Jackets riding woeful road losing streak
Columbus winless in 10 consecutive away games
The Blue Jackets have two games left in the 2023-24 season, and the first of those is Saturday night in Nashville. Bad news for Columbus, which is 9-35-7 all time in away games against the Predators.
Not that the Jackets have fared well anywhere on the road this season. The Blue Jackets are 26-42-12 overall and 1023-7 away from Nationwide Arena. Their 4-0 loss to the Florida Panthers Thursday at Amerant Bank Arena was their seventh straight regulation road loss and 10th straight winless (0-9-1).
The Panthers (50-24-6) seized control from the start. Matthew Tkachuk made it 1-0 just 47 seconds after the puck dropped, and that was all Florida needed to help former Blue Jackets goalie Sergei Bobrovsky (25 saves) notch his sixth shutout.
"They were the better team for 60 minutes," Blue Jackets defenseman Erik Gudbranson said. "There's no doubt about that. We could've done a lot better tonight. We didn't manage the puck very well through the neutral zone. They kind of three-quarter iced us for the whole game, and it's tough going back for pucks like that every shift, gapping up to the blue line and going back (in your own zone) . ... At the end of the day, they were 100% better than us the whole game."
The Panthers made it 3-0 late in the second on goals 1:41 apart by Evan Rodrigues and Sam Reinhart before Vladimir Tarasenko completed the scoring in the third. It was a total whitewash for the guys in red.
"You can't create offense after 30 seconds of being in your own end and getting it to the far blue line," Gudbranson said. "We have to manage the puck much better than that."
According to Natural Stat Trick, the Panthers forged dominant 5-on-5 advantages in shot attempts (75-35), shots (42-24), scoring chances (40-16), highdanger
chances (17-5) and expected goals (3.28-1.25). Overall, they outshot the Blue Jackets 46-25, forcing goaltender Jet Greaves to make 42 saves just to keep the final score respectable.
The Blue Jackets certainly don't make life easy on their 23-year-old rookie backstop, who faced 49 shots in his
NHL debut last season, a 4-2 loss in Toronto, and sees an inflated average of 37.3 shots per game.
“The one thing that Jet does is that he doesn't give any easy goals,” Blue Jackets coach Pascal Vincent said. “So far, what I've seen is the goals that go in are (off ) great shots, rebounds. All the saves he has to make, he makes them. He's playing really well.”
Graves's record in eight career NHL appearances (seven starts) is 2-6-0 with a 3.64 goals-against average and .919 save percentage. And while he is undersized by NHL goalie standards, listed at 6-foot tall, he makes up for it with quickness and sharp hand-eye skills.
That has allowed him to quickly gain respect inside the Blue Jackets' locker
room while goalies Elvis Merzlikins (lower body) and Daniil Tarasov (upper body) are sidelined.
Columbus' regular season finale is Tuesday when the Jackets host the Carolina Hurricanes. bhedger@dispatch.com @Brianhedger