Who else thinks we’re almost there? Like 2 completed passes and 1 instance of carrying the puck out of the zone instead of a failed chip against the glass for a line change, and we’re there. Add a Laine one timer goal on a powerplay and a Johnny feed to Tex for a goal, and we’d really be cooking with gas. I’d like the boys to blow the doors off a couple teams to shut up the doubters for a week.
by tomtakespictures
12 Comments
I’ve seen several comments about the season riding on this weekend. What kind of hopium are people smoking? The pace we need to continue on to make the playoffs is just not happening. I fully expect the vets to finally start producing about the same time as the kids run out of steam and the goalies start getting toasted. But, holding out hope we can win about 10 of the last 12 games of the year to get a worse draft pick, because that’s the very CBJ thing to do.
If the power play could produce a lot of these results are different. If we turn the puck over in our zone 1 or 2 fewer times a game, this season looks different. If we turn the puck over and the offensive blue line a few times less, this season looks different. I think PV said it well last night after the game. This league will punish you for making mistakes. Overall the team is playing some good hockey but making costly, lazy mistakes too often.
Any teams NHL season (barring the outliers like Tampa in 2019 or Bruins in 2023) are going to be peaks and valleys (wait… How’d those teams do in the playoffs again?)
Please please please, let this be a valley and not our peak .
Here’s my expectations for the end of the season:
1. .500 hockey consistently
2. The best line isn’t 2 rookies and Marchenko
I’ve gone from hopeful to copeful
is there anything to even still be hopeful for?
I’m here, I’m all the way here. If you think this young ass team, who had some of the worst coaching I’ve ever seen last year, and lost their coach a week before camp this year, was going to be good, then you deserve to feel as shitty as you do about the start of this season.
They are figuring out. The kids look great, FFS the amount of first and second year players on this team that are showing flashes of greatness is amazing. That’s not even factoring in all the fucking gems that haven’t cracked the NHL yet, (Dumais, Mateychuk, Malatesta, Svozil, etc.). As long as they don’t blow it up, this team is going to be good for years to come.
I love everything about Vincent, preaching accountability and winning battles, because those are the things you can coach, you can’t coach someone into being talented. And there is a lot of talent here, tame them and get them to play a system. And he does all this while being fair, and being calm.
My biggest fear at this point is they are going to make some braindead trade or blowup the front office/coaching staff before it all clicks.
The one thing that’s on the coaches is the power play. Fire Recchi, he’s got a history of running a shit powerplay, go out and get a legit powerplay coach. And get Z off the point. Love the player on both ends of the ice, but he sucks at QBing the power play. Watch Z versus any other good QB in the league. He has zero threat of a shot, he’s too stationary, he only ever passes to the opposite point, just zero creativity and ability to create chaos for the PK. Provorov, severson, Jiricek, Boqvist, and even bean are all better PP point men. He’s the one consistent in their years of a shit ass powerplay and that’s no coincidence.
Convince Laine to just be a big shot on the wing/PP and talk him down from trying to win the game single-handedly every shift. He’s a piece to a successful team, but he’s not Connor McDavid. He can’t be trying to go 1v5 coast to coast every play. Just post up, bomb clappers, and occasionally he can dance for the extra room when people are expecting the bomb.
I love preaching winning battles, but CBJ seriously needs to have an entire weeks of practices devoted to one-timers. Like an entire practice where the emphasis is on moving the puck after two strides, and not collecting the puck before shooting. Look at good teams and good goal scorers in this league, they don’t collect a puck, let the goalie reposition, and then try to hit a 3 inch window. Dudes move the puck across the ice and slap it home, even if they don’t score on the initial slapper, it’s way more likely to get the D and goalie scrambling, loose pucks, defenders out of position, and rebound opportunities.
And, we are going to need a goalie at the end of the day. I will concede that Elvis has been better this year, but he’s still constantly 10 feet out of the net, over-selling on a non-shot, then scrambling to recover. There are a grand total of ZERO goalies in the league that play this way and are successful, and only 1 in the history of the game. Most the time when he’s making a “good save” it’s because he was out of position to begin with. Right now I truly believe a bright future is inevitable, minus the goaltending. We don’t need a world-beater back there, just a guy who’s in position, and settles things down, rather than inflicting chaos any time the pucks in our zone, that shit weighs on the whole team and gets them panicky and scrambling.
I am very hopeful. I knew this season would be a disaster, but even I didn’t expect it to be this bad. I expected a clean sweep of the front office and coaching staff after the season, but we might get that by New Year’s playing like this. Can’t wait!
i want to be here but i’m not close
As upset as I’ve been, I knowww that the players on our roster are very talented and are capable of much more than what we’ve seen so far.
I’m just baffled at what’s been going on these past few weeks. Like it’s shocking, even a few of the ESPN haters we deal with thought we’d at-least be up in the mix.
I hope that this drought stops at 9 and we build from there and piece ourselves together the rest of the season.
I’ve been a Cleveland sports fan since the 1970s. I know what it is like to lose. The Blue Jackets are just another disappointing sports team in a long list of disappointing sports teams.
I ain’t fucking leaving. I’m always hopeful. That’s my thing I guess lmao
I’m an LA Chargers fan. If they can’t break me, nobody can