The Blue Jackets head into Raleigh tonight with a chance to stack a third straight win, but the assignment is as tough as it gets this early in the season.
They’re facing the defending Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes, a team that shook off a slow start and has been rolling ever since. After dropping their first two games, Carolina has won 10 of its last 12, with all but one of those victories coming in regulation. The Hurricanes sit atop the NHL standings with 22 points, a 10-2-2 record, and a league-best .786% points percentage.
Columbus arrives with some momentum of its own after Tuesday night’s 4-3 overtime win over the Philadelphia Flyers. There’s also a possible lineup boost on the horizon: after the Blue Jackets placed defenseman Carson Soucy on waivers yesterday, all signs point to Ivan Provorov making his first appearance of the season tonight.
That kind of help may be necessary if the Jackets want to hang with a Carolina team that makes life miserable on visitors in its own building. The Hurricanes are built to tilt the ice, pile up pressure, and feed off the energy in Raleigh when they get rolling.
Columbus doesn’t need to win every push, but it does need to survive the surges without getting buried. That means staying inside the system, clogging passing lanes, blocking shots, and finding ways to slow the game back down.
A timely save or two wouldn’t hurt either.
The other challenge is creating offense against a team that squeezes opponents so tightly. Carolina’s structure has long made shot generation difficult, but if the Blue Jackets can force their way toward the net, they give themselves a chance. Pyotr Kochetkov has been excellent so far at 8-0-0 with a .918% save percentage and 1.62 goals against average, but the Jackets would likely feel much better about their chances if they can get more than 15 shots on goal.
If Columbus is going to crack that defense, the young core may have to drive it. Kent Johnson leads the team in scoring with 10 points in 10 games, Adam Fantilli has 3 points in his last 2 games, and both Cole Sillinger and Denton Mateychuk have been productive early on as well. Their speed and skill figure to be critical if the Blue Jackets are going to get anything going offensively, especially with the offense already showing it can stall when it leans too heavily on the veterans.
This is the first of four meetings between the teams this season, and the Blue Jackets haven’t won in Raleigh since 1/13/2022, when they beat the Hurricanes 6-0. Puck drop is set for just after 7:00 Eastern time.
In Other News...
Blue Jackets Showed Something In Carolina That Fans Will Want Repeated
The Blue Jackets did not leave Carolina with points, but they did leave with something to build on after an early-season road test that got away from them. Columbus fell behind as the Hurricanes controlled the opening and closing stretches, yet the Blue Jackets found a better rhythm as the game went on and started to look more like the team they want to be.
Charlie Coyle pointed to the improved energy in the later periods, which is the kind of detail coaches and teammates can circle after a loss. The challenge now is turning that late push into something more consistent when the schedule moves on, because a good burst in one game only matters if it carries into the next one. [Read more 🡒]
Blue Jackets Got Caught In Another Brutal Hurricanes Trend
The Blue Jackets ran into a Carolina team that has been piling up wins at a pace few clubs can match, and the latest meeting fit the pattern. On October 29, the Hurricanes slipped past Columbus 3-2, pushing their season total to 11 victories and keeping them atop the NHL standings with 24 points while extending a five-game point streak.
Pyotr Kochetkov was once again at the center of it for Carolina, continuing a start that has put him in rare franchise company and given the Hurricanes a steady edge in close games. Columbus made a push late, but the bigger picture was familiar: Carolina has been finding ways to control the night early, then lean on its goaltending and structure when opponents try to claw back. [Read more 🡒]
Blue Jackets Showed Late Fight After Another Costly Start
Another rough start left the Blue Jackets chasing the game again, and this time the margin proved just a little too steep. Columbus fell 3-2 to the Carolina Hurricanes, with Jet Greaves stopping 24 of 27 shots as the club tried to steady itself after a slow opening and keep its road trip from slipping further off track.
The push came late, with Denton Mateychuk and Kent Johnson providing the offense as Columbus made things interesting in the third period. Even so, the Blue Jackets could not fully erase the early damage, and the result left them at 5-6-0 heading into the next stop in Dallas. [Read more 🡒]