CBJ vs San Jose 1/6
Werenski Reads and Burden, Kent Johnson vs William Eklund Wing Archetype Case Study
A tepid performance from the Blue Jackets results in a loss to a young and fun team that is much worse than them on paper. Yes, those are alarm bells you hear ringing.
The Game
The Blue Jackets got to the net this game. That checks out, this San Jose defense group is simply not good. Great for them, Monahan even had an entirely self created goal there which was nice to see, Zach Werenski just keeps scoring.
Otherwise, though, the Blue jackets got beat in all of the critical areas. San Jose created a ton of rush offense and rush goals, lots of big forecheck chances and even had the better powerplay. Did the refs miss some penalties? Yeah absolutely but the Blue Jackets powerplay was horrific.
At 5v5, the Blue Jackets simply didn’t have much creation outside of the net-front business. Kirill Marchenko found some but San Jose’s chance-type, volume and quality all looks immediately preferable. They created dangerous situations by playing with the puck, the Blue Jackets drove the net and got dirty.
The Power of Belief vs Weight of Expectations
This one was of the early storylines heading into this season, I wrote:
Zach Werenski does seem to have a sort of infinite resevoir to pull from, simply one of the most fascinating players to watch when the Blue Jackets were down a goal, and that’s probably the best reason to have faith in the teams ability. His calm demeanor may drag his team along and if he repeats his ice-dominating performance, the team will have a lodestone.
At the same time, these sorts of declarative statements can sometimes have an adverse effect. Early season struggles could quickly spiral into moments of anxiety for these players.
Last season, the puck went in. This season, it’s not likely going in like that again. How the Blue Jackets overcome and grow through that critical struggle is going to determine quite a lot about how the season goes.
I think that’s an excellent jumping off point, particularly through the lens of Zach Werenski. After the game, I felt that he had a miserable performance and was simply completely off. He’s been a bit like that lately, I think, starting in the Anaheim game that he was injured.
Upon reviewing the tape, some messiness was certainly there. Werenski was involved in a miscommunication that resulted in the first goal, turned over the puck that Mateychuk and Sillinger inexplicably lost the race to for the third goal, was PKing and potentially slow to react when Olivier checked Celebrini into the net for the second goal and maybe could have pinched on the final goal as well.
Still, even on nights when he’s off (like the Anahiem and perhaps Pittsburgh game), handling pucks poorly and putting his teammates in minorly inconvenient situations, he’s still getting the team jumpstarted. The Blue Jackets need him to do everything, to make every play clean and provide a stable surface for performance for everyone else while also being the guy that puts the puck in the net. It’s simply too much.
I write this all here because the San Jose Sharks are on the opposite side of this curve. There aren’t any expectations for this team and they can play young, reckless and free because there are minimal stakes. Even their general manager feels free to take chances, to mess around with the D corps and all sorts of things.
I’ll stop here, perhaps the longer post-mortem style breakdown can be served later when it’s more official but it’s hard not to see how different the Blue Jackets are from last year to this and yearn for the attacking hockey that the San Jose Sharks just played.
For now, I’ll just leave with this. The Blue Jackets all toe’d the company line, said they liked their third period. That’s all well and good, you can’t just stay mad and expect things to change. That’s not how sports work. I share the video because the general vibe of each of the players interviewed was extremely subdued. To be expected after a poor loss, maybe,
Defensive Zone Faceoff Play
The San Jose Sharks utilized a specific tactic to bewilder the Blue Jackets and score the first goal but the same thing appeared on a couple more occasions. It’s hard to say here what exactly is wrong but Zach Werenski failed to confidently pinch and the Sharks exploited the space between.
The first two clips come from defensive zone faceoff wins and the last from a failed forecheck with the net empty.
In all of them, Werenski fails to pinch and the Blue Jackets are ultimately caught in soft gaps through the neutral zone. There is certainly an open question of why Zach Werenski, the perhaps most aggressive skating defenseman in the league, would hesitate and be inactive. It’s possible he’s suffering some injury effects.
Tactically, though, San Jose puts the defense in bad spots because of the numbers they bring to exiting the zone. On the first, Iorio beats Jenner around the net quickly which gives Toffoli a ton of space. Werenski bails out of the pinch to cover but neither he nor Fantilli take charge of the situation. Either one of them could have decisively taken Pavol Regenda, making the decision of the other clear, which would have solved a whole host of issues.
The second clip, Iorio once again beats Voronkov around the net and Toffoli is in a similar position. There’s no pinch hesitation mixup but Werenski is gapped on the blue-line when Toffoli crosses the red and Mateychuk still isn’t on screen despite Wennberg being near the red as well. It’s loose and inviting. A distant chance is all they muster but the Blue Jackets are playing timid and soft.
The third, the Blue Jackets send three bodies hard to the forecheck. Given the numbers advantage, Werenski should be staying connected with his forwards and ready to contest the wall early. Fantilli also makes a choice to not stay above his man, Alexander Wennberg, which means there’s no one to contest the soft-space behind the aggresive forecheckers. Would that have made a huge difference? I don’t think so but the end result is that Fantilli, Monahan and Marchenko are each too far away to have any influence on the eventual empty net goal.
San Jose is making great passes, moving with pace where the Blue Jackets are hesitating and making poor choices as the season wears on.
Kent Johnson vs William Eklund
I find comparing these two to be a fantastic illustration of a concept I’ve been wrestling with lately. Both of these two players were in the 2021 NHL Draft where Jarmo Kekelainen selected Johnson 5th and San Jose got Eklund 7th. On the surface, you might find them to be similar players, both are slight, playmaking wings.
Their games, however, couldn’t really be any different and it’s an excellent representation of the difference between a wing who is good at wing things, a small space wing you might say, and an open-space wing or a wing who plays more like a center.
Kent Johnson, obviously, performs more like a center. Conceptually, he is more capable of being that guy and has more tools to create large breakdowns and run play through his stick. While these skills were certainly more obvious last season, we saw some of it this game as well.
He sets up some legitimately good chances and that final chance was an excellent indirect to Boone Jenner, peak KJ moving the puck wide to attack through layers, and the unfortunate inches from being a goal. He’s frustrated and slams his stick but there was a ton to build off of in this game.
William Eklund, on the other hand, is a completely different type of wing. He’s technically more complementary but right now he’s the better player.
His skating and sturdiness, depsite his size, are fantastic. He’s slippery and elusive especially on the back wall and always stays moving and threatening defenders. He’s got a strong stick and a keen sense of opponent momentum and timing. He frequently puts Provorov and Mateychuk in the blender in the corners and quickly wins back pucks and finds outlets.
It’s different than Kent Johnson, though, I think you’ll notice. He doesn’t quite have the scoring punch, though KJ has struggled in that regard this year, but mostly he’s responding to moves by Celebrini and working off of him. He is afforded that luxury, you might say.
I think following these two as a case-study is going to remain interesting. Did San Jose make the better pick? I suppose that depends on what a team might need. Kent Johnson still feels like he has the higher ceiling, and could be a dominant powerplay creator, but he also feels like he has much more variability and has more warts to polish before it’s possible. Eklund has a contained and aligned skillset and a small-space game that would provide value with anyone and anywhere in the lineup.
If anything, I hope this goes to show just how different two “undersized, pass-first” players can be and what different archetypes can look like. Most of all, I hope we appreciate that a player doesn’t have to be big, or hit, to create value in critical areas.