Carter Performs Well in Columbus Debut, Not Enough as Jackets Fall in Opener at BetLM

Carter Performs Well in Columbus Debut, Not Enough as Jackets Fall in Opener

Fans were excited to see what the new era in Blue Jack­ets hockey would look like. For the first time in Rick Nash’s career, he’d have a cen­ter who could keep up with him. At least that was the plan when we looked at the team on paper in the off­sea­son. So what would it look like when the idea was put into prac­tice in a reg­u­lar sea­son game?

Pretty good. Pretty darn good.

Colum­bus lost their first game of the sea­son against the rival Nashville Preda­tors, but it wasn’t due to lack of pro­duc­tion from the Jack­ets new look top line. New­comer Jeff Carter had a pair of assists in his Jack­ets debut, Vinny Prospal had a goal and assist, and cap­tain Rick Nash had a goal and assist as well. Pretty good num­bers con­sid­er­ing the Preda­tors fea­ture the best defen­sive pair­ing in the league and one of the best goaltenders.

Unfor­tu­nately for Colum­bus, the rest of the team failed to get any­thing done and they fell 3–2.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Jeff Carter was upset about his trade out of Philadel­phia. Most will remem­ber that in the days imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the trade, Carter was nowhere to be found as he let the deal digest. But all that is in the past:

“It’s excit­ing to get out there and play a real game. It seems like the trade didn’t hap­pen all that long ago, but now here we are, ready to go.”

Two assists are cer­tainly a good way to get off on the right foot. The next step will be for the Blue Jack­ets to put a W in the win column—but Carter and his line­mates undoubt­edly did their part. Carter fin­ished the game with his two assists (both at even strength), a +1 rat­ing, 6 shots on goal, and won 77% of the draws he took in his first game. His 20:40 of ice time was sec­ond among Blue Jack­ets forwards—only behind cap­tain Rich Nash. So much for eas­ing the new guy into his new role.

Jack­ets head coach Scott Arniel acknowl­edged that he hoped that chem­istry would develop quickly on his new top line and was happy with their effort in their first game. Even the oppos­ing net­min­der acknowl­edged the play of the Carter-Nash-Prospal line:

“Every time they’re on the ice, they seem to have at least one scor­ing chance,” Rinne said. “Or at least they try to shoot and try to cre­ate every sin­gle shift. If you’re a goalie or a defense­man, it’s challenging…”

It was a good start for Carter in Colum­bus, but now the team as a whole will need to improve to start post­ing some wins. The first place to improve is on the power play. Despite the strong play from the big guns, the power play that strug­gled last sea­son strug­gled dur­ing stretches again. Arniel counted eight chances on the power play—but the num­ber that mat­ters the most is 0. As in 0 for 5 on the power play. That’s not going to cut it for the team that fin­ished 29th in the league with a 14% power play last sea­son. But if the trio con­tin­ues play­ing like they did tonight, those num­bers are bound to turnaround.

For the first night in Colum­bus, Carter and his line­mates gave fans some­thing to look for­ward to. Now he’ll just need to get a lit­tle help from his friends. They’ll have 81 more games to show they’re capa­ble of step­ping up their game.

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