What transpired Wednesday night in Pittsburgh as the Blue Jackets took on the Penguins in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs was all too familiar.
In the words of head coach John Tortorella, the Blue Jackets played good minutes. They outshot the Penguins in 5-on-5 play. And yet they scored just one goal in a 3-1 loss to begin the conference quarterfinals.
It fit a worrisome trend that engulfed the Jackets near the end of the regular season. In an 11-game stretch to end the campaign, Columbus scored just 21 goals, even as Tortorella said he often liked the team’s play and the stats showed the Jackets often carried possession.
So if that’s the case, the question becomes simple – how does Columbus turn possession into danger?
“We have thoughts,” Tortorella said Thursday. “We have some thoughts we think we can try to improve ourselves, but I’m not going to talk about it here.”
Indeed, the head coach wasn’t about to go into specifics, but he did have confidence the team had the players on hand to get the job done.
"I have full faith that we’re going to find our way and create some, not only by manufacturing and some of the things we can do as coaches, but also them just playing,” he said. “I think you have to be really careful as a coach because we spent a lot of time on that part of the game today, the offensive game, but when coaches start teaching offense, you kind of get in the way sometimes, too.
“Who the hell are we? They’re the guys that play. They have the instincts, they have the skill and the talent, and they see things. It’s kind of a fine line there how much you give them and not turn it into running plays. We have to allow them to play, and I think they need to feel that. We’ll be really careful.”
That answer shows a couple of things – first, confidence that such players as Nick Foligno, Brandon Saad, Alexander Wennberg and Oliver Bjorkstrand have the ability to tally against a team that was just 17th in the NHL this year in goals against per game.
It also points the difficulty in pinpointing exactly how to create those tallies. One has to have some creativity, which the Jackets think they have, and strong possession metrics tend to help – after all, having the puck, especially in a threatening position, is the first step toward making things happen. But even with those things, a little luck can go a long way toward helping or hurting when it comes to putting pucks in the net.
In the domain of possession, Columbus had the edge over the Penguins in Game 1. Tortorella said the Jackets had five more minutes of offensive zone time in the opener, while the team had an edge on 5-on-5 shots on goal and 5-on-5 overall shot attempts.
If there’s one thing that seems to be agreed-upon, it’s simply that the Jackets didn’t get shots from the highest danger areas in front of the net and were boxed out when it came to rebound chances.
Pittsburgh did what it could to protect surprise starter Marc-Andre Fleury in net, swarming to the front of the cage to clear the puck and keeping the Jackets to the outside of the zone and the points as much as possible.
“We have to get inside,” Tortorella said. “Give Pittsburgh credit. I thought they defended well in front of their goalie, blocked a lot of shots. But there’s no question I think for both teams, a big part of this series is getting inside. They scored a goal being inside, a very important goal that third goal. We have to do a better job of trying to get in there and trying to get shots there.”
“They collapsed five guys and do a great job of getting sticks in passing lanes,” Scott Hartnell added. “We’d try to make that extra pass and they were willing to sacrifice the body, which is what you need this time of year. Give them credit, but we need to find ways to get more opportunities there.”
The key will be to keep playing with the same structure as Game 1, a contest in which Columbus kept Pittsburgh’s powerful offense in check for most of the game. Opening things up in an effort to score would more likely backfire than work for the Jackets.
“We’re going to have to score some goals in this series,” Tortorella admitted. “The fine line you walk here, you’re going to have to score some goals, but we’re not going to get into a track meet. We have to stay within ourselves with some patience along the way here, too, and play our game. I liked our physical play. I thought we consistently did a lot of good things in the neutral zone. We just didn’t create enough scoring chances.”
