The locker room inside Nationwide Arena must be quiet by now. Many players have left town for vacations or returned home to spend time with family and loved ones. It's a far cry from the energy that permeated the club just a few short weeks ago.
The Columbus Blue Jackets missed the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs by either two or three points. If they had won one more game in regulation, they would have had 31 to Montreal's 30 and would have gotten into the postseason on the Regulation Wins (RW) tiebreaker. If they had won another game in overtime or a shootout, they would have needed an additional point to pass the Habs' final total of 91 points in the standings. The Jackets finished with 89.
With such a small margin of error, I took a look back at some of the critical losses the Jackets took by just a goal or two. If they'd gotten some luck and a bounce here or there, they'd likely have gotten in over the Habs.
As anyone who has played the game knows, hockey is a game of bounces and a ton of luck. Sometimes, for all of the advanced statistics, scouting, and power rankings in the world, there's no predicting the path the puck will take on its many journeys up and down the ice. One singular bounce accounted for the loss of at least one additional point for the CBJ, or perhaps two if the team's decent overtime record had been able to serve them in this particular match.
I am, of course, going to start with the late 5-4 goal the Jackets allowed coming off a powerplay against the Detroit Red Wings. Detroit had Jonatan Berggren sitting in the box after a failed coach's challenge for goaltender interference on the CBJ's previous score.
With time ticking down and under 45 seconds to go until Overtime, Ivan Provorov took a shot from the right circle that was deflected off a nice play by Detroit's Ben Chiarot. Unfortunately, this also just happened to be at the time when the Jackets' power play had expired. The puck bounced into the neutral zone and was swept ahead to a streaking Berggren by former Blue Jacket Tyler Motte, who then scored off a nice shot on Jackets netminder Elvis Merzlikins, where it trickled in past between his glove and pads.
That one bounce could have saved the Jackets' postseason hopes. What if the shot from Provorov went in, and the Jackets went on to win in regulation? They would've had 91 points and 31 regulation wins, enough to vault them over Montreal and into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
What if Motte hadn't been able to make the pass, or Elvis had made the save on the other end of the ice? The Jackets would've likely gone into Overtime with Detroit at that point. The Jackets had a stellar record in both home games and shootouts this season, posting 26-10-5 and 6-1 records, respectively. For this exercise, let's assume they would win in overtime against the Red Wings.
That would still keep them at 91 points and 30 regulation wins. Montreal would still get in here based on the Regulation plus Overtime wins tiebreaker. The CBJ would need one more point to qualify.
There are plenty of games this season that I could choose to gain an OT loss point, such as the 3/17 2-1 loss to the Devils in Columbus or the 2/4 loss to Buffalo on the road, that come to mind. But I like to get the W in this situation, so let's look at the OT losses for the Jackets this season instead.
Columbus had a handful of overtime losses this season: 10/26 in Nashville, 11/5 in San Jose, and the heartbreaking loss in MSG to the Rangers on 1/18, where Daniil Tarasov technically posted a shutout, all come to mind. The most obvious one to reference, though, is the 11/27 loss on Nick Suzuki's goal to Montreal in OT.
If the Jackets had won instead of getting the OT point and then gained an additional win elsewhere, they would have punched their ticket to the postseason in 2025. The what if here has to be, what if Kent Johnson hadn't lost an edge and turned over the puck, leading to the eventual odd man rush and game winning goal for Montreal?
At this point, all we can hope for is that the CBJ come out next season on fire and march their way into the postseason for the first time in over half a decade, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the club's inaugural season.