Blue Jackets’ Calvert suspended for Game 3

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Columbus Blue Jackets forward Matt Calvert suspended on Saturday one game for his cross-check to Pittsburgh’s Tom Kuhnhackl late in the third period of a Game 2 loss to the Penguins.

Calvert will miss Game 3 tonight at Nationwide Arena in Columbus.

At the end of Game Friday at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Calvert received a minor penalty for cross-checking when he chased down Kuhnhackl away from the play and hit the Penguins forward in the head with his stick, which broke in the process.

The NHL Department of Player Safety said it rose to the level of supplemental discipline because it was not a hockey play and fell into the category of message-sending.

The cross-check and subsequent hit came with 35 seconds left in a 4-1 loss that dropped the Blue Jackets into a 2-0 hole in the best-of-seven series.

The NHL said dangerous or retaliatory plays meant to send a message in a playoff series will be viewed in that context and punished accordingly.

Kuhnhackl practiced Saturday. Had he been injured, the league would have factored that into the length of Calvert’s suspension.

Calvert had never been fined or suspended before, and that did factor in. Calvert was not made available to the media Saturday.

TortS

Last summer, John Tortorella sent Blue Jackets players a terse personal letter letting them know that uncomfortable times were ahead.

But if they worked hard, he wrote, it would all be worth it.

The Tortorella training camp was notoriously demanding and set the tone for a season in which the Blue Jackets put together a 16-game winning streak on the way to making the playoffs for just the third time in franchise history.

The camp was part of the no-nonsense Tortorella’s rebooting of a culture he said he found when he was hired in Columbus after the team started 0-7 last season.

The talent was there, but the attitude needed adjustment. Enter Torts.

“I just felt that it was a lousy room with guys thinking they could come and go as they pleased — the entitlement factor,” he said. “I thought our mindset stunk.”

It didn’t take long for Tortorella to add a businesslike culture of working hard, being in the moment and never getting too up or too down in the Blue Jackets. Win your shift, win the period, win the game. Block out the noise.

The intense Tortorella even eased up this season. “I think he’s been a little calmer,” veteran winger Brandon Saad (Mahoning Valley Phantoms) said. “He demands a lot of players, but there were some times last year when he flipped the switch. And this year he’s kind of relaxed a little bit more, taught a little bit more rather than screaming.”