The Blue Jackets Are Not Good Enough, and We Deserve Better
The Columbus Blue Jackets dropped their sixth game in a row on Tuesday night, a disheartening 5-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins at home. It’s time to discuss the elephant in the room: the Blue Jackets are not good enough.
If you’ve read the story of this game before, allow me to apologize in advance for repeating it. The Blue Jackets traded punches with the Pittsburgh Penguins quite a bit last night, with momentum swinging in either team’s direction for solid stretches of time. But the Jackets went 0-4 on the power-play and couldn’t muster up a go-ahead goal late. The Penguins struck right after the final Jacket man advantage, with Sidney Crosby scoring the eventual game winner.
Just for fun, he added an empty netter as well, giving him the hat-trick and a four point night at Nationwide. Worse, the team saw hats thrown all over their home ice to a chorus of “Lets Go Pens”. The embarrassing loss spoiled another strong outing for goaltender Elvis Merzlikins, in yet another game that saw the team play inspired hockey for parts of it – before collapsing in the third period. Again. This is a concerning trend with this team, a storyline that has seen them win just four of their first sixteen games on the season. Of no consolation, the standard responses were given to the media:
"We had our chances. We didn't finish."
— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) November 15, 2023
Paz speaks on the power play struggles.
Postgame Media: https://t.co/TpSenDTXjr pic.twitter.com/zyFxjhTUCP
My main take-away from that interview is that Pascal Vincent, just sixteen games into his NHL head coaching career, already looks to be defeated. One look at his body language will tell you that this is a guy who is not feeling good about his team, or the direction they’re heading. I won’t say he’s out of answers, but there’s nothing here that inspires me to think this team is ready to bounce back ahead of their next game – which is again at home, tomorrow night.
There are no excuses for this team to be in this situation right now. They don’t have any key injuries to the core of the lineup. Sure, Jack Roslovic just hit IR; but last night was his first game out. They’ve lost 10 of their last 11 games, in spite of holding leads in many of them.
This is a team that went out in the off-season and acquired two big ticket top-four defensemen, who were supposed to come in here and make an immediate difference. Why, then, are Ivan Provorov and Damon Severson consistently at the bottom of the team’s scorecard every night? The point I’m trying to make here is this: we shouldn’t be waiting any longer. This isn’t a team that is looking to land more high draft picks. This group, as assembled, is supposed to be winning some hockey games. So, why isn’t that happening? Let’s hit some bullet points on the next page.
We’ve been patient through this rebuild for three seasons now. We were packing Nationwide Arena to watch the 32nd place team in the NHL play games at the end of last season. It’s time to turn it around. We deserve better than this.
Why was the team so bad last season? Two reasons, really. First, they were a young team that was supposed to start correcting their learning curve – especially on defense. To say they were supposed to be good out of the gate, would be wrong; but they should have been competitive. Second, they were decimated with injuries to many of their best players.
We can’t use either of those excuses this season. At least, not yet. They added two defensemen to their top-four, loaded with experience. They’re still a somewhat young team, but there are pieces here that should point to at least some level of success – and they’ve remained pretty healthy so far.
The problem is, their best players have not yet been their best players. Like, not even for one night so far. Without getting personal, I have to say that Johnny Gaudreau looks completely disinterested in playing hockey. This is a guy who came here with the promise of being one of the greatest Blue Jackets of all-time … but he has 6 points in 16 games so far this season, with his lone goal being on an empty net. Maybe he needs a night, or a few nights off, away from the team, to reset and get back to basics?
Aside from Johnny, where is the leadership when this team loses momentum? Where is the big goal from someone like Gaudreau, or Patrik Laine, or Zach Werenski, when the going gets tough? We can’t blame any of this on the team’s youth or inexperience – in fact, the young guys have been the best players on most given nights for this team.
I don’t know if there’s a fracture in the locker room, or if they aren’t responding to the coach for some reason. But clearly, something is not right with this team. They don’t play for each other when the game gets to its most difficult points. They can’t get a power-play goal to save their life, and quite frankly, that’s unacceptable for a team with this much talent. They’ve spent right up to the salary cap, with an elite level playmaker, an elite level shooter, a defenseman who is supposed to be at an elite level offensively, they have good net-front guys, and some offensive depth too … but they still have a 12% power-play, 27th in the NHL. How many years has this unit been terrible now?
The blame for all of this falls solely at the feet of this team’s management: Jarmo Kekalainen and John Davidson. Look, you can’t blame Pascal Vincent or his staff for what is going on here at this time. We were thrust into a season of uncertainty by the terrible coaching hire this team’s management made over the summer. Vincent did not have time to prepare for the season. Nor did the players on this team, who saw the goalposts moved just days before training camp started. Maybe what we’re experiencing now, is an extended training camp as they try to figure things out. Who knows.
What I do know: it’s time for management, or ownership, to come up with a correction here. Soon, rather than later. We fans deserve way better than this. Whether that’s making a shift to the roster via trade, or having a meeting with the players to set standards…or perhaps even moving on and letting someone else manage this franchise. This isn’t good enough, and we should not have to sit through another season of despair from this team.
Next. David Jiricek Makes a Huge Different for the CBJ. dark