What happened on Sunday didn’t replicate itself on Tuesday, much to the dismay of the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Their first postseason loss ties them with the Toronto Maple Leafs at one win apiece in their five-game Stanley Cup Qualifying series.
On Wednesday, John Tortorella and a couple of his players addressed the media. Here are three things from their interview sessions.
Torts Isn’t Talking About Games 1 And 2
Tortorella doesn’t want to talk about what happened in the first two games of this series.
He really doesn’t want to talk about it.
“We're just going to play,” Tortorella said in response to the first question at Wednesday’s virtual interview session. “We're going to get prepared to play the right way and go about our business.”
Asked a follow-up question about what concerns him coming off of Game 2, he laughed before responding.
“You guys are killing me,” Tortorella said. “We're going to prepare to play the game. I'll probably answer all your questions. We're going to prepare. We had a meeting today at 11:30 with coaches. We had a 2:30 practice. We'll have an 11 o'clock meeting tomorrow, and then we'll play at 8 o'clock. I'm not going to talk about what adjustments we have to make, what we'll do differently. We're going to prepare to play the right way.”
A third question about his team a minute later led to him telling a reporter, “God damn, you just keep on working me, don't you?”
“I've told you I'm not interested in breaking down what's happened in the games,” Tortorella said. “I've been very fair about that. All I'm telling you is I'm looking to get our team ready to play the next game. I'm sorry I don't have information for your story, but that's how we're going to go about our business here.”
Understood. The puck drops at 8 p.m. on Thursday.
Torts keeps it short and sweet in today's media avail. #CBJ | @TelhioCU pic.twitter.com/hD3LGzafjM
— x-Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) August 5, 2020
Penalty Kill Success
Perhaps not a single interview session has passed since Columbus entered the bubble without someone bringing up Toronto’s power play. To say the Blue Jackets respect it would be an understatement. Both Tortorella and his players have talked about it at length.
So far, though, it hasn’t bit them.
Joonas Korpisalo shut the Maple Leafs out in Game 1, and Toronto went scoreless on five power-play opportunities in Game 2. Of course, the Blue Jackets haven’t scored in six power-play chances across both games, either, but their unit had much less success throughout the year. Toronto ranked sixth in the NHL in the regular season by scoring on 23.1 of its power plays while Columbus ranked 27th with a scoring percentage of 16.4.
“We take a lot of pride in our penalty kill, especially against a good power play like them, and we know how big of a difference-maker it can be for both teams,” Foligno said. “It's an area that I'm sure both teams are looking to try and improve on, but we're going to do our darndest to make sure we don't let them get anything on the power play and see if we can tweak a few things to give us a little bit more success and a little bit more options on ours. I think both teams are looking at it that way. That's going to probably be a difference-maker as this series goes on.”
Of course, the Blue Jackets need to get their power play going. Ensuring it continues its penalty kill success through two games might be just as important, though.
The “Bubble” Is Working
As each passing announcement gets made, the NHL and NBA look better and better.
On Wednesday, the NBA went public with their most recent COVID-19 test results, telling the world that of the 343 players tested for coronavirus since results were previously announced on July 29, zero tests were positive. That news follows shortly after Monday’s news that all coronavirus tests administered by the NHL since teams congregated in hub cities have come back negative for COVID-19.
The difference between those two leagues and the MLB, the other of the four major sports going on right now? They’re playing in self-contained “bubbles.” While baseball teams have had games canceled and been forced to quarantine from one another, hockey and basketball teams have been smooth sailing.
“I think the league has done a terrific job, and the people here doing it have been terrific,” Tortorella said. “We are so fortunate to be looked after the way we've been looked after here. It has turned into a routine. We're about a week into it. There's a routine. I have a routine of when to go do it. I think it's been handled very well. I think we all feel very safe, very fortunate compared to what's going on with some other people in the world.”
Foligno joked that Vladislav Gavrikov hasn’t been willing to face him and David Savard in the FIFA video game. But if that’s the biggest issue, things are going swimmingly.
