December has been a disappointing month for the Columbus Blue Jackets.
The Columbus Blue Jackets have had a rough month, losing five of seven games to this point. The worst part about those losses is the fact that a majority of them should’ve been wins for the Jackets if they kept playing for a full sixty minutes.
Despite those losses, the Jackets are still somehow second in the Metropolitan division behind only the Washington Capitals. They’re currently one point ahead of the Pittsburgh Penguins and three ahead of the fourth place New York Islanders.
The interesting thing is, if the Jackets were to fall out of the top three in the Metropolitan right now they wouldn’t even be in a wild card spot. The Metropolitan is currently too close for the Jackets to continue playing how they have been and if they do, it’s not impossible for them to fall almost to the bottom in just two or three weeks.
Luckily for the Blue Jackets, it seems as if the entire division is trending downward at the moment as the only teams with five or more wins in the last ten games are the Penguins and Capitals but even the Penguins haven’t been that impressive.
The Capitals are currently 8-2-0 in their last ten though, so it’s going to be difficult to catch up at this rate. The Columbus Blue Jackets are currently playing with fire though, as a single team getting out of a slump could knock them out of the top three in the division and into a game of catch-up.
Points at the end of the season have the same value as points at this point in the season and as a result, the Blue Jackets need to stop dropping them in games they should win if they don’t want to risk missing the playoffs late in the season.