{"id":481170,"date":"2026-03-02T17:43:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T17:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/481170\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T17:43:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T17:43:34","slug":"blue-jackets-elvis-merzlikins-defending-road-crease-monday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/481170\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jackets&#8217; Elvis Merzlikins: Defending road crease Monday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"VideoPlayer-backgroundImage\" alt=\"default-cbs-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1772055195_422_video-slate.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                            <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/nhl\/teams\/CLB\/columbus-blue-jackets\/\" aria-label=\"home team page\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"TeamLogo-image\" alt=\"team logo\" src=\"https:\/\/sports.cbsimg.net\/fly\/images\/team-logos\/399.svg\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><br \/>\n                                                <\/a><\/p>\n<p><a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/nhl\/players\/3107125\/merzlikins\/fantasy\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Merzlikins<\/a> will start Monday&#8217;s road game against the Rangers, Jeff Svoboda of the <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/nhl\/teams\/CLB\/columbus-blue-jackets\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Blue Jackets<\/a>&#8216; official site reports.<\/p>\n<p>Over eight appearances since the start of the calendar year, Merzlikins has gone 5-3-0 with a 2.44 GAA and .909 save percentage. He&#8217;ll make his second start since the Olympic break during Monday&#8217;s matchup and will face a favorable opponent, as the Rangers are scoring just 2.59 goals per game this year, which is the sixth-worst mark in the league.<\/p>\n<p>        More News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Merzlikins will start Monday&#8217;s road game against the Rangers, Jeff Svoboda of the Blue Jackets&#8216; official site reports.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5108],"tags":[3644,5180,897,230,5179,7819,276,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-481170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-columbus-blue-jackets","8":"tag-blue-jackets","9":"tag-bluejackets","10":"tag-columbus","11":"tag-columbus-blue-jackets","12":"tag-columbusbluejackets","13":"tag-elvis-merzlikins","14":"tag-fantasy-hockey","15":"tag-hockey","16":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116160824514521050","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}