METRO MATCH-UP: Are The Caps The Team To Beat For Columbus Blue Jackets To Make It To Playoffs?

0:00This is the Lockdown Podcast Network celebrating 10 years of your team every day. Thank you for making Lockdown your first listen every day. For your second listen, go find Lockdown Fantasy Hockey. Steal Rodin and Flip Living Stone provide daily fantasy tips to give you the edge over your leaguemates all while making you a smarter hockey fan. And Lockdown Fantasy Hockey on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. Your team every day. That's all good. We've got another Metro matchup on our hands. We're talking all about the Washington Capitals today and is this Alex of Edgekins last dance or is he just going to keep on keeping on all of that and more on today's Lockdown Blue Dragons? You're Lockdown Bluejacket.

1:05Your daily podcast on the Columbus Bluejackets. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. Your team every day. Hello, welcome to Lockdown Bluejackets. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. Your team every day. I am as always your host, Jay Foster. It'll give you the good, the bad and the ugly about your favorite team and mine the Columbus Bluejackets. We're going to do another of our Metropolitan matchup crossovers today. But Dan Hormie of Lockdown Capitals here. And familiar face with the Capitals in Boon Jan. We're going to talk about him. We're going to talk about Vetskin. We're going to talk about how the caps might have sneakily had the best off season in the Metro and is it not particularly close? All of that. But Dan, I wanted to start off the Capitals finished the season in a suboptimal place. I would think after, did they win the President's trophy the year before last? They certainly finished at the top of the, or near the top of the match. They won the Eastern, they won the Eastern and they won the Metro division is what they won.

2:05Right. So extremely, extremely good season. And not a lot of people really saw coming, I think. And then this season people are like, are they going to do it again? And they kind of flounded a little bit. Why? I guess is my very simple question to what happened from the year before to this season? So the biggest thing about last season was pure loop Dubois getting injured. He is that second line center for the Capitals. You saw him elevate the players around him. Conor McMichael put up record numbers, that kind of thing. But the big thing, you know, so pure loop Dubois factors in there for sure injuries, but the power play was deplorable. 25th, 17.8 efficiency converting on just 43 of 241. And it was just, it was awful. It was predictable. They could never get set up. And when you think about all those opportunities that were lost by not converting on the power play, that is the sum total of. And ultimately why the Capitals went out and hired a new guy to run the power play.

3:07But if I'm going to drill down on it, I'm going to say injuries that we saw the injury to peer loop Dubois, Ryan Leonard missed some time amongst other players. But it was that the ugliness of the power play and zone entries. Those kind of things, those are the biggest cause of what put the Capitals in the position that they were in. Yeah, it's interesting you say that because that feels very much like a, well, it wasn't really a fault of the team as constructed. It was just bad luck, right? You can't, you can't help injuries. Hopefully, there will be less injured this year. However, and we talked about this a little bit off Mike. They then went out. He's obviously picked up both Alex Tuck and Jordan Cairo, who were arguably the two best wing options available. Cairo in a trade. Tuck is also technically in a trade, but he was going to hit free agency that had assigned a trade for him. And a lot of people were like, is this their Ovechkin replacement? Are they gearing up for one last swing at the cup with Ovechkin?

4:10Obviously, is 40 years old now, will be 41 by the time the season finishes, I believe. Which side, I was going to say which side of the debate do you fall down on? But why do you think they went out and got these two guys swimming? Because that is a lot of firepower for a team that, like you said, was really just kind of undone by poor special teams and bad injury luck. Well, it's just a goal scoring fuel. The caps had 261 goals last season, 15th in the league and goal scoring. So they wanted an upgrade and Alex Ovechkin at the time it wasn't known if he was going to return or not that capitals Jim Chris Patrick said he was making a plan for with or without Alex Ovechkin. To me, it seemed like how is that possible, but he did just that by getting by getting aggressive before free agency. So I mean, that is the big thing is they struggled in goal scoring and it was predictable. You know, you want to talk about the power play that we touched on.

5:11It was predictable. Get the puck to Ovee. Everyone shaded over towards Ovee. Now you add talk. You add Cairo there that you can get the puck coming from a lot of different places. It could come from Ovechkin. It could come from talk. It could come from Cairo that I think it kind of just gives the capitals a lot of different looks. And you add to 30 plus goal scores to this team, at least on paper as we record this in early September before the formal start of camps. It looks good on paper. Yeah, that's always the way isn't it though. Things look great on paper and all things look terrible on paper and somehow they put it together or it falls apart. So it'll be interesting. I want to talk about Ovechkin a little bit more because. And I don't, I genuinely don't mean this as criticism of Ovechkin because I do genuinely think greatest goal scorer to ever play the game. One of the best players to ever play the game. I really truly thought he was done this season.

6:14I know that it's 32 goals, which kind of shocked me because I felt like, you know, was it, this season he broke his leg to start the season and then came back after like six weeks or was that? That was the season before against you time. But even so, like insane like to do that. And then this season, I felt like he had kind of a slow start and then I looked and I was like, oh no, he's got 32 goals, which kind of low numbers for Ovechkin, I feel like, but still 30 plus goals at the age of 40 clearly still getting it done. That being said, he didn't look. He looked slow this season. He looked very, not stoppable necessarily because obviously, you know, it's still Alex Ovechkin, but it felt like this was him winding down, you know, of him realizing that he can't necessarily keep up with the NHL for a full season comes back for another year. How surprised were you to get another year, Ovechkin? I mean, I was very surprised.

7:14I had made the case all the season before that this is it. Get used to it. This is all for Alex Ovechkin. And I said that just based on the fact that he caught and passed Gretzky, that he has so many trophies on his trophy case and his mantle is full of accomplishments that this is an Alex Ovechkin that is a father, a husband, you know, to me, I didn't want to project what I wanted from him. Like, well, you still got to chase down Gretzky for the all time goals list or this or that type of thing. I was very surprised though. And the big thing is is that Alex Ovechkin is not the guy that wants the farewell tour. And we saw a bit of that that, oh, this is the last time I'm playing in New York or Columbus or this or that city that there's going to be all of this fanfare. But as it turns out, I was wrong that he kind of made a case to Chris Patrick similar to what we saw with Austin Matthews and Quinn Hughes and Dylan Larkin that put together a winning team. And then I'll consider coming back because the capitals missing the playoffs was kind

8:15of like Ovechkin saying, Hey, you knew that we were going into what was going to be my final year. And you did nothing to address it. You brought in Declan Chisholm and you brought in Justin sort of two players that really didn't move the needle as far as wow, that team is serious about winning that I was surprised. But then when I saw what Chris Patrick had up his sleeve, the Kyru, the tuck, the gender, the all of that, that I think that he stood back and looked at it that coupled with the Cole Hudson, the Ryan Leonard, all these players that this team looks good on paper. I'm going to come back for at least one more season. And I think this season will determine what he does in the future. If they make it to the playoffs, if they, you know, things are looking good, maybe he even comes back for another one because he has joked saying, I'll come back for one, you're maybe five years. Of course, that's not real realistic. But I think in all of that he's trying to avoid. You're not going to know when I'm done. But to answer your question, I was surprised because I was pretty dead set that what we saw last season, that was it for Ovechkin.

9:18Yeah, I was also very surprised. I feel like, and again, creating him wrong here, but I thought he might be done last, last season. You know, obviously the capitals had that incredible season. They finished it up the Metro didn't get it done in the playoffs. Obviously, you started a year left on his contract, but I did wonder if this might be, maybe the end for Ovee. Obviously, no, he came back had this one last season. And then I was like, no, he has to be done. He might go and play in the KHL for a couple of years, but he has to be done in the NHL, right? Not because I think he's not good enough to play in the NHL anymore, but it just felt like this was, this was the way to, to go out. I did just check to see, because obviously he made his NHL debut against Columbus. And I think there was a lot of hope that he would finish his career against Columbus as well, which was the last game of last season. The Blue Jacket do not finish their season against Washington this year, but they do play them twice in the last four games of the season. So there is very much, there's, there's something there that it would be, it would be poetic

10:19if, you know, his first goal against Columbus is last goal against Columbus is first game in this last game, I think, which would be, obviously I'm never rooting for a guy to score against my team. And I was really glad that he didn't hit the record against Columbus. He hit it, I think, a couple of games before that when no one was expecting it, which was great. But there's something about, I love a narrative in sports and it would be really fun, I think, if he ended his career in the place he started it, so to speak. Yeah, I mean, for sure. And I think that there was a lot of people that look back to that last game of the season against Columbus. A game that really had no significance for either team that it was definitely this feeling of like this is where he's going to go out. He's going to go nothing against Columbus, a good story, but a game of zero significance other than it could have been OV's last game. So I do like those storylines as well. I think that would be a neat thing. You know, there's the other storylines he started his career in Denamo Moscow. Many people think that that is where he will conclude his career is one last ride out

11:21in Denamo Moscow, but it'll be an interesting storyline. And it would be a fun one if he was able to get another major milestone against Columbus. Yeah, for sure. And look at Yaga, you know, who I believe is still occasionally playing at the age of 52 or whatever, which I don't think a veteran is going to go that route, but there is something to be said for going back to Europe and doing a couple more years there, which is always always fun for like the home crowd, I think. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to talk about another new edition to the capitals that we mentioned briefly, but a long, long time blue jacket. And I think the plan is that Dan's going to pick my brain a little bit on what Boone Jenner is going to bring to the capitals this season. We'll do that in just a second here on Loftown Blue Jackets. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where Odo comes in and all in one business management software that brings every

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13:24They won the cup this year because every single player with pulling in the same direction, they were doing the same thing. They were all on the same page. Rob Brindemore runs that chip like the Navy and they want a cup out of it. Clearly great organizations win because those operations matter. That's why you should get Odo. It's one platform to manage, grow and scale your business. Try free today at odo.com slash locked on. That's odo.com slash locked on. Welcome back to locked on blue jackets and locked on capitals. I've got Dan Holme here. I had suspected that Boongenno was going to leave. There was a lot of chatter about what we would love to keep him, but it's about whether the term makes sense, about whether the money makes sense. And as it kind of went on, got closer to July, Washington showed an interest. I feel like early, there were a couple of other teams that showed interest. And it wasn't really until he signed that I genuinely was like,

14:26oh no, he is actually going. I truly thought that at the 11th hour, that we'll bring him back. But didn't turn out the capitals offered him. I think both more term and more money than he was going to get from Columbus. So we'll flip the script in a minute and I'll get Dan to pick my brain about Jenna. But how do you feel about the signing? Obviously not as exciting as a carry or a talk, but still a low key, a pretty decent sign for you guys, I think. I was very excited about it. We take a look. You know, my initial knee jerk reaction was that he was going to be the third line center. But then we take a look at the young influx of talent. We're talking Ilya Protis, Justin sort of that I think they want to give the younger guys a look and get that opportunity at center. And the good thing about Boone Jenner and what Spencer Carberry has said is that he can be a bit of a Swiss army knife. You know, he's got that leadership. He there's not a situation that he has not seen just given the fact that he has been the captain of Columbus for so many years.

15:27So I think there's a flexibility that he can play center or wing and also that if one of these young guys isn't up to what we hope they are, that he can stay and slide into that position. So that is what has me excited about adding Boone Jenner to the mix. Yeah, he so one of my favorite Boone Jenner fun fact is there was a couple of seasons ago. I don't remember which season it was, maybe 21, 22, I think. He played at some point in the season on every single position on every single forward line. So he played all four left wing positions, all four center positions, all four right wing positions. And that's the most Boone Jenner story to me is yeah, he was covered is exactly right. He's just a semi knife. Is he tops its player anymore? I don't think so. But you can put him in there and he won't be an active liability. I do think yeah, your best bet is just slot him in at the fourth, the fourth, uh, fourth line center position or bottom six wing.

16:29And he'll, he'll get the job done. He is, he was a frustrating player to watch. But if you utilize him properly, which admittedly the blue jackets did fail to do for a large amount of the last handful of seasons, if you use him properly, then he's going to be a really, really great addition. Yeah, and that's, that's what has me excited about him here as well. And talking about him and what kind of role that he played for Columbus when we take a look at it, the captain of that team. What kind of player do you think the capitals are getting in Boone Jenner just if you were going to summarize who he is. Boone Jenner is like I said, he's a little bit of a weird player. Um, his underlying stats are really interesting to look at because you look at his stats and he's one of those guys that is like basically normal when you look at the advanced stats, like he's fine. He's not an active liability, but he's not actively driving the team forward. Something interesting about Jenna is that he makes players around him better.

17:32So a lot of guys on Columbus, their numbers improve when they're with Jenna, even as his stay basically the same, which is really interesting. And I don't quite know why that is or how that is. I know just enough about advanced stats to make me dangerous. And this is something that is a little bit above my level, but it's always something that I kind of. It always surprises me and then I think about it. I'm like, no, he, he's a great third guy on a line, you know, he's never going to drive possession. He is a fairly decent goal scorer. You know, he had. He's fallen off a little bit again and we'll talk about kind of availability in the second because he's struggled a lot with injuries over the past, you know, handful of seasons. But he's a guy that when he's in the lineup, he's, he's effective. He played a bunch of time for the blue jackets. He was either on like their second line wing or their fourth line center when he was in the lineup. There's these and he was much more effective as their fourth line center than that second line wing. However, I do think he is a better center than a winger.

18:33That's just a little bit high in in the lineup for him to be at this point in his career, I think. So to answer answer the question, I think you are going to get a guy that is decent five on five. I think he's a great option for the second power play unit potentially. He was our net front guy. So I would say that he stole a bunch of goals from guys. He loves to deflect the puck in very much like a James Brown dreams night type on the power play loves to get the tip in looks to get the rebound. He's fine on the penalty kill as well. He wouldn't be in my first choice necessarily, but if you need a guy to throw out there again, he's not an active liability, which, you know, the bar is low sometimes for the penalty kill. But sometimes, you know, he, he, he clears the, clears the bar. So you're going to get a guy to is not, I would say, elite at anything necessarily, but he is fine to good. Most NHL roles in that instance.

19:35Yeah, and, you know, I'm kind of just taking a look at what he brings that he has two hundred and twelve career goals one 52.6 of his face offs last season. That is one of the things that I like about him as well recorded 38 points and 67 games and has delivered over 1800 career hits you talked about injuries. I could ask you if there's any correlation there between the hits and the injury. But when you just take a look at the raw numbers, we're talking face off success, the career hits talk about the impact and how that impacted Columbus for all those years. So I am kind of an unusual hockey fan and that I don't think there's correlation to hits and success. Mostly because at the very, very base level, if you're hitting a lot that it means you don't have the puck. You know, and that there's nuance to that, obviously, you know, it's how often does it hit translate into your team getting the puck back, you know, because that's what it is to the attempt to regain possession.

20:37Physical is good. He's not going to. He's not going to shy away from that. He will drop the gloves. If you need him to, I still think that probably he is best better served on the game on the ice playing than sitting in the penalty box. But if you if physicality is something that you want to add to your lineup, generally is probably a pretty good and pretty good option. And I do think obviously you mentioned that his injury history, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a second, don't see that as necessarily being correlated to the amount of hits that he takes just because of the nature of some of his more recent injuries earlier in his career. He's with his back that seems to have mostly resolved knock on wood, but it is something that he is going to have to manage and it clearly it hasn't affected the way that he's played his game. Again, when he's in the lineup, he is throwing hits, he is blocking a lot of shots, he is, you know, quote unquote sacrificing the body. So if that's something you want from a player, then yeah, generous your guy. Yeah, I mean, that's when I take a look at just what he brings to this team because you know, you take a look at it, the capitals have to prepare for the pulse to Vetsch Genera, right, whether it's going to be at the end of this season or whatever that adding a leader like Boone Jenner to the locker room, I think, is a really big thing.

21:55Let me just hear briefly as well about Boone Jenner and his leadership qualities, what kind of leader do you think he can be for this young capitals players that are kind of burgeoning up here, we're talking, hot sin, we're talking these kind of guys, what can he be as, let's say, as a mentor. Yeah, Boone Jenner was kind of a kind of a low key captain, I think, and I have lots of thoughts on the role of the captain in NHL that I won't get into right now because we simply don't have all week, but I will I will bow list down to say that I don't necessarily think that your best player has to be your captain, right, you know, I look at Nick Faleena, for example, captain of two NHL teams Columbus and then again in Chicago was never the best player on any team that he played for is widely regarded as one of the best captains in the NHL I feel like and I don't think Boone Jenner hit that level, but consistently recognized for his leadership. He wasn't going to he's not a yelling guy, but he I think he was a good captain, he wasn't ever the best player on the team, but I think he was a he was a pretty good leader, I think he kind of really tough job a couple of years ago when he had to try and hold the team together after the good road tragedy, and I think he did a really good job there, and I think the yeah there's like you say, you're not just losing a player in a bench, can you losing the captain of the team and I'm not going to sit here and say that Boone Jenner's going to be the next captain of the Washington capitals, but.

23:19I think a guy like that I think is you know sometimes you need to add just an extra adult in the room you know the blue checkers have done a couple of you know a couple years in a row where they've just been like this is a really young team we're going to add an adult adding an adult like Boone Jenner I think yeah it it it's still it's going to start instilling okay these young guys have someone else to lean on like you mentioned his face off percentage he was one of the best face off guys for Columbus one of the better face off guys in the league have young centers that's something that's not going to be the best player on the team. That's something that can be taught by a player maybe a little bit more effectively than a coach right so he has a lot of things to teach and I think he's going to be if not a letter where in in Washington I think yeah he is going to be one of those guys that like leads quietly and by example as opposed to you know standing up in the locker room and yelling. Yeah well i'm very excited about what he will bring to this team. Yeah like I said I wouldn't have been mad if Columbus had kept him and I wouldn't have necessarily wanted to put the contract that Washington gave him just because the blue checkers again have a lot of guys coming in and they have a lot of veterans already that are you know taking up roster spots but if you use him properly he's going to be a really really good addition for you guys.

24:36Let's take another quick break and then we'll finish off we'll talk a little bit about some predictions what are your hopes for the capitals this upcoming season will you then just a second here are locked on blue jackets and locked on capitals. Welcome back to locked on blue jackets have got down homie of locked on capitals here we're just going to finish up and talk a little bit about obviously 111 points a couple of seasons ago miss the playoff this past season loaded up this off season what are your hopes for this capital season obviously make sure you get it. The playoff makes some noise but how realistic do you think that is for this team. I mean i'm very bullish on this year's capitals team that I think that anything I think anything short of making it to the eastern conference final is a failure and you know some people would look at that and go well that that's a that's a strong take down.

25:38But you don't go out make the moves of adding Kyru talk Jenner day Harnay get Alex Ovechkin back for one more season and go you know we tried our best but it wasn't enough so that is ultimately my goal for this team I think that I think that this team is good enough to be Carolina and that's that's a hard take right there. But I think that the moves that they made that the capitals don't have to be that much better than Carolina they just have to hope that Carolina takes a step back and I think that they could definitely win the Metro and I think just based on the moves that they made they're one of the best teams. In the eastern conference as we record this in early July or September. Yeah for sure it's the Metro is such a weird division I feel like and I've done a bunch of these Metro matchups now and I get a different answer every single time but like. Obviously Carolina is the team to beat and then most people I think have pencil Washington in as kind of the second seed and then after that you could have one of like four teams fighting for that third seed in the Metro.

26:40You know there's no way to know does Pittsburgh get better or worse just Philadelphia take a step back or a step forward what do the New York teams do can the devil stay healthy right. So the capitals I think are in a really good spot right now in that no one really knows what to expect from the rest of the Metro beyond Carolina is going to be good and then you've got the capitals who I think I said did they have the best off season in the Metro probably I'm not convinced that some of these contracts won't come back and bite them in the future. Right that they could the tuck contract was one that we talked about a lot on the show as an option for Columbus I am very wary of giving a 30 year olds 10 and a half million dollars for eight years I believe it is seven years eight years but if it works out in the short term and you know a cup comes from it then you deal with it later right. So do you have the to kind of wrap all that up. You have the Washington capitals first to the Metro that's your your quote unquote official prediction here. Yes and I'm looking at it not just because I cover the team or I'm a capitals fan I just do it based on the additions could I be surprised injuries those kind of things those are the things that we can never plan on but where I'm kind of planting my flag right now is that yes they can be the best team in the Metro.

27:58It'll be it'll be interesting to see again the Metro I feel like has wild swings year over year you know. And that is it's going to be it's going to be interesting hopefully you guys can stay ahead of the the mess that it talks about there that kind of three to six range. Because I think that's when it's going to get messy I have said I think on every single one of these crossovers that I've done that the blue checkers are going to have to make the the the can have to be third seed or better to make the pile because the Atlantic division is insane. So yeah I'll be interested to see I don't necessarily think that these Washington moves the gambles I think the Cairo edition I love. He was another guy that we looked at a lot for Columbus and I think that is a fantastic addition and again can they can they pull it together and do one last dance for OV can OV. Have another incredible season at the age of you know 40 41. If they put it all together it's going to be great. The question is did they do enough to jump over Carolina and I could see an argument that yes they they absolutely could.

28:59If people want to keep up keep tabs on what Blue Generace doing if people want some of capitals talk and I can be looking at you and your show online dad. Yeah so you can find me on Twitter X it's at Dan Caps to an eight you can find a show on Twitter it's at locked on caps of course available on YouTube and wherever you find your podcasts. You can find locked on Blue Jackets wherever you get podcasts were on YouTube, pre-inavailable in all of these places were on Twitter at L.O. underscore Blue Jackets as well I will be back with a brand new episode tomorrow morning on Luxemble Jackets Dan will also be back with a brand new episode of Lockdown Capitals tomorrow morning and thank you once again for listening making us your first listen of the day every single day. We are continuing to be free available everywhere you can possibly think of and until tomorrow make sure you stay locked on.

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