CBJ vs Montreal 3/27
Top Line Dominance, A D Coverage Wrinkle, Form over Function
The Blue Jackets lost a big game against a fellow playoff-race team despite dominating the chance share. Takeaways from the game might be totally different from results, performance and process lenses.
The Blue Jackets “deserved to” win the game. But they didn’t. They lost and very many of the “red flags” reared their heads again. A Boone Jenner offensive zone penalty at a critically poor time. Strange defensive mistakes. A tepid powerplay.
This time, though, there aren’t any kids for Rick Bowness to blame. He has decided that he simply does not like Denton Mateychuk lately offering him his three lowest TOI games of the season in the last 5.
Dmitri Voronkov and Kent Johnson are scratched. In their place, Monahan, Wood and Heinen get more minutes. Despite the above facts, Sillinger’s ice time was also quite small.
Adam Fantilli, on the other hand, is having a brilliant finish to the season from an underlying perspective. They didn’t score this game but they were the only reason to walk away positive.
The veteran fortified middle six flagged hard and conceded goals and the fourth line, though outchanced, was the only one that did actually bring a goal.
The quotes coming out of that game all moved to the tune of “we were the better team, you’re not going to win them all”. Frankly, they’re correct. It’s just frustrating that the Blue Jackets seem to put together “better team but couldn’t win” a bit too often against some of these fellow playoff race teams lately.
Marchment-Fantilli-Marchenko Dominance
This line dominated the Montreal Canadiens while being mostly matched against their top line of Juraj Slafkovsky - Nick Suzuki - Cole Caufield. They did it by creating a heavy volume of rush chances, consistently winning second effort pucks and just generally putting a ton of shots on net.
Their opening shift really set the tone and somehow demonstrated pretty much exactly how the rest of the game would go. They gain the entry off of a line-change regroup. Montreal’s neutral zone coverage is incredibly passive. They commit bodies to protecting the middle of the ice after entries but struggle to stop plays before that.
They created a ton of loose pucks and didn’t let the Blue Jackets get into the zone clean which might mean Objective 1 was solved but the Blue Jackets’ top line was simply unstoppable at recovering these pucks and continuing the fight.
It really is remarkable to me just how soft this defense was.
In particular, Kirill Marchenko’s stewardship of these regroup situations must be commended.
After their initial chances, they recovered pucks well. While they didn’t always convert these recoveries into threat, and there is a ton of wasted potential in the struggle to do so, the inverse of this “waste” is a complete lack of offense from their counterparts. The ice was nearly always tilted and genuine scoring chances were created.
Then there’s always the not-even-an-inch difference between both Fantilli scoring on the initial shot and Marchment simply poking the puck in.
Fantilli’s play control growth has been outstanding, especially noticeable this game was timely backcheck disruptions and very much improved wall-play. Kirill Marchenko has been less minute-in, minute-out dominant than last season but he too is growing in terms of game control.
They couldn’t come out with a win but there’s still plenty to build off of. As much as the team said that they did enough to come out with a win, it was functionally only this unit that really made a difference.
The Goals Against
The first goal against comes from an interesting situation for a few reasons. The Blue Jackets have recently made an in-zone coverage tactical switch to avoid exactly these types of situations. Assigning blame, should that be our prerogative, is also therefore quite difficult.
First, Danton Heinen wins a wall battle and then loses it. Lane Hutson recognizes the situation to keep playing, rather than retreat like many defensemen are asked to do, and wins the puck to keep playing. Then, Provorov and Heinen go for a double team at the wall and both make no impact on the play. This is the more critical mistake that sets of a series of cascading consequences.
From here, the Blue Jackets are in a situation that isn’t particularly dangerous. It is a situation they have gameplanned and adjusted because of poor performance in these situations.
Conor Garland stays in the slot and fronts the shot threat. This is the wrinkle and it’s technically what he was supposed to do.
Monahan has to stay and protect the stick presented in front of him because Provorov and Heinen aren’t back in time to make a play. Bolduc shows shot and waits out the defense, Provorov never locks in coverage of the stick so Monahan can’t ever comfortably rotate.
Whichever was responsible, neither Monahan nor Provorov ultimately rotate over to get a stop here. The Blue Jackets just don’t seem to have players, outside of a select few, that can anticipate danger and move early to make a difference. Struble gets a great finish through Greaves. The hole he ultimately scores on isn’t visible and is a result of dropping into a save, the type of placement that elite goalscorers like Auston Matthews have been know to utilize intentionally but coming from a third pair defensive defenseman.
Here’s a similar situation with an example of the new coverage. It happens much more slowly and without as much defenseman rotation. Sillinger and Provorov ultimately lose the two player overload at the wall, and the Islanders leave a player on the wall, but we can see Olivier as the weakside wing prioritize fronting the shot rather than covering the far side.
Provorov is beat back door, ultimately, but Coyle is the player who moves over to cover the “shorting the zone” d-man.
This isn’t exactly the same situation given it was an exit chip attempt, but here we can see that Kent Johnson, as the weakside wing, has to take responsibility for both d-men on each point.
This look also isn’t exactly the same but Evason’s defense clearly shows a man-on high strategy that wouldn’t necessarily result in the same rotation.
Garland wasn’t on the team in pre-Evason or even early Bowness cases, though he has had some defensive zone struggles, so it’s most likely that the defensive confusion lies elsewhere.
The second goal is just confusing frankly. I have hardly ever seen a transition effort move this slowly and yet find such an open chance. The Montreal camera angle certainly doesn’t help.
Matheson does a great job carrying the puck, and Sillinger’s failed maneuver obviously a missed opportunity, but the structure on entry was fantastic. Olivier taking a glide instead of striding through the play is irritating. He has legitimately been one of the top defensive players for the Blue Jackets this season, perhaps because of the attachment to Coyle, so it’s just simply a mistake that cannot be made if the Blue Jackets are to win games when it counts.
The Folly of Form Over Function
I am as frustrated as anyone with the lineup based decisionmaking from this organization especially under Rick Bowness. His refusal to trust Kent Johnson, flagging belief in Denton Mateychuk and elevation of Cole Sillinger, Erik Gudbranson and all the rest is hard to stomach.
He hollowed out the middle-six in terms of offensive talent. The middle six lost their matchups. It’s a difficult result especially under this specific circumstance.
Under Bowness, the Johnson-Monahan-Garland line is up in their minutes 5-2. They are hardly trusted, to be sure, but the number of posts hit and high danger chances created by this line are unparalleled.
They won their minutes but Bowness didn’t like them. Just as Bowness didn’t like Voronkov.
Who also won his minutes. He gave up little and got scored on less.
But Bowness decided to add Miles Wood back into the lineup. Prior to his lines’ goal in this past game, he was the only Blue Jackets forward with more than 50 minutes of ice time to have been losing his actual goals share. Now, he’s even.
It’s just interesting to me that Wood’s speed and forechecking would help against a Canadiens team despite him being a functionally poor defender. Rick Bowness doesn’t like what he does, he likes the way he does it.
Here’s what his speed on the forecheck accomplished:
Sure, that first clip ends in a goal. It starts with Wood getting in early, doing part of his job, and his line getting beat out of the zone. Jet Greaves skips Miles’ Woods hard skating to the back wall and Isac Lundestrom pumps out a turnover that bounces directly to Jenner.
After that we have: Miles Wood forechecking hard and getting beat, dumping the puck without pressure and forcing Jenner to hunt it again, and getting beat on the forecheck, conceding territory and giving up a hardly dangerous tip chance. The last two clips were the Blue Jackets chasing the game. His actions functionally resulted in killed clock which worked against the Blue Jackets’ interest at the time.
Similarly, two players who genuinely had good games in Cole Sillinger and Erik Gudbranson, still demonstrate the concept well.
Cole Sillinger starts this clip off with a blue-line turnover. His puck management and decisionmaking continues to be poor. He gets back and makes a great defensive stop on Juraj Slafkovsky and outmuscles him to the puck where he loses his forecheck.
He was competitive and physical but functionally he made the play worse and exposed the Blue Jackets to risk.
Erik Gudbranson had his first positive game of 2026. He opens this clip with a desperate shot block. The Habs, and Nick Suzuki in particular, seem to love this motion. Have to love a guy who puts his body on the line and can make stops.
However, it’s Denton Mateychuk to wins his net-front battle and is first to the puck to win it away from a crashing Noah Dobson.
The end result is a slap shot from distance despite acres of space and four more dangerous players on the ice. Montreal completely collapses their defense, concedes far too much space and basically concede no danger despite a significant breakdown.
Considering Montreal’s first goal from a defenseman with a ton of space, and Denton Mateychuk receiving diminished ice-time in a needing-goals situation, you have to wonder what the priorities are.
The late injury to Damon Severson has the potential to be a backbreaker. He’s been a significant positive force this season. Without his territorial dominance next to Zach Werenski, perhaps Bowness will build a roster that isn’t so dependent on single pairs and single lines to provide all of the offense. They may simply be forced into experimentation.
If the Blue Jackets can’t learn lessons from their recent “moral victories” against Atlantic playoff hopefuls, their remaining schedule against them might portend doom. Two against Boston, one more against Montreal, one against Detroit.
Winning in spite of themselves. Classic Bowness hockey. It almost sucks that he's such a good defensive coach because it gives him the absolute worst tunnel vision. Miles fucking Wood...
Ambivalence is the word to describe my sentiment towards the team right now: short-term excitement, long-term concern.