Poor Early Exits Provide Little Experience posted by Jeff Ponder
The Columbus Blue Jackets and St. Louis Blues entered the 2009 NHL Playoffs with high hopes for their respective teams. Those thoughts became nothing but a few pipe dreams for their fans and players what seemed like minutes after the playoffs had begun.
St. Louis suffered a series sweep at the hands of the Vancouver Canucks Tuesday night. This was a fate that the Blue Jackets faced to the Detroit Red Wings just a short 48 hours later. Both of these teams felt devastation after they lost in their home arena, which adds much insult to injury to these young teams.
"It's a tough way to lose,” commented Blue Jackets captain Rick Nash. “What can you say? There's 19,000 people. Everyone saw what happened and I don't need to comment on it."
Nash quite possibly had the largest spotlight shine on him in this series. Being an impact player in Columbus since his rookie season in 2002-03, the 6’4” power forward has accumulated 194 goals and 355 points in 441 career NHL regular season games, but saw his first playoff action in this series. Nash had 40 goals in the regular season, but scored just one goal and three points in the four-game sweep. His lone-goal came in game four, when he tipped in a Rostislav Klesla shot early in the second period, which put his team down by just one goal at the time.
Nash has to be more of a presence if his team wants to succeed in the future. Red Wings’ coach Mike Babcock played Nicklas Lidstrom and Pavel Datsyuk nearly every time Nash was on the ice, which was detrimental in shutting him down. But Nash rose above tough coverage all season; his play was not effective in this series.
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