The last time the Columbus

COLUMBUS www.blackhawksshoponline.com , Ohio — Blue Jackets played the Los Angeles Kings in early November, they were struggling with consistency.Win one, lose one. Look good one night and bad in the next game. Fast forward a month and the Blue Jackets still haven’t figured out how to be more consistent. Article continues below ...After three humbling losses at home in the last four games, the Blue Jackets will try again Thursday night to start and sustain a streak of success beginning with the Kings at Nationwide Arena.The Blue Jackets (16-12-2) and Kings (11-19-2) both experienced tough losses on Tuesday night.Columbus coughed up 1-0 and 2-1 leads by allowing two goals in the final minutes of a 3-2 loss on home ice to the visiting Vancouver Canucks.A few minutes earlier, the Blue Jackets were feeling good about their chances after forward Oliver Bjorkstrand’s first goal in a month gave them a one-goal lead and seemingly the momentum.The late collapse came after the Blue Jackets were shut out on Saturday night by the Washington Capitals after opening a stretch of seven of eight games at home with a 9-6 loss to the Calgary Flames on Dec. 4.“That’s the rub now is we play the right way but we didn’t get a result,” Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said, according to the team’s website. “Can we stay with our concentration here and stay with the things we have to do? Because we made some great corrections in our game to get it back to how we should be playing, but we didn’t get the result.“We have to be able to do it (Thursday) night and keep on working at that part of it, and hopefully the results start coming our way.” Los Angeles lost the second game of a back-to-back on the road, falling 4-3 in overtime to the Buffalo Sabres. The Kings have gone 0-2 on a four-game trip that ends Saturday night in Pittsburgh and 1-3-1 in their last five games overall.To make matters worse for the Kings, players keep going down. Defensemen Drew Doughty and Dion Phaneuf left Tuesday’s game with upper-body injuries and didn’t return. Phaneuf flew back to Los Angeles for evaluation.Doughty has played in 360 consecutive games Chicago Blackhawks T-Shirts Womens , a franchise record, but Kings coach Willie Desjardins on Tuesday night listed Doughty as day-to-day. His absence would be felt.“Not only is he a big-time leader, he’s one of the best defensemen in the game, and he eats a lot of minutes,” Kings goaltender Cal Petersen said of Doughty. ” … losing him, (he’s) a huge part of our team.”Kings defenseman Alec Martinez didn’t make the trip because of an upper-body injury and was placed on injured reserve Wednesday. Also sidelined are forwards Kyle Clifford, Jonny Brodzinski, Carl Hagelin, Ilya Kovalchuk and Trevor Lewis, and goaltender Jack Campbell.Kings defenseman Jake Muzzin was forced to carry a heavy load, finishing with 30 minutes of ice time and contributing a goal and an assist against the Sabres.“Every time he goes out he plays hard and he gives us both offense and defense Sam Reinhart Jersey ,” Desjardins said. “A lot of times guys see him as an offensive defenseman, but he can do it all and he’s a big guy and he loves to play, and he’s got such a good attitude around the locker room as well.”An injury also knocked a Blue Jackets player out of the game on Tuesday. Forward Josh Anderson is considered as day-to-day with an upper-body injury after he crashed headfirst into the post.Anderson didn’t practice Wednesday and Tortorella said Bjorkstrand would take Anderson’s place on a line with Boone Jenner and Nick Foligno.Sergei Bobrovsky will be back in goal for the Blue Jackets after getting Tuesday night off. WASHINGTON (AP) Alex Ovechkin is built like a linebacker with the motor of a steam engine and the mentality of a wrecking ball.He can score like no other player of this generation and few in history and has the physicality to match. That was evident from his first NHL shift when he powered up ice and crushed Columbus defenseman Radoslav Suchy so hard it knocked out the stanchion between the panes of plexiglass.Ovechkin at 32 is no longer the human bulldozer he once was, but his hard-hitting style never put a dent in his prime years as he became the fourth-fastest player to 600 goals . On Sunday in Pittsburgh, the Washington Capitals‘ 2004 No. 1 pick will be the first player from that draft class to play 1,000 NHL regular-season games, a testament to his durability that is also difficult to duplicate in modern hockey.”That he has reached 1,000 games this quickly is an amazing accomplishment with the way he plays,” Capitals owner Ted Leonsis said. ”These are big men, and the league has gotten faster but it’s also gotten much more fit, and that Alex has been able to span those generations and continue to play and be incredibly productive is really a historic feat.”In 13 seasons Womens Zemgus Girgensons Jersey , Ovechkin has missed more than four games only once and never missed more than 10. Take out the eight games for suspensions and the Russian winger has only sat out for injury 21 times out of a possible 1,028.”I heard a couple years ago that he said he’s the Russian Machine,” longtime teammate Nicklas Backstrom said. ”That probably has something to do with it.”Ovechkin brushed off an injury in his second season with the now-famous line, ”Russian machine never breaks.” Ovechkin has played through knee and back pain and finished one playoff series on a fractured foot, illustrating his pain tolerance while also avoiding the kinds of serious injuries that derail other players’ careers.Goaltender Braden Holtby pointed out that it helps Ovechkin to not kill penalties and risk injuries in those situations while also marveling at how the Moscow native is built. His 6-foot-3, 235-pound frame gives him the tools to punish opponents with his body as much as his shot.”When you’re big guy like Ovi, you’re not gonna be afraid to hit no one,” Capitals center Evgeny Kuznetsov said. ”And when people gonna hit you, they’re gonna feel it, for sure.”When Barry Trotz coached in Nashville, he remembered players seeing Ovechkin down the hallway cutting his stick and whispering about how big he was. Ovechkin had that intimidating presence to him.”Trust me http://www.officialflames.com/authentic-adidas-jaromir-jagr-jersey , we had a lot of nervous defensemen,” Trotz said. ”We had a couple of nervous cats.”Watching Ovechkin’s sometimes reckless play could have at one point made the Capitals nervous, too, because of how valuable he is and how important it is he stay healthy. In recent years, he has toned it down with age and as hockey has gotten faster with lower priorities on hitting.”As soon as you get a little older, you realize when you have to get a hit and when you have to take a hit,” Ovechkin said. ”You can see right now in the playoffs it’s different hockey. Of course, every shift you try to do something out there, but in the regular year you don’t have to run around and hit everybody because if a game is 5-2 or 4-1 you don’t have to do it. Obviously you have to play smarter and try to do different things.”Evolving his game as a scorer and a power forward has helped Ovechkin get to this point where he’s on the verge of leading the league in goals for the seventh time and reach 50 for the eighth time.If Ovechkin, who still has Stanley Cup aspirations and three years left on his contract, maintains this level of durability and wants to keep playing in North America toward age 40 Johnny Gaudreau Jersey Kids , reaching 1,500 games isn’t out of the question.”There are a lot of players that have played 1,000 games but not as many players have scored 600 goals,” Leonsis said. ”If he takes cares of himself – which he has been, he looks great – he can play a lot of years in the league.”—