Columbus Blue Jackets captain Nick Foligno was ejected from Saturday’s game against the Colorado Avalanche for a nasty elbow to the head of Pierre-Edouard Bellemare.
That play will result in him missing a few more games.
The NHL’s Department of Player Safety announced on Monday afternoon that Foligno has been suspended three games for elbowing.
Bellemare was diagnosed with a concussion is going to remain out of the Avalanche for the time being.
Here is a look at the play, as well as the NHL’s explanation for the suspension.
The league notes that this hit can not be classified as excusable or accidental contact where Foligno raises his arm as a reflex to brace for sudden contact or to attempt to avoid a collision. Instead, it is Foligno that is in control of the play and initiates the contact, meaning the onus is on him to deliver a clean body check. He obviously did not do that and instead extended his elbow forcefully into Bellemare’s jaw.
Foligno said after the game he did not know he hit Bellemare in the head and was sick to his stomach when he realized he did.
Prior to this suspension Foligno had only been fined one time in his NHL career and never suspended, but the fact that Bellemare was injured on the play almost certainly added some games to Foligno’s punishment.
In 17 games this season he has one goal and six assists for the Blue Jackets.
There were a handful of strong goaltending performances again on Saturday, and you can even gripe about the placement of stars here, as Greiss didn’t have the most saves in stopping 37 out of 38 shots on goal.
Greiss might have been asked to do the most of any winning goalie, though.
Not only was there no margin of error, as the Islanders beat the Panthers 2-1, but Greiss faced a mixture of quality and quantity against the Cats. According to Natural Stat Trick, Greiss faced 20 high-danger scoring chances, and the Panthers’ expected goals were at 4.41. To hold the Panthers to one goal – and only on the power play – is another great night of work for a goalie who probably deserves more hype at this point.
If you look at the bare stats alone, Nilsson had a “better” night than Greiss, allowing one goal on 39 SOG (38 to 37 saves).
We can debate Nilsson’s Saturday vs. Greiss’ Saturday, yet it’s getting tougher to reasonably argue which goalie should be starting for Ottawa — at least if the Senators don’t want to merely tank. Nilsson is now on a three-game winning streak, and his save percentage is up to a splendid .930. He’s shown some signs of being a well-above-average backup goalie for a little while now, especially since joining the Senators.
All due respect to Craig Anderson‘s tremendous accomplishments, particularly helping them come within an OT goal of advancing to the 2017 Stanley Cup Final, but times haven’t been great for the veteran goalie. Anderson’s save percentage is a rough .897 this season, and he’s been putting up replacement-level numbers since 2017-18.
Frankly, tanking might be the best option for Ottawa, so theoretically they could merely split starts for at least a while. If this continues, they won’t be able to get away with even a platoon for a whole lot longer, though.
3. Evgeny Kuznetsov, Washington Capitals, or pick your favorite two-point night
Pointing to Kuznetsov’s goal and assist is a way of moving up the Capitals’ winning streak in the “batting order,” if you will.
The funny thing about the Islanders’ remarkable 10-game winning streak (and their still-active point streak of 12 games) is that, if you were looking at the standings, you might have thought “Huh, but the Capitals are still ahead.” That’s because Washington’s been almost as hot, and with a win on Saturday, the Caps are now at 29 standings points. Which means they’re leading the NHL.
Some might argue this package is the highlight of the night, then.
A specific but cool stat from NHL PR: St. Louis Blues forward David Perron is the first player in league history to score three OT goals before a team reaches 20 games played.
However you feel about Nick Foligno‘s hit on Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, it’s tough to watch Bellemare falling to the ice, seemingly knocked unconscious or at least to the point of losing control. It’s never a good sign when you see a player’s neck make a whiplash-like motion, either.
Apparently Foligno, captain of the Columbus Blues, agrees that it’s difficult to watch.
Foligno received a game misconduct and five-minute charging major penalty for the hit, and after Saturday’s game (which Bellemare’s Colorado Avalanche won 4-2), Foligno expressed regret about the head contact that was made.
Full quote from #CBJ Nick Foligno on the hit to #Avs Pierre-Edouard Bellemare that led to a 5-minute major and a game misconduct for the Blue Jackets’ captain: pic.twitter.com/SQmx8AXjTW
Foligno sharing word that Bellemare is OK is promising, although it’s unclear how that might translate to missing time for an Avalanche team that’s already dealing with a lot of injuries.
There are some who weren’t happy with Foligno’s play beyond that hit:
Nick Foligno went hunting earlier in the game and missed. This time around he got an elbow right to Bellemare's head. Bellemare with a classic fencing response laying on the ice. Being helped to the locker room.
Yet, Foligno deserves credit for being open about his regret for the check, even if he gave talk of a possible suspension a no-comment.
The Blue Jackets have now lost six of their last seven games, going 1-5-1 during that span. (The Avs were in a similar spot, as they lost five straight before Thursday, but have now won two in a row.)
If Columbus’ captain sits a game or more, it will only be that much tougher for the Blue Jackets to get back on track. That said, it would be tough to argue that Foligno doesn’t deserve a suspension of some kind. Foligno might even only give a token protest against such a complaint, at least judging by those public comments.
The Blues captain picked a great time to record his 400th career point. With 12:09 left in the third period and the game tied at two, Pietrangelo wired a shot by Frederik Andersen to give the Blues the lead for good over the Toronto Maple Leafs. The goal was the 23rd game-winning tally of his career, putting him past Al MacInnis for the franchise record among defensemen. The win capped off a pretty good sports Monday for the city St. Louis.
Monday’s win over the Buffalo Sabres was a wild one. The Blue Jackets went up 2-0 in the first, then proceeded to blow that lead in the second period. In the third, the teams exchanged power play goals, which included Victor Olofsson‘s third of the season with 1:14 to play. Overtime was all Columbus, with the young forward netting the winner after 128 seconds.
With 42 goals in just over a year, Jeff Skinner is already tied for 81st in #Sabres history, ahead of guys like Clarke MacArthur (187 games), Brian Gionta (230 games), and Rob Ray (889 games).
Given all of the talent that walked away from the Columbus Blue Jackets this summer it was pretty obvious they were going to have a very different look this season.
Not only on paper, but also in the way they play on the ice.
They lost a franchise goalie with two Vezina Trophies to his name (Sergei Bobrovsky) and replaced him with two relative unknowns (Joonas Korpisalo and Elvis Merzlikins). They lost their biggest superstar (Artemi Panarin) and a couple of trade deadline acquisitions (Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel) that were supposed to help make them contenders.
That is a lot of talent to replace, especially in net. Because of that, and because of the uncertainty around their two goalies, they were going to have to adjust the way they played and take a more patient, conservative approach. The old “safe is death” mindset John Tortorella’s teams used to employ was never going to work with this roster. They not only do not have the skill to trade chances with other contenders, but they also don’t yet know if they have the goalies to help cover up for chances coming back the other way.
Safe is probably the only way for this team to play.
Through the first two games of the season (a 4-1 loss to Toronto and then an ugly 7-2 loss in Pittsburgh) they are still trying to figure out how they have to play and what they have to do to win.
Patience was the big word used after Saturday’s loss in Pittsburgh.
“We had a lot of good minutes in there,” captain Nick Foligno said after Saturday’s game. “I know it’s weird to say that, but we did some good things. It’s just the patience, it’s the understanding of how we need to play and being okay with a 1-0 game or a 0-0 game for 59 minutes if it has to be that, and sticking with that. We are almost over-anxious and our patience is getting away from us right now and it is costing us. We are doing so many good things throughout the game that are being negated by poor decisions because we don’t want to do the necessary thing in that moment. Sometimes it’s not the prettiest thing, but it’s the necessary thing.”
“I think it gives us an opportunity to teach a little bit here,” said coach John Tortorella, echoing Foligno’s thoughts that were still some positives mixed in with the early struggles.
“I thought our first 25-35 minutes or so were pretty good. I thought we were fast, I thought we were right there. They end up scoring a few goals and we end up losing our composure as far as how we have to play. So for me it just gives us a great opportunity to start teaching what the patience of our game needs to be.”
In recent years the Blue Jackets had Bobrovsky to mask a lot of flaws on the back end and serve as the last line of defense. A franchise goalie can change a lot for a team and allow the team in front of them to maybe take more chances and play a bit more aggressively. They no longer have that proven safety net behind them. Korpisalo has been a backup his entire career with varying degrees of success, while Merzlikins is getting his first taste of NHL action. Saturday’s game was his NHL debut and went about as poorly as it could have gone.
“I think it’s going to help him in the long run,” said Tortorella. “I thought he looked really calm in the first period, just the way he handled the puck the outside the net, stopped some wraparounds, broke us out. I thought he was right there. But it’s an unforgiving league. It’s a good lesson for him, and we knew there were going to be lessons like this for us. The most important thing now is how we handle it. It’s an opportunity for us right away at the beginning of this year to teach about patience, to teach about how we have to play. Hopefully we go about it the right way.”
They get a chance to start doing that on Monday against a white-hot Buffalo Sabres team.
It has been a frustrating start for sure. They had a tough draw out of the gate getting two of the most dangerous offensive teams in the league as their new goalies get settled, while the team in front of them hasn’t exactly adapted in trying to protect them. But there is still enough talent on the roster to get it figured out.
