"If you have a shooting chance, if there's a guy in front of you, you might not want to shoot 100 percent and injure the guy," he said. "When it's a real game, a preseason game, you don't know the other guy so you can go 100 percent."
#CBJin30: Monday Mailbag gets you read for the preseason opener
Of course, it also helps that preseason action means things are starting to look more like the routine the Jackets will follow come the regular season. After two days of physical testing followed by three days of scrimmages, skating-heavy practices and workouts, a game day is a picnic compared to what the Columbus players were just put through by John Tortorella.
"You are happy that the games start," said Nutivaara, who also battled illness over the weekend. "It can't be that hard anymore."
Unfortunately, Nutivaara won't quite get his wish as he's not on the 20-man roster to suit up for tonight's game vs. the Sabres. He'll instead have some on- and off-ice work to do before Wednesday's off day.
One man who will skate at the corner of Front and Nationwide on Tuesday is Oliver Bjorkstrand, and the talented winger is excited to see training camp switch from an evaluation mode to one that is more focused on preparing the team for its opening games of the season.
"These three days are pretty hard here -- the first five days, I guess," Bjorkstrand said. "Now we're getting to start getting into some games and you start talking about more systems, so that's definitely exciting. It's fun getting these games in before the season starts. It's important to be ready for preseason games, getting your mind-set ready for when the regular season starts."
Tortorella won't be behind the bench, he said Monday, for at least the first two games, leaving the job instead to Cleveland Monsters head coach Mike Eaves. With the Blue Jackets dressing so many likely Monsters in the first few games, it will give Eaves -- who led the team's prospects in Traverse City -- a chance to further get to know the players he'll be coaching this upcoming season.
From his perch above the ice, then, Tortorella hopes to see how some of organization's younger players will do on the big stage.
"I want to see the kids early on here, and (the front office does) too," Tortorella said. "We let the (front office) do (the rosters) the first couple of games just because they know more about the people than we do. We can't see what these guys are about in a couple of games in Traverse City and then in camp here. We're trying to be as fair as far as the guys that we look at.
"A number of the kids are going to play a lot of the exhibition games. There's a handful of guys, probably six or seven, that are going to play five or six of the games because we think they have a chance and we have to look at them."
