 2019 EDMONTON, Alberta — If it were the middle of the season, the Blue Jackets’ struggle to score wouldn’t be as troubling. There would be time to snap out of it, there wouldn’t be a huge buildup of pressure and they could just play without worrying about “what ifs?” The Blue Jackets have only nine games left in the regular season, however, and they need to start scoring more consistently in their hunt for the playoffs. “When it’s not going in, you don’t feel good about yourself like you do when it is,” said center Matt Duchene, one of four players the Jackets added to boost their roster before the trade deadline Feb. 25. “So, you’ve got to manufacture that feeling the best you can and just work at it in practice.” The Jackets had a day off Wednesday after falling 4-2 on Tuesday at the Calgary Flames, but they will try to create some better feelings Thursday against the Edmonton Oilers, who beat them 4-0 on March 2 at Nationwide Arena. That game will be less about revenge for the Jackets than about finishing, something that has been a problem for them since the trade deadline. In 61 games before the deadline, they ranked 10th in the NHL with 194 goals, an average of 3.2 per game. In 12 games since, they’re ranked 23rd in goals (26) and have averaged just 2.2 per game. “We’ve just got to bear down harder on our chances and find ways to put it in the net instead of just missing or hitting the goalie or defenseman or a post or something,” defenseman Zach Werenski said. “We’ve got chances. We’ve just got to find ways to score.” Hitting the net would be a good start. As Werenski mentioned, the Blue Jackets hit just about everything but the net against the Flames, finishing with 19 missed shots. That tied their third-highest amount of misses this season and included four that clanked off iron. According to NHL.com, the Blue Jackets have hit goalposts 53 times and the crossbar nine times. That’s the second-highest amount of goalpost strikes in the league and 14th-highest in crossbar dings. “Andy and I are shaking our heads at how many good looks we had (against Calgary) and just weren’t able to get anything to go,” Duchene said of Josh Anderson, who assisted on a power-play goal by Oliver Bjorkstrand at Calgary. “That goes for the whole team, not just us. We did some really good things. We’ve just got to keep moving forward.” Or stop moving backward. The Blue Jackets are clinging to the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, one point ahead of the Montreal Canadiens, and they’re going to need more consistent scoring to win the race. 2 “There’s no point in getting frustrated right now,” said Werenski, who snapped a 30-game goal drought last week. “We have nine games left to make the playoffs and if we get frustrated, it’s just going to hurt us.” 3 Flames 4, Blue Jackets 2: Five takeaways By Brian Hedger, Columbus Dispatch – March 20, 2019 CALGARY, Alberta — The Blue Jackets did enough right Tuesday night to leave Scotiabank Saddledome feeling like they deserved to win. They didn’t, though, losing 4-2 to the Calgary Flames because of a few things they did wrong — and some poor luck while shooting the puck. Despite scoring the first goal and outplaying the Flames in the final 30 minutes, the Jackets couldn’t get enough big plays at either end — committing one too many defensive miscues and missing the net 19 times. It something that happens to all teams occasionally, but it has happened to the Blue Jackets with semi- regularity since adding four players at the Feb. 25 trade deadline. “It’s tough,” said Matt Duchene, the biggest star among those additions. “When it’s not going in, you don’t feel good about yourself like you do when it is, so you’ve got to manufacture that feeling the best you can.” Here are five takeaways from one that got away from the Blue Jackets in Calgary: 1) What it meant As far as the playoff race goes, it couldn’t have gone much worse for Columbus. The Montreal Canadiens, who’d been getting smaller in the rearview mirror, downed the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday to close to within a point of the second wild-card spot that’s currently owned by the Blue Jackets. Each team has nine games left, including a huge one against each other Mar. 28 at Nationwide Arena to conclude the season series. The Carolina Hurricanes, meanwhile, extended their lead over Columbus for the East’s first wild-card spot with a shootout win Tuesday against the Pittsburgh Penguins – who tacked a point of their own onto their grip of third place in the Metropolitan Division. Carolina (87 points) has a three-point lead over Columbus (84 points) now, in one less game, while the Penguins lead the Blue Jackets to five points within the division. “Today we lost some ground, but we’re still in a (playoff) spot,” Duchene said. “The next two games are big. We move on and get ready for Edmonton, and try to get a win there.” 2) Post note Going by the official tally, the Blue Jackets hit the goal posts three times, including twice before Calgary’s Andrew Mangiapane made it 2-1 Calgary late in the first period. 4 Going by the Jackets’ account of the stats, it was three posts and a crossbar – including two by Pierre- Luc Dubois. Either way, that’s too many missed scoring chances. Had two of them been a couple inches lower or to the left, it might’ve been the Blue Jackets shooting at an empty net late in the third. Instead, it was the opportunistic Flames – who put the game away with an empty-netter by Matthew Tkachuk. If it seems like Columbus clanks a lot of pucks off the net’s metal frame, you’re not crazy. They do. According to the NHL.com stat page, the Blue Jackets hit goal posts 50 times going into the game – third- most behind the Tampa Bay Lightning (51) and Vancouver Canucks (57). They’re at 53 now and have also hit the crossbar 10 times, which ranks 12th highest in the league. The Jackets’ 19 misses on shot attempts was also a big number, tied for their third-highest in a game this season. 3) Dzingel played After missing practice Monday with an undisclosed physical issue, which coach John Tortorella described as being “nicked up,” Ryan Dzingel wound up playing. Dzingel, who appeared to sustain an upper-body injury Saturday on a hit by Boston Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara, played 17:19 and finished with two shots. He also missed once, ringing the puck off the right post with 1:00 left in the first period off a great feed by Zach Werenski. That could’ve put the Blue Jackets up 2-1 going into the first intermission, but Mangiapane’s goal at the other end gave that lift to Calgary with 7.2 seconds left. 4) Anderson brought it He didn’t score a goal, but Josh Anderson had another strong game for the Blue Jackets, finishing with an assist on Oliver Bjorkstrand’s power-play goal in the third and landing four crunching hits. He also added five shots, which tied defenseman David Savard for the team-high, and blocked a shot. Anderson was also involved in a wild sequence with less than five minutes to play and the Blue Jackets trailing 3-2. Mikael Backlund was denied by Sergei Bobrovsky on a short breakaway and then got hammered into the corner boards by Anderson. They immediately exchanged shoves and what appeared to be gloved punches before Anderson took Backlund down with a tackle and laid on top of him. Play c0ntinued without a whistle and Flames fans roared their disapproval. “It’s a tight game, 3-2 game, so I don’t think they’re going to call anything,” Anderson said. “That’s the way it should be. Two guys battling in the corner ... it’s hockey.” 5) No Foligno, Nutivaara This was the second straight game the Blue Jackets didn’t have captain Nick Foligno, who is attending to a personal matter back in Columbus.