After Wednesday night's loss to Pittsburgh, Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella found himself in an unusual position.
The Blue Jackets were the last team in the NHL to lose three games in a row, doing so Sunday vs. Washington, and added a fourth in the Steel City. The loss ended the Jackets' three-game test vs. Chicago, the Capitals and Penguins at 0-3 and likely ended the team's bid for home ice in the opening round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
So Tortorella was left answering what went wrong and what has been going wrong, really for one of the first stretches this season. As such, we figured we'd comb through what the coach said for our first edition of Translating Torts, a look into the words, wit and wisdom of the head coach.
Torts: “We gave them a free one at the end of the first period. It was just a kick in the teeth. That’s just a free goal. We have full control of the puck and it ends up in the back of the net at the end of the first period. … It can’t happen in this type of game.”
Translation: Yeah, it was a bad goal. If Tortorella was upset about anything in the game, it was the opening goal for the Penguins late in the first. Thanks in part to the standard excellent goaltending from Sergei Bobrovsky in the opening period, the Jackets were set to go into the first intermission with the game scoreless even after a rocky start. Instead, a cross-zone feed from Jack Johnson to Cam Atkinson forced the latter to stretch, and the puck caromed off his stick. Quickly, Pittsburgh's Scott Wilson quickly gathered the puck, created some space and centered the puck to Carter Rowney, who got his stick in front of Johnson for the redirection past Bobrovsky. Suddenly, at 18:51, it was 1-0. Those are the kinds of goals that deflate teams, especially in games where momentum is huge and every goal makes a difference.
Torts: “I do think we have shifted down a bit where the intensity isn’t totally there because you know you’re in (the playoffs). It happens. It happens to all teams, and I think some guys are a little bit inexperienced at it, and it’s coming here quickly in the next few days. We’re going to find out what the schedule is, who we’re playing, and I just want our guys to work through these next games and try to play the right away. That’s all we’re trying to do here. I thought we did for a number of minutes tonight, and we certainly didn’t get enough (finishing) and certainly didn’t make enough plays offensively.”
Translation: While the Jackets are facing obvious issues at the moment, they might be more mental than anything else. Tortorella has coached a number of playoff teams so he knows what it’s like to go through this stretch of the schedule, one that is new to Blue Jackets players and even fans. And the reality is many of the Jackets’ fellow top teams have gone through similar stretches of late. Pittsburgh had lost four in a row before the team’s win streak hit three vs. the Jackets. The Blackhawks have lost three of five. As Torts said, it happens.
Torts: “That’s 24, 25 minutes that are pretty important minutes that we’re trying to find (with Zach Werenski out). We’ll look at the tape and see what we feel and go from there.”
Translation: Nothing against the Jackets' other blueliners, but day one without Zach Werenski wasn’t a great one. The head coach chose to split up the David Savard-Johnson pairing as well, giving the Jackets three new defensive pairings. By the midway point, those duos were shaken up with 58 and 7 placed back together, but the other four defenders were mixed the rest of the night. Replacing the 19-year-old wunderkind who has been effective in both zones proved as difficult as expected. He is said to be "day-to-day," and the team has to hope the day he returns to the ice happens soon simply because he's such a unique talent.
Torts: “A goal for us tonight was to play a good hockey game. We don’t get too convoluted as far as what it brings us and all that. We knew we were playing against a very good team, a team that we may face in the playoffs, but we just wanted to try to play a good game, a fourth game in six nights. We wanted to try to play a simple game.”
Translation: The team isn’t too worried about the home ice aspect of the playoffs, or what these late-season games mean toward any postseason permutations. Sure, being able to have home ice for the first round against the Penguins likely went out the window with the loss, but Tortorella said in his career he’s found that home ice truly matters only in Game 7. And that’s a long way off. To fans, losing that chance – mere days after seeing the Presidents’ Cup likely go out the window – will hurt. To the team and Tortorella, it’s still about focusing on the now.
Torts: “We're lacking execution. We have 79 shot attempts toward the net, I think. Just a lack of execution offensively. ... We developed chances, we need to make more plays though. It’s funny, you talk about when you’re making plays, you need to have some grind in your game. I thought we had grind in our game tonight, I don’t think we had enough playmaking tonight when the plays were there.”
Translation: Figuring out this goal-scoring funk – 12 in eight games – won’t be easy, but in some ways it’s the opposite of what happened to the team when it won 16 games in a row earlier this season. At that point, everything the team tried worked out; as such, the team was oozing with confidence and getting results even when it wasn't necessarily playing as well as the record would indicate. Right now, it seems Tortorella believes the team isn’t playing as poorly as the results would indicate, but nothing seems to be working and the Jackets are playing with the opposite of confidence. Tortorella has often said during this streak that if the team plays the right way – and works for its offense – the goals will come. That’s the next step.
