GDT: Game 78: Ottawa @ Columbus | 7 PM EST

[LJ7]

Gotta watch the game on replay later since I didn't see it live, did he look faster vs Ottawa than against the previous teams?

I've seen the other games of his brief CBJ career, and been thinking if he could be a reliable 2nd or 3rd pair dman for us during a playoff series, or just when winning games actually matters.

I don't have a lot of doubts about his capability, he's obviously very smart, skilled and strong for a 5'9 player. That said, I've found myself kind of hoping that he could still find another gear in his skating, at the age of 24. It's not looking bad but in my head I'm trying to picture a future scenario where he's defending 1vs1 vs some speed demon who's significantly bigger than him, and I wonder how often is he going to get burned. He may never be able to fix the lack of reach but can he get a little bit faster, in both forwards and backwards skating (and in transitions from one to the other) with the right coach and optimal training program?

I was talking about straight line forward speed originally, but I'm actually glad you expanded the conversation to the other parts of skating that honestly will matter more to his success, and is more interesting than normal straight line speed. This is the one of the two plays that prompted my message:

Honestly not bad considering he had the puck. He had another play which I think was to ensure an icing where he looked even faster but that sadly did not make the cut for the Sportsnet highlights

As to your points about his pivoting/agility so far I think he's strong at that too, but I haven't really focused on it while watching. Short guys have an intrinsic advantage with that stuff (and there's also a chicken/egg factor where short guys can only make it to the NHL if they're good in those areas), but Blankenburg so far seems like he's more than just "short guy agile". I generally see him as an athletic, quick, and strong skater as opposed to a more crafty, figure skater type of skater. In other words he just does the basic stuff really well.

If you do end up watching the game on replay let us know what you see with his skating. I've never focused on it all that hard so I'm curious if you'll notice anything with a microscope on it. How good he is at skating is honestly crucial for him and could be the difference between him being a 3rd pair energy guy and a true core piece of the back end.

 

[majormajor]

I was mainly thinking about the pivoting, it has looked great to me too but in some plays it hasn't been as smooth and seamless as it could be for a skater of his level. I agree that he's a good skater in all aspects but not that good he could very often afford to lose a step in change of directions.

Edit: I couldn't find clips of Blankenburg doing these types of turns on the ice but I found videos of other people demonstrating this skating stuff so I hope this helps.



I don't know what is the English hockey term for this type of skate movement. Nevertheless you can imagine a situation where Jackets are heading up ice but then there's a turnover in neutral zone that forces Jackets to skate back towards their own zone. At the time of turnover, Blankenburg is located somewhere between the red line and the defensive blueline. He has to do this turn from forwards to backwards skating while facing the play. What I tried to say was that his turns look good on these situations but at the same time I wonder if there's still room for improvement to get them to look cleaner.



The thing OEL does with his skates at the 8 second mark on this video is called pivoting, am I correct? I'm terrible with skating terminology. Anyways, it's another type of situation which I think might be difficult for Blank if he has to play against very quick forwards.

Yes we're talking about "pivoting" or "transitioning". Forwards-back and backward-to-forward. I would call them pivoting because transition can refer to the whole neutral zone process but a lot of people call it transitions too.

 

[KJ Dangler]

Not surprising , KJ has been one of our best players the past 3 games

 

[LJ7]

 

[Columbus Jack]

KJ should have seen OT, if not OT, at least the shootout. What is this guy's obsession with Nyquist? A good veteran but let us see what the kid can do with only 3 defenders. Lars knows we're missing the playoffs right? You could argue not putting KJ out there probably helped the tank at this point.