The Weekly Dis
Catching up with the visuals with the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Crew, including This Week in Discasting (excellent guests)
I don't shoot a ton of video, but I usually shoot too much to edit and post over the course of a week. When my angel investor/big sponsor comes aboard – drop me a line, eh? – it'll buy time and help to expand coverage and content.
This was one of those weeks when I was able to digest and post more video than usual. So, I'm going to use it here this week.
The Crew are coming off a two-week international break. The Blue Jackets, through a quirk of scheduling, had a six-day break after their first two games. It's fair to say, then, that there was a whole lot of considered coaching going on in Columbus over the last little while. 'Twas a rare interlude, too, given the usual congestion of the MLS and NHL schedules.
It's usually interesting to ask coaches, "What have you been doing with your time?" Crew coach Laurent Courtois put his answer in context with the roster overhaul that took place over the course of the summer:
"We know that there was the transitional phase, there was the rebuild phase, and in that rebuild phase, before the break, we finally arrived with the players and the level of fitness that we expect the guys to have," Courtois said. "And in between, it was a little bit rough because there was some positive rebuild, I would say. But at the same time we were lacking a little bit of key positions or fitness. And before the break, the last few weeks we were able to tell that this group's coming along and ... yeah, so now we have no excuse, I would say."
Courtois believes he is two-deep at every position as the Crew hit their homestretch. They entered the weekend in 12th place in the Eastern Conference, four points out of a play-in spot with seven games to play. They've also got a shot at a trophy – they will host St. Louis City in the U.S. Open Cup final here in Columbus on Wednesday, October. 21.
Here's Courtois on Wednesday:
If it's CBJ-PIT, it's going to OT
The Blue Jackets tilted the ice in their favor but, because of the sterling goaltending of Sergei Murashov (46 saves), they needed a shootout to beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-2 before 17,057 at Nationwide Arena on Friday night. It was the fifth time in a row that a game between these teams has gone beyond regulation.
The refrain coming from the locker room – goaltender Cam Talbot, who won in his Blue Jackets debut; defenseman Damon Severson, who had a goal and an assist in his first game back since shoulder surgery in April; and Kent Johnson, who scored the lone goal in the shootout – was something along the lines of, "This was Blue Jackets hockey." Or, in the case of Rick Bowness, "This was Columbus Blue Jay hockey." I think he was riffing on "CBJ" with "Columbus Blue J," and not "Jay," although one never can tell.
The Jackets had a 45-22 advantage in shots on goal. There were long stretches when Talbot saw no rubber at all, especially in the second period. Bowness expressed that, after six days off, which included three full days of brisk practices, he was happy with how the work translated into game conditions.
Below is Bowness' postgame (forgive the audio, which is not up to my usual standards because I forgot to put my mic up there on the podium). It was delivered just before the team left for a flight to St. Louis for a Saturday game against the Blues. It's their first back-to-back of the season.
Head on a swivel I
I was rooting for this Great Egret to land a fish and in this video he takes two shots. Before his second attempt, not the ripple to the right of the bird (he sees it, too, and triangulates).
Head on a swivel II
This was at practice earlier in the week. That's Mathieu Olivier in front of the net and Jet Greaves between the pipes. The gyroscope in my iPhone made this video difficult to edit. I had to flip the thing around into a mirror image, which is why Olivier is left-handed here. The exclamation of "Damn!" came from Dave Maetzold.
This week in Discasting
The week wrapped with an episode of Cannon Balls, featuring guest Jody Shelley. The Original Jacket is becoming a ubiquitous broadcaster. For 12 years, his home base has been the analyst chair in the Blue Jackets' television booth. Over the past few years, his national presence has grown on Amazon Prime Canada, TNT, the NHL Network and other outlets.
He's a talented, hardworking dude who does Columbus proud. We take a deep dive on the Jackets in the hours before they played their third game of the season, against the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Nationwide Arena.
The Lionel Messi foot stomp/cleating of Crew DP midfielder Santi Rodriguez continues to rankle.
Michael Arace
I know Messi has been doing this kind of stuff for years. As he is Too Big to Fine, let alone Suspend, the integrity of MLS is denigrated every time the league looks the other way.
Messi doesn't talk to the media. There's the other side of the story, Rodriguez's side. He can speak English but prefers to use Spanish with the media (with a translator) for the sake of clarity. I got about 20 minutes with him mano-a-mano on Thursday and got right to the meat of things with the first question.
My thanks to Estaban Osegueda, from the Crew's comms staff, for serving as translator. Rodriguez walks a tightrope: He maintains a high road; at the same time, he's an Uruguayan soccer player, which puts him in possession of a certain intestinal fortitude.
I like how serious and expressive he is – while also willing to play along with a sarcastic line of questioning.
A version of this with an AI-dubbed translation – which I loathe, and have since turned off in my settings – can be found at my YouTube channel. The Spotify version (below), which can also be accessed at other pod platforms (such as Apple Podcasts) has Rodriguez's pure Spanish with Osegueda's translation.
As of this writing, the Crew were flying into the fringe of Hurricane Isaias – which made landfall on the Florida/Alabama border Friday afternoon (we'll get the remnants here in Central Ohio overnight Saturday through Sunday).
The Crew are scheduled kick off against Orlando City in Orlando – Central Florida, which was spared the worst of Isaias – at 8 p.m. Saturday.
To catch up with the Crew after a two-week international break, I had Neil Sika as a guest on The Crewcible. Always a pleasure. The former voice of the Crew, now a play-by-play voice for MLS on Apple TV, will have the call of the game in Orlando.
This is a very leafy mind here. Neil, I mean.
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Michael Arace
