Even if you are a glass-half-full type of person, you would’ve been hard pressed to find the positives in Atlanta’s 2-0 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday night. Atlanta got off to a slow start, allowing the Blue Jackets to control the puck through the first two periods, and even got a one-goal lead.
The goal for Columbus was obvious: clog up the neutral zone, get in front of shots and frustrate the heck out of Atlanta. Mission accomplished.
“They had a big strong defense and they don’t give you a lot of space,” head coach John Anderson said after the game.
Without that space the team seemed lost offensively, getting a combined nine shots in the first two periods, with the first of the game coming with 8:30 left in the first period. All of that was a product of Columbus’ game plan: to fluster Atlanta from the start.
“They’re a good team over there,” Columbus coach Ken Hitchcock said. “They skate well, they have great defense that can move the puck and I just thought we really took them out of their transition game and made them play a game they probably weren’t really comfortable with.”
But not all the credit belongs with the Blue Jackets, as Atlanta did little to put added pressure on a team that lost 7-2 just a few days earlier. From the outset the team looked flat, allowing minute stretches without getting the puck out of Columbus’ zone. Goaltender Ondrej Pavelec did his best to keep the game scoreless but after eight minutes a lucky bounce found its way onto the stick of Rick Nash, who slammed the puck home for a goal.
“It was just a shot from the blueline, and we tried to block the shot. It was just a lucky bounce,” said Pavelec. In his fourth start, filling in for the injured Kari Lehtonen, Pavelec stopped 29 shots to keep Atlanta within striking distance throughout, while setting a career high for shots stopped.
In hopes of sparking the offense Anderson altered the lines midway through the game. Eric Perrin was replaced with Erik Christensen on the first line with Jason Williams and Ilya Kovalchuk. The trio, like most of the lines, was unable to find the offensive chemistry seen throughout the team’s five-game win streak.
Even Garnet Exelby tried to spark his team, getting into multiple scrums with the taller, bigger Columbus players to try and rally his teammates. “I think we seemed a little flat. There’s going to be those nights when you don’t come out as strong as you’d like and it finally takes something to get a team going … a goal, a fight, a hit.”
Three times did Exelby try and use his physicality to spark the club, but each time it led to more excitement around the glass then on the ice. Exelby even received a five-minute penalty for fighting with Jared Boll in the second period. Afterwards his frustration over his failed attempts to rally the team showed in the locker room.
“I can sit here and list off excuses but we gotta play with a lot more passion,” Exelby said. “We have a lot of passive passengers and not everybody is pulling their weight. It’s becoming more and more evident with every passing game.”
So how exactly does Atlanta get off to a better start in its next game, which is Tuesday at Toronto? Well, maybe Anderson will be calling down the street to Bobby Cox to find an answer. “It’s like the leadoff hitter. When the first batter of the game gets up and whacks a home run or a double or something like that to get the team started, we need something like that.”
Boral can be reached at jboral@scoreatl.com.
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