Something was amiss at Nationwide Arena Wednesday night. After losing in a shootout to the worst team in points in the league on Sunday, the Jackets were burnt by turnovers and a lack of effort against a young Chicago Blackhawks team.
Wednesday’s 7-2 loss for Columbus marked the most lopsided loss in over two years. As the team has now lost their third in a row, they continue to fall further away from the eighth and most critical spot in the West.
The game started off bad from the beginning for the home team. Fredrik Modin who is fresh off the Injured Reserve list committed a tripping penalty minute just 2:30 into the game. Just over a minute later, 19 year-old rookie Blackhawk Patrick Kane scored his 13th of the season on the man advantage. The Jackets never had the energy to keep up. Less than two minutes later, Chicago defenseman Brent Seabrook scored on a breakaway after blocking a Michael Peca shot. The scoring assault by the Blackhawks continued.
Chicago defenseman Dustin Byfuglien scored his first of two goals with less than six minutes remaining in the first. Jackets head coach Ken Hitchcock had seen of enough of starting goaltender Fredrik Norrena and on came Pascal Leclaire for the final five minutes. He did not fare much better as Byfuglien added his second goal. With Hitchcock trying to give his leading goaltender rest heading into the upcoming five game road trip, he decided to play Norenna the final two periods.
Finally the Jackets got on the board when newly acquired Dick Tarnstrom scored on the power play. After Chicago made it a 5-1 game thanks to a goal my Martin Havlat, Modin scored his third goal of the season.
“We gave the puck away the first five goals,” Hitchcock said. “We had the puck on our stick and we either gave it away or we were checked off the puck. Pretty simple. When you give the puck away as much as we did, you’re not going to win very many hockey games.
Chicago’s James Wisniewski added a goal late in the second, and Robert Lang notched the final goal in the third. Chicago won the turnover margin 6-2, and hits 11-8.
“We lost tonight because we didn’t have near enough competitive players. We didn’t have enough players who compete at a high level. And we certainly didn’t compete on the puck and every time we turned it over, it was in our net,” Hitchcock said.
“We can’t make excuses, you don’t do that at this level,” Blue Jacket captain Adam Foote said. “We just have to regroup. There is not enough time to get negative. Every team I have played on has gotten blown out. That was one of our first. We had two other bad games that the score didn’t show.”
One positive coming out of the game was having Modin back in the lineup. Scoring has been hard to come by for everyone except for Nikolai Zherdev and Rick Nash. To have Modin in the lineup boosts the scoring opportunities.
“It is always good to get back and play hockey,” Modin said. “It doesn’t matter if it is the first or the last one, it is always disappointing when you come out and get outplayed like that. We just got outplayed tonight. That is the bottom line. We don’t have time to mope around about it.”
The team goes on the road Friday to play St. Louis followed by Detroit and then Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal before seeing home ice on Feb. 27.
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