Five Reasons the Blue Jackets Won’t Make the Playoffs

#4 reason the Blue Jackets don’t contend: the wrong guys for the job.

GM Jarmo Kekalainen and President John Davidson put all of their eggs into the Mike Babcock basket – only for it to blow up in their faces. Their preferred head coach didn’t even make it to training camp – and they had to scramble and replace him with Pascal Vincent, a guy they twice passed over for the job. One question comes up for me: do they have the same faith in Vincent, that they had in Babcock?

For years, Vincent was considered one of the top up-and-coming coaches in hockey; the heir apparent to Paul Maurice with the Winnipeg Jets. But suddenly, he gets thrown his first NHL head coaching gig on the backs of a scandal – at 52 years old. Obviously, we’re all relieved to have had Vincent stick around after again being passed over by the Jackets. By all accounts, he’s got a bright future in the role.

But is he suited to lead the NHL’s youngest team out of the cellar? This team desperately needed structure and accountability last season, and it’s up to the first time head coach to bring that after being promoted from behind the very same bench. It will be interesting to see if he can straighten those issues out, while also rebuilding a potentially fractured locker room that is chock-full of rookies. Oh, and with question marks in goal. If he can do all of these things, this team might be in the playoff hunt, and he might be in the Jack Adams hunt.

#5 reason the Blue Jackets don’t contend: the pesky injury bug.

We might be beating a dead horse at this point, but it’s just the truth of the matter. Without the stack of injuries the Jackets had last season, they really weren’t all that bad a team. Sure, coaching staffs and players all love telling the media how you have to just play through it, next man up, and so on. But when your defense corps features only three players with more than 200 games played, and you lose a guy like Zach Werenski for the entire season, you’re doomed.

Nearly every key player for the team lost big chunks of last season due to injury. The Jackets had just two guys play at least 80 games. They lost 563 man games due to injury last season, far and away a franchise record. Any sort of repeat to that scenario, probably has this team with another lottery pick next summer. Nothing will expose a team’s shortcomings like missing key players from the lineup, so staying healthy this year may be their most important task – even with the other question marks.

A lot has to go right for the Jackets to compete for a playoff spot this season. They’re a long shot to do so, coming off of a 59-point season. I do think they will improve; but if any one of these five things comes true, the task becomes nearly impossible.