Tuesday, March 31, 2009
COLUMBUS (AP) — Without looking at a calendar, it’s easy to tell it’s playoff time at Ken Hitchcock’s house.
The bills are piling up and so are the dishes. There’s a stack of newspapers by the front door. A tower of videotapes sit by the television, past games awaiting further review by the Columbus Blue Jackets coach.
Hitchcock is so focused on his team that he’s become oblivious to all aspects of normal life.
“The one thing you find out at this time of the year is that the rest of the world stops,” he said Monday. “All of the things that people do in everyday life, for us, stops. You spend little or no time with it. You exist. It’s like you sleep, you come to the rink, you work at preparing your team, you go home and you rest.”
The Blue Jackets, who are in their eighth season but have yet to make the playoffs, woke up Monday morning to find themselves with an unsteady grip on sixth place in the Western Conference with 86 points. Nashville, which Columbus hosts tonight, is seventh with 84 points. St. Louis holds the eighth and final playoff spot with 83 points — with Anaheim (82), Edmonton (81) and Minnesota (80) right behind.
Each of those six teams have six games left.
Things are so tight and every point so critical that everybody studies the standings, listens for the late scores and ponders every injury and personnel move.
For instance, the Predators lost forward Martin Erat to a broken left leg on Sunday in Detroit, felled by teammate Shea Weber’s slap shot. Erat will likely be gone for a month.
“That’s a tough loss. Good player,” Columbus captain Rick Nash said. But he said this is no time to express sympathy. Everybody has injuries. The Blue Jackets are without several mainstays — Fredrik Modin, Jason Chimera, Ole-Kristian Tollefsen, Derick Brassard — and nobody is feeling sorry for them.
Miss the playoffs and no one remembers that a team was down an important player or two.
“It’s tough when any player goes down, but we need points,” Nash said. “We have to worry about what we have to do here.”
After tonight, the Blue Jackets return the favor on Saturday night. They play at home against fifth-place Chicago on Sunday before playing at Chicago on April 8, at St. Louis on April 10 and closing the regular season at home against Minnesota on April 11.
St. Louis is the hottest of the six teams fighting for those last three playoff spots, but the Blues are at home for only that April 10 showdown against Columbus. Nashville has won its last three, but no one knows how the Predators will handle the loss of Erat, their second-leading scorer.
So bunched are the standings that players are paying as much attention to other scores as their own.
“At this time of year you can’t depend on other teams to do you any favors,” Blue Jackets center Jason Williams said.