Thursday was Margaritaville Night in Nationwide Arena, but for CBJ players, the real beach will come this upcoming week.
While Zach Werenski is headed to Montreal to meet up with Team USA for the start of the 4-Nations Face Off, many of the other Blue Jackets are surely headed to tropical locales. Everyone but Werenski will get some major time off for the international tournament, with the Jackets not scheduled to practice until Feb. 19 and off from game action for a full two weeks.
The break couldn’t have come at a better time for the banged-up Blue Jackets, who will use the time to rest their bodies. If all goes well, captain Boone Jenner could return to action on the other side of the gap in the schedule, while such players as Kirill Marchenko, Dante Fabbro, Sean Monahan and Yegor Chinakhov will be closer to an eventual return as well.
The Blue Jackets can’t look too far ahead, though, as there are still important points on the line tonight against New York. Columbus hopes to go into the break on a victory and build some momentum before coming back for the NHL’s frantic finish.
“It’s huge for sure, especially with where we are in the standings,” Werenski said. “We’re right there with everybody. Points at home are super important. We want to end these two games at home on the right foot and go into the break on a high note. It’s a huge game for us and hopefully we can get two points out of it.”
As Werenski noted, it’s also important to keep pace in the standings as the Blue Jackets push to end a four-season playoff drought. Columbus has lost three games in a row after Thursday night’s 3-2 overtime loss against Utah, moving the Blue Jackets to a point behind Detroit for the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference.
While Columbus would have preferred to finish off the game with an overtime goal, a cannon blast, streamers and two points, they were happy to at least get a point Thursday.
“You take as many points as you can obviously,” defenseman Damon Severson said. “We had a .500 road trip. We come back, we get a point; now if we get a win going into the break, that’s going to set us up pretty solid moving forward here in the stretch run coming back from the 4-Nations break.
“We’re in a position that we don’t mind, I would say, right now. But it’s going to be a real battle to the end of the year with how tight everything is. Every point is going to matter.”
Even with Werenski’s return last night, the Blue Jackets were still without some major firepower up front, and it was clear early they didn’t have their legs against Utah after playing eight of the previous nine on the road. Perhaps that’s why head coach Dean Evason was happy his team was able to battle its way to at least a point.
“That’s a good point tonight,” he said. “Of course we want two. But to kill a penalty (in overtime) like that at the end and some adversity that we went through, it’s great that we can put this in the memory bank and go, ‘OK, maybe we don’t have some people. Maybe we don’t have our best stuff. But we’re able to play the way that we know how to play in order to give us a chance.’”
Know The Foe: New York Rangers
Head coach: Peter Laviolette (Second season)
Team stats: Goals per game: 2.96 (14th) | Scoring defense: 3.06 (20th) | PP: 20.6 percent (19th) | PK: 82.2 percent (7th)
The narrative: With a star-studded roster and two appearances in the Eastern Conference Final in the last three seasons, the Rangers came into the season as a Stanley Cup contender, but this year has been a roller coaster. Convinced his roster needed some major changes, general manager Chris Drury traded captain Jacob Trouba in November amid a brutal fall stretch, but the Rangers have found their footing a bit of late. Where a once-promising season goes from here remains to be seen, but there’s been plenty of intrigue on Broadway this season.
Team leaders: The Bread Man keeps baking up points in the Big Apple, as former Blue Jackets forward Artemi Panarin is averaging over a point per game for the eighth straight season with team-best totals of 23 goals and 57 points. Defenseman Adam Fox has struggled to put the puck in the net this season (four goals) but is still facilitating the offense with a team-high 39 assists, while Mike Zibanejad (10-25-35), Vincent Trocheck (17-18-35), Alexis Lafreniere (14-18-32) and Will Cuylle (13-14-27, 196 hits) follow and Chris Kreider has 16 goals.
The most stable position this season has been the goaltending spot, as Igor Shesterkin has again been solid with a 18-19-2 record, 2.87 GAA and .906 save percentage in 38 starts.
What's new: Just how up and down have the Rangers been this season? New York started 12-4-1 then went 4-15-0 in its next 19 games while being outscored by 32 goals in that span. The Rangers may be turning the corner, though, as New York is 10-5-3 since then and added 2024 All-Star and Ohio native J.T. Miller in a recent trade with Vancouver. Whether the team’s shakeup will be what it needed to get to the top or a harbinger of a missed postseason berth remains to be seen, and the Rangers enter five points out of the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
Trending: Columbus has points in four of the last five dating back to last season, going 2-1-1 a year ago and then getting a point in a 1-0 final in a shootout Jan. 18 in Madison Square Garden.
Former CBJ: In addition to Panarin, there’s goaltender Jonathan Quick, though he never played in a game for the Blue Jackets when acquired and then traded at the deadline in 2023. At age 39, Quick is 7-5-2 this year in 17 games with a 3.04 GAA and .901 save percentage. He recently became the first American goalie and third active netminder to reach 400 career wins and is expected to start tonight.
