There's been a bit of a buzz about the Blue Jackets in this corner of the web for awhile now. I wrote about them back in November when I noticed that their underlying numbers didn't match their results:
The club is +73 by the corsi metric thus far, with guys like Huselius (+47) and Nash (+33) leading the way. Only 4 guys are in the red: Jan Hejda, Mike Commodore (tough match-ups?), Andrew Murray and Jared Boll (4th line muckers).
It looks to me like Columbus has been pretty unlucky so far. Leclaire has been mediocre/injured, with Fredrick Norrena doing his best Raycroft impression. Not a single one of Columbus' goalies has a SV% above .900 right now, which strikes me as something that can't possibly continue on a Hitchcock coached team.
In addition, the shooting percentages with guys like Nash and Juice on the ice are ridiculously low (5.4% and 7.3%). Nash himself is shooting at just 9.8%, around 4% below his career average, smaller even his rookie rate of 11.0% (his worst to date).
Since then, the Jackets have promoted the new Calder front runner Steve Mason, Nash and Huselius have turned things around and Howson has added Jason Williams for a song. They aren't a Stanley Cup favorite by any means - they're still in tough to make the dance at all - but they've made enough of an impression to catch the attention of both Matt and Lowetide as well.
This is all a prelude to me saying: the Flames can't take this team lightly this evening, despite their 10th place ranking in the WC. They have an excellent coach, an emerging superstar in Nash and, suddenly, very capable goaltending. They tend to out-shoot their opponents at ES and would probably be skating with the Anaheim's of the world if not for 6 weeks of terrible netminding a PP ranked last in the league.
On the Flames front, apparently Bert is in and Vandermeer is out (phew). That's a pretty big vote of confidence for Adam Pardy (assuming it actually happens this way, of course)...also, it might actually be good to see Bert in the line-up tonight, if only because we wont have to watch #4 trying to be a top 6 winger anymore.
Prediction - Flames take this one in overtime, 2-1. Langkow and Moss for Calgary. Huselius (!) for Columbus.
Edit - Apparently, Juice might be out for tonights game (again!). So, let's say...Malholtra scores instead.
Go Flames.
