If you think that for a hockey player, it doesn’t get much better than laying someone out on one end of the ice and scoring on the other, well, you’d be right.
“Yeah, that was great,” Fantilli said, starting with the hit. “I was reaching for (the puck), he was reaching for it. The last second I saw him, and I didn’t want to be the one that went down there. It’s not like I was hunting him the whole way down the ice. I saw him probably half a second before I ran into him, and to be able to go down and score, that was great. I thought it gave us some momentum there going into the second period, and we kept rolling with it.”
Fantilli added a second goal early in the middle period, and the rout was on. His two tallies moved him to 27 on the year – 30 is on the table in his second season – and gave him 50 points on the campaign. The No. 3 overall pick in the 2023 draft has excelled down the stretch, and teammates are taking notice.
“Fants is bringing it for us,” Sean Kuraly said of the 20-year-old center. “We need him to. We rely on him pretty heavily now, and we’re going to need him the next week here to get some things done. He’s playing really well for us, and we expect that. He shows it every day. He’s a really good player and a good teammate. We’re lucky to have him.”
2. The Blue Jackets more than held their own in a physical affair.
Fantilli’s hit and ensuing goal was like throwing a match into a dry pile of kindling wood, and by the time the Blue Jackets extended their lead to 6-0 early in the second period, you knew some shenanigans would be afoot.
That was the case the rest of the way, as there were two fights – Kuraly buried Leonard under an avalanche of right hands amid an old-school team-wide donnybrook, and van Riemsdyk dropped the gloves with defenseman Rasmus Sandin – in the second period and a kerfuffle in the third that led to misconducts for CBJ forward Dmitri Voronkov as well as Caps players Pierre-Luc Dubois and James’ brother Trevor van Riemsdyk.
The 76 combined penalty minutes – including a 10-minute misconduct for Tom Wilson, who had words for the officials after there was no penalty on the Fantilli hit – were the most in a CBJ game this year, and you could sense the temperature rising as the two division rivals battled in the one-sided affair. The Blue Jackets didn’t back down, though, and seemed to thrive on the physical play.
“When you have so many guys that are in the battle, I think it helps,” Kuraly said. “They’re not just looking at a couple of guys. Everyone is in the battle, and it’s what we expect, and it’s kind of what’s helped us come out on top of these games.”
Indeed, with the Blue Jackets riding a 4-11-1 stretch going into Tuesday’s must-win game vs. Ottawa, head coach Dean Evason told his team it needed to play with more edge and bite – and confidence. The message was that you belong, so go play with swagger and let the chips fall where they may.
In winning three games in a row, the Blue Jackets have done just that, and physical play is a part of that equation.
“Do we need to play chippy? Do we need to play undisciplined? No,” Evason said. “Do we need to have an edge? Do we need to have some bite? Are we desperate? Do we know where we’re at? Yeah.”
3. Jet Greaves continues to impress, earning his first career NHL shutout in the victory.
It seems almost impossible not to like Greaves. He’s an underdog story, working himself from an undrafted goalie into an NHL netminder. The fans love him, partly because of his name and backstory but also because you can tell how hard he works and plays. Teammates love him because he’s both a likable guy and he’s easy to play in front of with his calm demeanor and no-fuss personality.
Greaves has been impressive each time he’s been called up to Columbus, but his last two games might show just how high the ceiling is for him. Greaves made a season-high 39 saves in Thursday’s win over Buffalo, keeping the Blue Jackets in the game when their play dipped at times, and then earned his first career shutout with 22 stops in the win over the Caps.
“The guys were so good in front of me tonight,” Greaves said, “right from the start all the way to the end of the game. It was fun to see everyone bought in. I’m just super grateful today.
“Honestly, I never thought about (shutouts) too much. For me, I just like to try to win games. Obviously, when you have shutouts, it usually means you’re winning, so I like it there, but otherwise I’m just trying to help the team win hockey games.”
Greaves has shown his mettle in Cleveland, setting a team record for career wins, backstopping the team to within a win of the Calder Cup final a season ago and catching fire down the stretch this year. With a one-way contract next season, he seems ticketed to be with the Blue Jackets, but he’s showing that the future might be now.
“It’s been amazing,” Fantilli said of having Greaves in net. “The kid has been grinding all year, not just this year but years past. Every time he’s come up here, he’s been great for us. He was awesome. It was really great to see.”
