When asked about his play of late, Merzlikins said he was just doing his part to help the Jackets push for the postseason.
“I’m just focusing game by game,” he said. “Every game is two huge points right now in the standings. Obviously, it’s tight. Of course, there are going to be mistakes, there are going to be bad nights, but we all together are just focusing on those two points.”
It’s been an interesting sixth season in Columbus for Merzlikins, who has had times where he’s shared the crease with Daniil Tarasov and Jet Greaves, and other moments where he’s appeared to be the clear No. 1 for the Blue Jackets. His play of late shows that he’s deserving of that role, and his 2.95 goals-against average for the season is his best since 2020-21.
“What we really like is his ability to calm things down in the zone,” Evason said postgame. “Sure, Elvis makes some spectacular saves, highlight-reel saves, but the ones that are fantastic are the ones that he catches when we’re stuck in our zone and he smothers pucks – call him Velcro or whatever, they hit him and he just holds them and there’s not a lot of chaos after. He’s done a real good job of doing that, but he’s also done a really good job of personally, for him, staying calm when things get a little hectic as well.”
3. This one wasn’t pretty, but the Blue Jackets did what they had to do to get the win.
Columbus has been the highest-scoring team in the NHL at 5-on-5 as well as at home in Nationwide Arena this year, so there’s confidence in their ability to score goals. But you kind of knew going into this matchup that the six-goal outbursts that marked the first half of the season weren’t going to be seen on Saturday night.
Los Angeles is one of the biggest, heaviest teams in the NHL, and defense is the name of their game, as the Kings entered with the lowest mark in the league of expected goals against per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 per MoneyPuck.com. For the layman, that means creating offense against the Kings and getting to the difficult scoring areas is as tough as it gets, and that was obvious pretty much from the opening puck drop.
The Blue Jackets struggled to create at times throughout the night, but that just meant they’d have to win a 3-2 slugfest instead of a 7-6 shootout.
“Oh, the Kings are a really hard team,” Marchenko said. “I hate to play against this team because they don’t give you ice, and they are really good in the battles. It’s hard to play against this team. We just try to do our best. We say it’s a good D-zone structure for us because a lot of time today, we play in the D-zone. Elvis make a couple of saves, we have a lot of good blocked shots and good sticks. It’s a hard win for us.”
Right now, the days of putting up six goals are going to be harder and harder to come by. Part of it is the natural order of things, as teams figure out their systems as the season goes by and clamp down defensively as the playoff push intensifies. Part of it is because the Blue Jackets skated Saturday night without four players you’d consider top-six forwards in Boone Jenner, Sean Monahan, Yegor Chinakhov and Cole SIllinger.
There are still plenty of players up front – not to mention Zach Werenski, who extended his home point streak to 19 with a first-period goal – who can fill the net, but winning a few games like this one will be a necessity down the stretch.
“We have a confidence,” Marchenko said. “We feel better when we win these games. It’s hard games. We need to learn how to win every game – 6-5 or 2-1, 1-0 or 3-2. We don't care. We think about two points.”