The Need to Knows

The Time: 7pm PST

The Place: Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle, WA

Place to Watch: KHN, KONG, Amazon Prime (if local), FanDuel Sports Network-Ohio

Place to Listen: KJR 93.3-FM

An Opposing Viewpoint: Jackets Cannon

Game Preview

Well, if you were bummed out by the Kraken failing to overcome Casey DeSmith more than once, don’t let that get to you friend. While no loss is really a great one, it’s important to keep perspective.

For instance; the Blue Jackets nearly had the Oilers beat yesterday.

The Blue Jackets are an interesting team; they are clearly extremely talented, with impressive talents like Kirill Marchenko, Adam Fantilli, and Dmitri Voronkov; all of whom are exciting, dynamic and dangerous players. Guys like Boone Jenner and Zach Werenski are also pulling their weight in bringing a much-needed veteran’s hand to these young firecrackers.

The rest of their lineup?

Uhh…it’s there, I guess. Sure is.

That’s kind of why the Jackets are struggling like they have been over the course of this early season; they manage to get some genuinely impressive offense together, but it’s largely bunched up in those three young guns. The rest of the lineup is…decidedly not putting in the effort to help their offense. Which is why the Jackets have often gotten out to big leads…and then watch in horror as it gets whittled down in minutes, see last night’s game for further proof. Sometimes they stop the bleeding in time!…But not enough to avoid their 7-7-1 record.

Their defense meanwhile, has taken the interesting and quite risky choice of, at least according to shooting data available to us…largely abandoning their goaltenders in their time of need. The front of the Columbus net is effectively unguarded. Elvis Merzlikens might be on the short list for Latvia’s goaltending at the Olympics and Worlds but he isn’t superhuman, and while JET GREAVES is probably the coolest name anyone on earth has ever been named that isn’t GUNNARWOLFE FONTAINE, I regret to inform you that neither have been having great seasons on account of that interesting decision that the Jackets have decided to embark on.

This leaves the Jackets in a funky place; they do control games if they can help it, but they rarely keep control of them for too long and then things get squirrelly. Seattle meanwhile has been getting increasingly better at slowly imposing their will on a game over the course of 60 minutes. When both of these teams collide, who manages to seize the day?

Let’s find out together.

LET’S GO KRAKEN, LET’S GO SQUIDS