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Game #2: Crawling Before They Walk

The San Jose Sharks, defending Western Conference Champs with a healthy chip on their shoulders, swam into Nationwide Arena Saturday night. Just like their namesakes, the visiting team smelled blood, and was quick to attack.

This isn’t to say that the Blue Jackets didn’t try to put up a defense - in fact, when you look at the CORSI and game flow charts, this was a closer game at times than the shot clock or score indicated, particularly in the first period where the Jackets came out firing, but couldn’t put pucks reliably on Martin Jones, with quite a few attempts going just wide or being stopped by defenders putting themselves in position to logjam passing lanes or block shots.