The Blue Jackets are playing pretty well, so why aren't they winning games?

The Columbus Blue Jackets are playing pretty good hockey over their last few games. Even so, they are winless in November, now in a run of five straight losses dating back to October 30th. If they're playing well, why aren't they winning games?

In November, the Blue Jackets are 0-4-1 with a goal differential of -15. This comes after a pretty good start, where they were 5-3-1 with a +10 rating. To start the month, they lost back-to-back games against Winnipeg (their only home game, 6-2) and Washington (7-2). Since then, they struck out across the state of California, losing in San Jose (2-1 in OT), Los Angeles (5-2), and Anaheim (4-2).

In spite of the losses, they are doing a lot of good things...

The strange thing about these losses is that, it feels like this team has deserved to win on a lot of these nights. The Winnipeg game was the only one where they didn't have more shots on goal than their opponent. That's not really surprising, considering the fact that the Jets are 14-1-0 to start the year. Even so, for the first 35 minutes of the game, they were right there.

In Washington, a slow start and some terrible play in the crease dumped them into a 5-0 hole early. Against another strong team, they were able to correct their course and play to a 2-2 tie over the final 40 minutes. This was a positive sign from the young team. They got their feet moving and at least showed the Capitals that they could play with them. My guess is, next time these teams play, we'll see a much better game.

California trip was a disaster in the standings, but they deserved better...

It's hard to describe what happened in California over the last week. In San Jose on Tuesday night, the Jackets absolutely dominated the Sharks - to the tune of a 50-27 advantage in shots - but came up short in overtime. Quite simply, they ran into a white hot goaltender performance from Vitek Vanecek.

On Saturday, they played a pretty strong game against the LA Kings. Again, they won the shots on goal battle (26-23), but the Kings did what good veteran teams do: they took advantage of their chances and found a way to win.

Last night in Anaheim, the Jackets dominated play for much of the night; including one shift in the second period where they hemmed the Ducks into their own end for a full three minutes. They just weren't able to capitalize, and in spite of a 40-30 shots advantage, came up short yet again.

It just hasn't been good enough...

In spite of long stretches of strong play, inconsistency in all facets of the game is what has held this team out of the win column. They're generating chances offensively, but not bearing down and finishing like they were to start the year.

They're having good shifts in the defensive zone, only to make one mistake and have it result in a high danger scoring chance against. And, for every huge save by their goaltenders, both guys are giving up goals on shots they would probably like to have back.

The way to dig out of this rut? Get back to basics. Sometimes, dominating play with the puck isn't as good as putting shots through traffic and getting to the net. Trying the fancy breakout or zone entry can result in a scoring chance the other way - but, maybe it's better to dump the puck in and get the line change.

At some point, the offensive floodgates are going to open back up for this team and they'll score goals like they were earlier in the year. Perhaps keeping it simple will help them find that game again.