Among the areas where the Blue Jackets need to make drastic improvement to even sniff playoff contention is winning more often on the road.
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Their 4-0 loss to the Florida Panthers on Thursday night at Amerant Bank Arena was their seventh straight regulation road loss and 10thstraight winless game (0-9-1) away from Nationwide Arena. The Blue Jackets fell to 26-42-12 overall, 10-23-7 in road games and this one wasn't close in anything but the score through the first 37 minutes.
"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."
Unlike the Jackets' 5-2 loss Tuesday in Tampa, when the biggest issue was failing to finish enough scoring chances during a solid effort, the Panthers (50-24-6) seized control from the start. Matthew Tkachuk made it 1-0 just 47 seconds after the first puck dropped and that was all Florida needed to help former Blue Jackets goalie Sergei Bobrovsky (25 saves) notch his sixth shutout.
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), high-danger chances (17-5) and expected goals (3.28-1.25). Overall, they outshot the Blue Jackets 46-25, forcing rookie goalie Jet Greaves to make 42 saves just to keep the final score respectable.
Columbus is missing half its regular NHL lineup due to injuries and other situations, and is stumbling to the finish while facing a parade of opponents readying for playoffs. The Jackets will also be underdogs in their final two games, including another tough road game Saturday in Nashville .
Here are three takeaways:
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.
The last number is the one that jumps off the stat sheet.
A .919 save percentage is indicative of two things: a solid NHL goalie and a guy scrambling for dear life while facing a barrage of pucks. The Blue Jackets certainly don't make life easy on their 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.
Imagine what his save percentage might be with a dominant puck-possession team like the Panthers.
"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."
Greaves, 23, is undersized by NHL goalie standards, listed at 6-foot tall. He makes up for it with side-to-side quickness, puck tracking and sharp hand-eye skills while using his catching glove and blocker. Greaves is quickly gaining respect inside the Blue Jackets' locker room while goalies Elvis Merzlikins (lower body) and Daniil Tarasov (upper body) are sidelined.
"Jet stood tall and played well today," Gudbranson said. "He caught pucks when he needed to, but we've got to manage the puck a lot better and give ourselves a chance early in shifts to create some momentum."
Last season was a disaster for Merzlikins, whose injuries played a role in the worst year of his entire professional career.
This season has just been weird.
Merzlikins has gone from starting nearly every night to third rung among three NHL goalies to starting again and now out with a lower-body injury that's forced him to miss six straight games. That same issue has also caused him to miss eight of the Blue Jackets' past 20 games, and Merzlikins has played just six times since winning March 2 in Chicago .
Merzlikins plans to play for Latvia next month at the world championships in Czechia, so the injury doesn't appear to be serious. Still, with two games left, it's starting to feel like he's done for this NHL season.
If so, Merzlikins will head into the offseason with uncertainty about his future in Columbus and maybe the NHL after requesting the Blue Jackets —who've yet to name a new general manager ― find a "different scenario" for him moving forward.
Should Merzlikins be finished with this season, he'll stop with a 13-17-8 record, one shutout, 3.45 GAA and .897 save percentage in 41 appearances. Those numbers are improved from 7-18-2, 4.23 GAA and .876 last season, but they're still not where the Blue Jackets need them to be.
Merzlikins has three years left on his contract, which pays him an average of $5.4 million a season .
Alex Nylander didn't play Tuesday in Tampa , leaving pregame warmup with an undisclosed lower-body injury, and was questionable to face the Panthers. In fact, the Blue Jackets recalled Trey Fix-Wolansky on emergency basis and he joined the team in Florida.
Nylander played instead of Fix-Wolansky, but struggled through his worst game since joining the Blue Jackets in a trade Feb. 22 that sent Emil Bemstrom to Pittsburgh . Nylander, who scored 10 goals in his first 17 games with the Blue Jackets, played most of the game on the fourth line and barely touched the puck during 11:55 of ice time.
The Blue Jackets were also on the wrong end of a 14-1 margin in 5-on-5 attempts while Nylander was in the game (6.7%), and were shut out in scoring chances (8-0). He wasn't the only one to blame for those disadvantages, but it was clear Nylander didn't have the same jump.
Only two more games remain for Nylander — a pending restricted free agent ― to further bolster his case for a contract extension this offseason.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Blue Jackets lose to Panthers for 10th straight road loss: 3 takeaways
