Blues at Blue Jackets Preview: When it rains

Earlier this month, the Blue Jackets visited the Blues for Hockey Fights Cancer night. Tonight, the Blues return the favor, and the Blue Jackets are looking at the visiting team as an inspiration. “Sure, the Blues might’ve been awful for the first half of the year but look what happened!” is an interesting take for the Jackets’ official website to have, but Columbus are 1-5-2 over the last eight games (3-5-2 over the last ten) and lost their game in Montreal in the shootout. The Jackets can never rag on the Blues for blowing a third period lead, though - the whole reason the game made it to overtime is because Seth Jones missed a gaping net for a seal the deal goal, and the Habs turned around on the ensuing play to tie it. Blues fans have seen that before. It sucks, and it doubly sucks to have that happen when your team’s already down.

The Blue Jackets are seventh in the eight-team Atlantic Division and are blaming everything on bounces and bad luck and looking at the Blues as the team that fought all of that off. Torts must be so thrilled right now.

The game against the Jackets on November 1st was a 4-3 overtime win, one of many, many overtime games for the Blues. The Jackets are catching a break tonight, though - Jake Allen may more than likely be in net with a game against the Ducks on Saturday night. Allen is 3-1-0 but with a 3.29 GAA and a .882 save percentage. The Blues will be seeing Joonas Korpisalo in net this go-round. He’s 6-7-1 on the season with a 3.13 GAA and a .895 SV%.

The Blues last regulation loss was against the Boston Bruins on October 26th. They’re building up a points cushion early this season despite having issues maintaining leads during regulation. It doesn’t matter if winning is easy or not as long as it’s winning, but tonight’s game should be one that the Blues can end in regulation.