Jackets lose Tortorella's debut, stumble to 0-8
New coach, same result for the Columbus Blue Jackets as their historically bad start to the season officially became the worst start for any team in the post-expansion era with a 3-2 regulation loss to the Minnesota Wild. Only the 1943-44 New York Rangers started their season worse than these Jackets, who have now lost eight consecutive games in regulation. That Rangers club lost 11 straight before managing to break the streak with a tie.
Unfortunately for new head coach John Tortorella, he couldn’t come in and snap his fingers to make the team win. The good news is that the team looked better and played better for the most part. Regardless, it’s the same result and now the Blue Jackets are in unsavory company.
Here’s three things to know about the Blue Jackets’ historic loss.
1. The Blue Jackets played better as a group, but still not good enough.
When a team starts 0-8-0, there aren’t many positives to pull, but the Jackets looked far better Thursday than they had previously. You would expect them to come out flying. They actually gave up an early goal on a pretty fortuitous tip from Zach Parise, but instead of folding, Columbus responded.
The Jackets managed to score twice near the end of the first period to take a 2-1 lead into the intermission. Brandon Dubinsky scored with just 21 seconds remaining in regulation, so it made it really difficult for Columbus to relinquish the lead as quickly as it has in other games.
Eventually, the Wild came back and scored twice in the second period. Nino Niederreiter’s goal is one that Sergei Bobrovsky will want to have back. The Blue Jackets never were able to get back on the board, but it wasn’t for lack of effort.
At the end of the night, Columbus outshot Minnesota 29-23. The Jackets also held the edge in even-strength shot attempts with 45 to Minnesota’s 39. That’s not necessarily much to write home about considering they were chasing the Wild for a good portion of the second period and all of the third.
And while Bobrovsky didn’t look great (particularly on that Niederreiter goal), he also didn’t look as lost as he had in previous games.
2. The wrath of Torts was felt early by Ryan Johansen
Ryan Johansen is one of the Blue Jackets’ most important players. He is coming off of a career year and was a big reason this team had so much optimism coming into the season. He did not register a shot on goal, struggled at times at the faceoff dot and was a relative nonfactor.
So he didn’t play a whole lot in the third period. Tortorella wasted no time sending a message to the young forward. Johansen took just four shifts in the third period. He was not on the ice in the closing minutes when the team was desperate for a goal while trailing 3-2. His last shift came with 6:10 remaining in the period.
That is a big statement from the new head coach on his first day on the job.
As far as the rest of the game goes, Tortorella was animated on the bench. There was absolutely no feeling-out process. The benching of Johansen, however, was the most eye-opening move of the first game of the Tortorella era.
3. Thomas Vanek’s game-winning goal was actually pretty sick
It’s not often that a deflection goal would be considered “sick,” but Vanek’s absolutely was. He took a pass from Jason Zucker and from a near impossible angle, managed to position his stick and angle it in a way that the puck absolutely jumped off it and past a crouched Bobrovsky. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.
#VanekMagic https://t.co/cagk8Ijt5L
— Jason Gold (@JayGold85) October 23, 2015
I’m still trying to figure out how he did that and trying to decide if Bobrovsky should have done better with it. I’m going with there not being much the netminder could do on that one.
The Blue Jackets lost a historic eighth consecutive game. (USATSI)
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