It’s June, so you know what that means: NHL Draft time! Who cares about the actual hockey being played when we can dream about whatever shiny new players Jarmo and JD will be acquiring. With that in mind, we look ahead to the 2013 NHL Draft (well some of us are ALWAYS looking ahead to the draft). CBJProspects and myself have put together our own mock drafts. However, we each took a little different approach to it. I did your standard mock draft. I broke down who each team should pick in each slot. CBJProspects took an entirely CBJ perspective. His picks are who he believes the Jackets should select if they somehow ended up in every slot in the draft. So let us know what you think, who you want the Jackets to draft (or not draft), or just any thoughts on any of these youngsters in general. Continue reading The Union Blue 2013 Mock Draft
Greetings all! Time for the third annual CBJProspects Awards live from your PC/smartphone or wherever your reading this. So as I say every year put on your finest tuxedo t-shirt and let’s get going.
PROSPECT LEADING SCORER
Boone Jenner-Oshawa Generals(OHL)
56GP 45-37-82 +23 58PIM
TOP FORWARD PROSPECT
Boone Jenner-Oshawa Generals(Stats Above)
Boone wins this award with little to no competition. Let’s be honest, he likely wrapped the award up with his 15 goal November that gave him a new career high of 26 goals with three months left in the season. Boone would finish top three in the OHL in goals and would lead the league in first goals (goals that made it 1-0) with 10, and insurance goals with nine of them.
At the halfway point of the season I wrote about the second half expectations for the Blue Jackets. I looked at my preseason goal predictions for each player, then predicted how I thought they would perform over the second half of the season. Before I got to that point, I briefly discussed the team results. At the outset of the season, I had predicted a total of 128 goals scored on the season. I was off by a bit here, as they came in at only 120. However, I was off by the same amount in their goals against, as I had predicted they would come in at 127 goals allowed over the full 48 game season. Instead, they finished with 119 goals against. Excuse me for a second while I pat myself on the bat for exactly nailing their goal differential. In my preseason predictions, I hit another point that I think probably raised some eyebrows at the time: that the Jackets offense would actually improve with Rick Nash off in New York. And believe it or not it did (barely). The Jackets scored 120 goals this season, or the equivalent pace of 205 goals over 82 games. Not a great number, but better than the 202 goals the Jackets scored in 2011-12. Continue reading Looking Back to Look Back: Reviewing Preseason and Second Half Predictions
Now that we’ve finished up our CBJ take on all the NHL awards, it’s time to look at our prospects and give them some accolades. We’ll be posting all of our prospect awards next week, but n my previous Prospect Awards posts I’ve done a fight of the year and this year will be no different. Like last year, I’m asking for help from you fine folks – without further ado, here are the nominees – please leave your vote in the comments. Keep reading to see the nominees in action:
Continue reading CBJ Prospects Awards Fight/Best Hit of the Year Vote
Well here we are. The 2013 NHL regular season concluded a month ago. The dastardly Kings are creeping towards the Stanley Cup Finals again. Sergei Bobrovsky is in the running for the NHL14 cover. Things are happening. But more important than all of that is the conclusion of The Union Blue Awards for 2013. The series concludes with the most important trophy of all, The Hart Memorial Trophy. It is given out to the player judged most valuable to his team. I’m sure you all know the winner, but we had five different players receive at least one vote. With that being said, the winner of the 2013 tUB Hart Memorial Trophy is….
With the Memorial Cup Final being played Sunday night the NHL is now the only level of hockey still playing. Let’s look at a final wrap up of what happened with CBJ prospects that finished out their season recently.
Starting off in Springfield as always, the juggernaut Syracuse Crunch made quick work of the Falcons sweeping them in four games. Game one would be a 5-2 loss with Nick Drazenovic and Ryan Craig picking up the Birds’ goals. Drazenovic would strike first on the power play when the Falcons were trailing 2-0. Nick would take a pass from Nick Holden just above the faceoff circle with his shot looking like Boone Jenner tipped it but Drazenovic was given credit for it. Ryan Craig would score with only two seconds left when he’d deflect a Nick Holden point shot. Curtis McEllhinney would take the loss stopping only four of nine in just over 30 minutes of action. Allen York would stop all 11 shots he faced.
Continue reading AHL Eastern Conference Final/OHL Final/Memorial Cup Recap
The Mark Messier Leadership Award. As defined, the award goes to: “the player who exemplifies great leadership qualities to his team, on and off the ice, during the regular season.” there’s no question that the Blue Jackets had leadership appearing up and down the roster with the season they gave us. However when it came down to it, surprisingly there was hardly any variation in where we all cast our votes. Who did we pick? Read on.
Continue reading 2013 tUB Awards: Mark Messier Leadership Award
The Selke goes out to the top defensive forward in the NHL. Usually this also carries with it the burden of being somewhat of an offensive player as well. Not so with the Blue Jackets nominees, as we nominated guys from the top of the lineup to the bottom (as it should be). Read on to see who this year’s Union Blue Selke winner is…
Like the Vezina, we didn’t really have a lot of options here. Todd Richards was the sole Blue Jackets head coach this season, and while Craig Hartsburg, Keith Acton, Dan Hinote, Ian Clark, and Dan Singleton make up the rest of the coaching staff, this post will primarily serve as a place for each tUB member to wax poetically about the job Richie did this season. Continue reading 2013 tUB Awards: Jack Adams Award
The Lindsay is given out by the NHLPA, and awarded to the most outstanding player as decided by the players. Since we couldn’t do the whole player votes part (what sets it apart from the Hart) we went in a slightly different direction. The tUB Lindsay is going out to the BEST player, irregardless of value to the team. So with that said, the shocking winner of the Lindsay is…..