Game Preview: Price is In
lol atlantic division
Tonight will be the fourth time in the last four games that the Blue Jackets are facing an opponent who played in the night before. This will be the third of those games in which the opponent played an OT game. Last night Montreal defeated the Devils 4-3 in New Jersey.
Last night, Les Habitants used Al Montoya in goal, which means that for the first time since February 26, 2015, Columbus will be facing Carey Price. In case you have not heard, Price was out for the 5 meetings since then.
The first meeting against Montreal was that record-breaking 10-0 victory in November. The December rematch was a closely-contested 2-1 battle right before Christmas.
Montreal made a trade yesterday in advance of the deadline, exchanging defenseman Greg Pateryn and a fourth round pick for Dallas defenseman Jordie Benn. Benn skated this morning but the rest of the team did not, so it’s not yet clear where he’ll fit in the lineup (most likely the second pairing)
Obviously the trade deadline will continue to loom over all games tonight, prior to the 3 pm deadline tomorrow.
William Karlsson was not on the ice this morning, as he is not feeling well (per the Dispatch’s Tom Reed). UPDATE: Karlsson is out:
Dovetailing off this, Torts said there's no callup so #CBJ will play 7 defensemen. https://t.co/zSEh8JiF2y
— Tom Reed (@treed1919) February 28, 2017
Projected Lineups
| Boone Jenner | Brandon Dubinsky | Cam Atkinson |
| Nick Foligno | Alexander Wennberg | BJORKSTRAND |
| Brandon Saad | Sam Gagner | Scott Hartnell |
| Markus Hannikainen | ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ | Josh Anderson |
| Zach Werenski | Seth Jones |
| Jack Johnson | David Savard |
| Ryan Murray | Markus Nutivaara |
| Sergei Bobrovsky |
| Joonas Korpisalo |
| Max Pacioretty | Phillip Danault | Alexander Radulov |
| Paul Byron | Tomas Plekanec | Andrew Shaw |
| Artturi Lehkonen | Alex Galchenyuk | Brendan Gallagher |
| Sven Andrighetto | David Desharnais | Torrey Mitchell |
| Andrei Markov | Shea Weber |
| Alexei Emelin | Jeff Petry/Jordie Benn |
| Nathan Beaulieu | Nikita Nesterov |
| Carey Price |
| Al Montoya |