The Mark Recchi experiment turned out to be a disaster for the Columbus Blue Jackets

The offseason of change continues for the Columbus Blue Jackets. Over the last couple of days, word has leaked out that the team has removed Mark Recchi from his post as assistant coach. This closes the book on what we can only call a disasterous hiring by the team.

After bungling their head coaching hire last summer, the team was desperate to add an experienced body behind the bench. Having to make changes to their staff just hours before training camp was due to start, they had a void to fill because they promoted Pascal Vincent to the head coaching job.

From an early perspective, hiring Recchi made a lot of sense. After all, he's a veteran of 1,652 NHL games - with 577 goals and 1,533 points in his career. For a team whose bench staff included a rookie head coach and a very young assistant coaching their defensemen; adding someone with this pedigree seemed like a wise decision.

Recchi was brought on to coach the forwards and manage the power-play. It did not take long for us to realize that his scheme wasn't going to work.

The Jackets actually did improve in overall goals for, going from 214 in 2022-23 to 237 last season. A 23 goal improvement over 82 games certainly helps, but it's hard to attribute that to coaching too much. After all, the team added Adam Fantilli, Dmitri Voronkov, and had a healthy Zach Werenski - who finished second on the entire team in scoring.

Where we can really critique Recchi's coaching is the power-play. The Blue Jackets scored just 32 goals with the extra man this season, averaging 15.1% - both second-worst in the NHL.

Almost comically, that's a 3.2% decrease in effectiveness from the year prior - when the team played nearly the entire season without their #1 defenseman and main power-play quarterback (Werenski).

For a team that rolled out an extra man unit with players such as Werenski, Johnny Gaudreau, Boone Jenner, and others; this is simply not good enough. The talent was here, but on too many occasions the team couldn't complete simple passes or even gain the attacking zone with extra man. It didn't work.

We talked near the end of the season about how even a middle of the pack power-play would have given the Jackets 13 more goals on the season. Now, imagine the team being competent enough to finish inside the top-10 with the extra man. You get the point.

Factor in the team's 6 on 5 ratio, and it gets even worse. That unit should operate similarly to the power-play, but with an extra player to retrieve pucks and open up passing lanes. The Jackets scored just 5 times in that situation - while surrendering 19 goals on their own empty net.

It was obvious that the Mark Recchi experiment wasn't going to work here. Cutting ties with him now, before the team lost any more confidence offensively, was a wise decision by Don Waddell and the Blue Jackets.