The Three Biggest Surprises and Disappointments for the Blue Jackets

There are plenty of things to choose from here, with the team all but locked into a bottom-four finish. We could go on four paragraphs about things that went wrong this season; but we had to narrow this down to three to ensure we aren’t piling on, or boring you all with a rambling discussion. So, we chose three that really stand out.

Disappointing: Cole Sillinger

It’s really hard to put a 19 year old on this side of the list, but really, Cole had a rough sophomore season. He scored just 3 goals and 11 points in 64 games, before eventually being demoted to the AHL, where he’s currently playing with the Cleveland Monsters. Worse, he’s even struggling there, with just 3 assists through 7 games.

Before the season, in the same article mentioning Kirill Marchenko has a potential Calder candidate; we talked about Cole as the eventual top line center for this team this year. We definitely missed on that one. It’s not that his play was horrendous this season. In fact, I thought he had some really good stretches, and on most nights he was engaged and working hard.

He just lost all semblance of confidence early on; really, seemingly, after his first goal of the season was called back due to offsides in the season opener in Carolina. One look at his celebration in the video above will show you where his mind has been all season. Cole didn’t score his first official goal until November 12th. He scored two games later, then did not find the net again until March 17th (45 games). Still, he’s only 19, and there is plenty of time for him to regroup and reestablish himself as a future core member of this team.

Disappointing: goaltending

This is really the elephant in the room, and I have a feeling we’ll be talking about the goaltending situation quite a bit this summer. The Jackets have used six different goalies this season, led by Elvis Merzlikins (30gp) – who has the second-worst save percentage of them all.

In fact, outside of Joonas Korpisalo, who was dealt to the Kings at the trade deadline, any other goaltender to have significant playing time in Columbus, honestly has dreadful statistics across the board. Daniil Tarasov is supposed to be the top prospect and future starter here, but he’s struggled in both the NHL and AHL this season, and he simply cannot stay healthy.

Michael Hutchinson has been a blue collar workhorse since being acquired, but let’s face it – this guy isn’t a long-term solution. Jet Greaves and Jon Gillies both had fine performances in the games they played over the last week, but again, neither of these guys looks like a long-term solution here (though Greaves may be a good backup some day).

Whether it’s an obvious fix like improving the depth and experience on defense to help them out, or as drastic as finding another goaltender to step in, correcting the team’s goals against average has to be priority #1 this offseason.