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GDT: Canes v. Jackets 4/2 7:00

A

andyt

Canes Moderator
Staff member
The Canes close out the season series in the back half of a home and home. A win clinches a playoff spot.

A familiar theme on Tuesday; build a lead, lose the lead, take the lead. They kept it this time. Ehlers had a goal and 2 assists, his 13th multi-point game of the season. He also set a career high in assists . He needs 4 goals to set a new career high. Not bad for a guy that had no points in his first 5 games and no goals in his first 11. Svech had another multi-point game too. He’s up to 64 points, and is almost at a point per game excluding the first 8 games of the season where he was scoreless. The Jackets got a little salty at an uncalled slew foot from Aho on Werenski, it might not be a bad idea to get Deslauriers in the lineup. They’re skating this morning, so we’ll see.

The Jackets have hit their first rough patch since Bowness took over in mid-January. They’ve lost 4 in a row and are holding on to the 2nd wild card by their fingernails, 2 points up on Ottawa, Detroit and Philly, all of whom have a game in hand.

Black jerseys, FanDuel for TV.


View: https://x.com/waltruff/status/2039677115784720726?s=61
 
Well, Bowness got the Jackets going with a focus on stopping transition, which took some pressure off of his goalies and resulted in more winnable games. Once they got a taste of actually winning those games without having to grind so much, it kind of built on itself. But Bowness hasn’t really figured out how they need to generate enough scoring chances 5v5 to be consistent offensively … which is a problem he ran into in his prior stops as well. Even in Dallas, with all that talent, if they didn’t get you in transition or on the PP they just didn’t score enough goals. Honestly, he got one of the longest new coach bounces in recent memory just because he’s not some dire grinch constantly screaming at his team to work harder. Good on him, but he’s never really had a feel for offense.

That said, this team is dangerous because they’re desperate. Blowing that three game homestand put HUGE pressure on their playoff chances, and they’ll be pushing hard to get off the schneid. Greaves wasn’t particularly sharp on Tuesday so we could well see Merzlikins tonight for the first time this season. Apparently Marchment got dinged up on Tuesday, as he’s listed as day to day, but Olivier is off their injury list. Maybe we get a Deslauriers home ice appearance if Olivier can go tonight. We’ll see. I’d love to see Bussi back in net tonight so he can try to back up that strong showing on Tuesday, but I suspect it’ll be Freddie and that the Canes will just rotate this out until Kooch gets healthy enough to play.

Chance to clinch for the Canes, as noted, but also for Tampa and Buffalo. I’d love to see Carolina keep their nose in front on the Eastern race, as they currently have the edge on points percentage. Plus, it would be nice to clinch the season series over a possible first round playoff matchup. So not a big game, but also a big game.
 
Also, one assumes that Justin Gainey will be on the siren tonight. Or they might save it for the playoffs and have both new State and Carolina coaches on the thing.
 
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jeffbear said:
Yeah, figured that. It’s also Staal’s 1400th NHL game tonight. In the old days, that warranted a silver stick.
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IIRC, he got a sliver stick for 1,000 games but it was during the COVID season, so there weren’t many in attendance.
 
Olivier is actually a pretty good hockey player. If he is healthy, he is definitely in the lineup. Unlike KK, he is a legit 30 point a season player.
 
HeyKurtz said:
Bowness said yesterday that Olivier is likely out for the rest of the regular season.
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Maybe that’s why they took him off the injury list then. As for how good he is … meh. He did manage 33 points last season and was on pace for something close to that this year with 26 through 61 games. But this is the first year in his whole career he’s been above water in expected goal share as a full time NHLer. He’s a higher class of thug than normal, but that’s about it. Columbus inexplicably pays him $3 million AAV … $4 mil in actual cash this year.
 
Merzlikens in goal for the Jackets. Marchment and Lundestrom are game time decisions.
 
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