Columbus Blue Jackets sweep Washington Capitals to avoid elimination
Columbus Blue Jackets discuss sweep of Washington Capitals to avoid elimination
Despite recent wins, the Blue Jackets’ playoff hopes remain slim and depend on other teams’ results.Elvis Merzlikins’ struggles and contract situation make him difficult to trade, and a buyout is expensive.The Blue Jackets will need to address their goaltending situation in the offseason, whether through free agency, trades, or internal options.
The Blue Jackets played the Washington Capitals twice in a span of 32 hours over the weekend. The Jackets put a 7-0 pounding on the Caps in Nationwide Arena on Saturday afternoon. They came back with a 4-1 victory in Washington on Sunday evening. The Caps have the best record in the East, and the two losses probably cost them the Presidents’ Trophy.
The plug hasn’t been pulled on the Jackets’ playoff chances, and they clearly have some juice — Adam Fantilli looks pretty good, eh? — but the cord could come out of the wall any day now.
The Jackets slid off the playoff bubble with an 0-5-1 jag in mid-March and a three-game winless streak earlier this month. It has been a week now since they came to understand their postseason hopes were but a sliver: They needed to win out over their last six games and, even with that, they needed a lot of help. Namely, they needed the Montreal Canadiens, holders of the No. 2 wild card, to keel over.
The Jackets (38-33-10, 85 points) are 4-0 in their past three games. They have two to play: Tuesday in Philadelphia and then home Thursday for the season finale against the New York Islanders.
The Habs (29-31-10, 88 points) are 2-1-1 in their past four. They have two to play, both at home: Monday against the lowly Chicago Blackhawks and Wednesday against the Carolina Hurricanes. In other words, unless Hawks captain (and former Blue Jackets captain) Nick Foligno rallies his young and beleaguered charges, the Jackets will be toast before the sun rises Tuesday.
(Duly noted: If you’re a Jackets fan and you tuned into Hockey Night in Canada and watched the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Canadiens in overtime Saturday night, one or two fantastical thoughts might’ve crossed your mind. Crazy stuff.)
Whatever happens, this season has been a leap forward for the Jackets and bodes well for their future. This stretch run has brought a return to the good vibes that propelled the team for nearly the whole of winter. It has also brought a most critical position into sharp focus.
Goaltender Jet Greaves was emergency-recalled from Cleveland and made 39 saves in a 3-2, come-from-behind victory over the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday at Nationwide Arena. Greaves was also in net for the back-to-back, home-and-home with Washington over the weekend — playing four games (one AHL, three NHL) in a span of just five days.
Over the three NHL tilts (in four days), Greaves went 3-0 with a 1.00 goals-against average and .967 save percentage, stopping 90 of 93 shots. For the season, he’s 5-2 with a 2.22 GAA and a .927 SV% for the Blue Jackets.
At the outset of the season, one of the stated objects of management and the coaching staff was to find out if Elvis Merzlikins could rediscover his game after two rough seasons. Merzlikins was entering the third year of a five-year contract worth $5.4 million annually. It’s a contract that no other team would want. It’s a contract for which a buyout was, in September, too expensive to consider. What the brain trust talked about was how Merzlikins should strive to be a good teammate first, then worry about stopping pucks.
Merzlikins looked like he was making strides. He wears his heart on his sleeve, he loves Columbus and, like everyone else in the locker room, he wanted to help facilitate the extraordinary in honor of Johnny Gaudreau. He had an excellent run of play from January through to the Stadium Series game March 1. He was awesome at Ohio Stadium. After that …
This past couple of weeks have been an end-of-season referendum on the success of the Elvis reclamation project. He lost his cool and broke his stick on a goalpost in the middle of a 7-3 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on April 3 at Nationwide Arena. For the first time this season, Evason pulled a goaltender. The next night in Toronto, Merzlikins bought dinner for the team, and it was perceived as something of an olive branch. A day later, he was seen exchanging words — on the ice and on the bench — with teammate Erik Gudbranson during a 5-0 loss to the Maple Leafs.
Merzlikins bounced back in his next start, then suffered an undisclosed injury during a morning skate. Wally Pipp moment?
Merzlikins is 26-21 with a 3.18 goals-against average and .892 save percentage. Has he rediscovered his game? His numbers are among the worst in the league. Is he tradeable? Probably not.
What is the buyout option? It would cost the Jackets $6.5 million, in the form of a $1.625 million cap hit in each of the next four years. The team has gobs of cap space right now — and the cap ceiling will be rising from $88 million to $113 million over next three seasons.
His backup, Daniil Tarasov, is 7-10 with a 3.54 GAA and a .881 SV%. Is Tarasov the answer? Presumably, if he was, he’d be playing.
Is Greaves — a 24-year-old who has played 19 NHL games in his three years as pro — the answer? When you ask Jackets players about Greaves, they say things akin to what Sean Kuraly said Saturday afternoon:
“He’s a pro. He does things the right way. I’ve been around for a while and it’s funny how those guys usually find success.”
Will there be something that works in a depleted free-agent market for goaltenders? Is there a goaltender to be had in trade?
What is clear is the Jackets need to address a goaltending problem and Merzlikins needs a fresh start somewhere else.
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