Columbus Blue Jackets Staring Down The Barrel – Rink Royalty

New Coach and GM for the Kings

LM- How much of the teams success do you think is tied to a new coach and GM?

Columbus Blue Jackets

BS- Seeing Darryl Sutter leave was tough at first. His son was always a fan favorite walking around the stadium during games and taking pictures with fans. But the change was necessary, and early on they’re proving that to be true.

The Kings are 5-0-1, and they’ve won in pretty big ways. With essentially the same core of guys as last year. At least a small part of that has to be attributed to the job Coach John Stevens has done early on. The promotion of Rob Blake was expected, as an in-house legend to the organization and so far so good. He hasn’t changed the face of the roster or tried to do anything to overhaul a team that didn’t need overhauling, so I’m thankful for that. The guys we have in the front office are tremendous, and Blake should only add to that.

LM- Who is the most underrated player on the Kings roster?

BS- Adrian Kempe probably just demonstrated last night that he is the most underrated player on our team thus fat. Kempe put up a hat trick against a Canadiens team that has really been struggling early on this season. Kempe was taken 29th overall in the 2014 draft, so it’s sort of difficult to call him underrated.

But considering most did not expect him to contribute this much this early, he’s probably been underrated. I mean, the guy played in 25 games last season and scored 22 goals. He just topped that in one game, six games into the season.