CBJ vs Carolina 3/17
Coyle Dominance, Small Tactics to Look For Next Matchup
The Blue Jackets put together a tremendous effort to win against one of the top opponents they have remaining this season. This win is one component of a series of excellent character results in a string of them that should together create a strong nucleus of confidence for this group.
Carolina has served as something of a gatekeeper for the Eastern Conference. They play a unique style of relentless pressure with a very rapid pace between events, shots or checks or what-have-you, that requires a high degree of skill just to survive. They fracture and stress-test the limits of your structure and force players to make skilled plays in critical areas.
That this Blue Jackets team beat them in Open Play should be considered an important achievement. This wasn’t a victory yanked from the jaws of defeat but instead an earned victory. On this day, the Blue Jackets were clearly the better hockey team.
Oftentimes, I find that there’s too much emphasis placed on “intangibles” or at least too much emphasis placed on talking about intangibles that often aren’t backed up by actions. I think we can see quite clearly that Dean Evason’s desire to “make aggressive mistakes” wasn’t quite backed up by the extremely conservative nature of the club when holding leads.
Rick Bowness, in many ways, looked like he was about that sort of coach too. There’s still plenty to quibble with but his messaging leading into the game was well aligned with the outcome coming out of it. He didn’t want the Blue Jackets to sit back and cede ground to the Carolina pressure, he wanted them to stay on the front-foot and meet it with their own as well.
On the grounds that Carolina usually dominate, in-zone cycling and forechecking pressure, the Blue Jackets met them eye-to-eye. Most critically, they were prepared to capitalize on their mistakes. The volume of counter-rush offense should be case-in-point for the front-footed nature of the game.
This performance, coupled with the all-in nature of “protecting teammates” (I think this is generally wildly overrated, I’m moreso pleased that any given member of the Blue Jackets is unafraid to defend themselves) suggests a team that will maintain confidence through this playoff push. This is always the goal, there is nothing to be gained by assuming you’ve lost before the game is even played.
I don’t even think the chance-share really tells the whole story. The critical component is the excellent shot-blocked and miss-forcing defensive effort from the “matchup” players. Charlie Coyle, Boone Jenner and Zach Werenski et al prevented nearly any danger from getting through to Jet Greaves who has seemingly put to bed any unstable performance concerns over these past few games.
Before I dive into Coyle’s performance, I think Werenski’s defense needs a moment of appreciation. He hasn’t been himself since returning from grevious sickness. He’s recently told us, though, that he’s not really trying to be either. He’s consolidating his game and focusing on defending, knowing that the offense will come.
On one hand, this might put his Norris in jeopardy. I'm entirely sure he doesn’t really care but no 5v5 points in 6 games for the best 5v5 defenseman scorer of the past few years is difficult.
Still, he’s absolutely right. He has been locking it down defensively and the Blue Jackets are discovering independent offense at the same time. A great sign, especially if Werenski’s overwhelming offensive presence re-emerges at the same time.
The story of the game, though, has to be the continued overwhelming performance of Charlie Coyle. His line dominated the on-ice chance share and he recorded four individual primary points. He was the driving force in both powerplay goals and chipped in well on the others at the same time.
There’s not much more to say about Coyle this season. His puck protection is incredible, his timing through the neutral zone and on connective plays is brilliant and the added net-front and backwall dimension on the powerplay is awesome.
The Blue Jackets haven’t had a player who brings this level of defensive conscience in quite some time. The above clip wasn’t included in the highlight package but I think it shows just how difficult players like Werenski are to play against, and how much their aggression is enabled, when there’s a player like Coyle with such great defensive awareness.
Watch Coyle’s presence in the slot as Werenski is doing the hard work of defending a very good athlete in Andrei Svechnikov. The same athlete that completely turned the corner on Severson just later that game.
At the same time, it should be clear in the mixtape above just how much Sillinger’s energy and combativeness work as a complement. Coyle is a security blanket that enables aggression and he loves to have players to play off of at the same time.
As a “fun” detail, I thought this little clip was neat, something you see in sports all of the time. Coyle is completely locked in and sees Jackson Blake jump for the puck. At the same time he pretty much mimics the leap.
The neuroscience of this all is pretty simple. Humans have “mirror neurons” that fire whenever they’re observing something happen. Essentially, the brain creates some of the same activity as if it was doing something when you are observing that same thing happen. In this case, whatever seam between the observing and the doing broke down and we got to see it play out in action.
Things To Watch For
This game was, essentially, a complete game from the Blue Jackets. There’s nothing that really rings “alarm bells” for when these clubs face eachother in the upcoming matchups.
Charlie Coyle was dominant and Jenner held the fort whenever he was absent. If those things continue to happen, Carolina’s smaller secondary D-corps (Walker, Gostisbehere) could be in for trouble. It was those two that Voronkov-Monahan-Marchenko made a meal of just last year.
The Blue Jackets were given a beneficial game state on account of Seth Jarvis’ two brutal high sticking penalties. On the powerplay, they weren’t altogether that good. They did score twice which is excellent but there was a ton of risk.
The Blue Jackets really struggled to handle Carolina’s aggressive PK. Mason Marchment, in all situations really, had some puck management decisions that were poor. His inefficiency high in the ice could be exposed but his capacity to continue playing through these sequences, and problem solving them, did help create some rather large breakdowns in structure that the Blue Jackets used to score.
In-zone, the Blue Jackets actually did a better job of defeating Carolina’s aggression with excellent use of the points and good interior timing.
The Blue Jackets gameplan was clearly to get the puck to the point and find the space that had just opened in the slot. Carolina plays an aggressively expanding team, similar to Evason’s Blue Jackets, and that means changes of side and depth will always have opportunity if executed promptly.
In particular, Kent Johnson and Conor Garland were fantastic. Garland, in particular, is built to exploit 1 on 1 defensive situations. He’s small and outrageously agile which can be a weakness but also means a defender who will match him has to work against a unique player.
Both he, and Marchment for that matter, have added a measure of small-space skill that will be critical for creating advantages against defenses of this type.
There’s not too much to say with respect to the next matchups, other than that the losing team usually has more learning material and gets the first opportunity to make adjustments. That the Blue Jackets won one of the three remaining matchups against their most difficult remaining opponent should already put them in a great position going forward.