Red Wings-Blue Jackets game-day notebooks: On the atmosphere at LCA, and Blue Jackets notes

Of Red Wings and Blue Jackets-related note ahead of the teams’ match-up tonight at Little Caesars Arena (7:30 PM EDT on Bally Sports Detroit/Bally Sports Ohio/97.1 FM), subsequent to the game-day skate and the post-skate media availabilities (videos of coach Jeff Blashill and Pius Suter included):

  1. MLive’s Ansar Khan posted a varied notebook which discussses Thomas Greiss, Moritz Seider’s ups and downs, Marc Staal’s status, and the atmosphere at Little Caesars Arena now that fans are back in the stands:

[Red Wings coach Jeff] Blashill noted that the atmosphere at LCA the first two games has been as charged as it has been since the building opened four years ago.

“I think the atmosphere has been great. Both games were highly emotional, which is a positive,” Blashill said. “We want to play with lots of compete, lots of emotion. The crowds have been awesome. It’s a loud building. It’s been a while since we had that (due to COVID restrictions last season). The first game in this building (in 2017), we didn’t have enough people in the seats. There were lots of people here, but they were either in the club level eating or checking out how beautiful the arena is. Now everybody is in the seats, and it just seems really, really loud.”

A loud building can provide a home-ice advantage.

“Playing at the highest level of compete and emotion every night is not easy for 82 games and most teams can’t do it,” Blashill said. “It can be a separator if we can do it on a night-to-night basis. We’re looking for every way we can to separate ourselves from other teams, and this is one way.”

2. ColumbusBlueJackets.com’s Jeff Svoboda posted a game-day update which includes the following:

3 Keys to the Game 

Stay committed: The Blue Jackets gave up just nine scoring chances against Seattle on Saturday; any single-digit total is a pretty good number. It’s the kind of committed structure that can lead to a lot of wins this year if the team can stick with it. 

Continue the party: One reason Columbus has been so good this year is nine players already have goals and 16 have points, led by Oliver Bjorkstrand‘s 2-2-4 line. That kind of balanced scoring makes a team hard to stop.  

Get [Yegor] Chinakhov going: The rookie has passed every test so far, scoring in Traverse City, preseason games and then the AHL. Why not his NHL debut? No matter how it goes, it should be fun to watch.

NOTABLE

With two assists in the opener, Jakub Voracek is three assists away from 100 in union blue, while Bjorkstrand is four from the mark. … Chinakhov would be the third player to make his NHL debut this season and sixth to make his CBJ debut, joining Cole Sillinger and Gregory Hofmann in the former and Sean Kuraly, Jake Bean and Adam Boqvist in the latter. … Columbus had the youngest opening roster in the NHL at an average of 25.71 years old. … The Blue Jackets have players from 10 different countries on the roster, most in the NHL. … This is the only road game of the first six contests of the season for Columbus. … Forward Sam Gagner is the only former Blue Jacket on the Detroit roster … The teams played eight times last year, with Columbus posting a 4-3-1 record. The Blue Jackets had gone 11-1-0 combined in the previous four seasons. … Bjorkstrand led the way with seven points (2-5-7) in eight games against the Wings last year. 

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, and have worked with MLive and Kukla's Korner. Thank you for reading!