The next 10 games for the Columbus Blue Jackets may decide their fate for this season. After this stretch, the season will be at its exact halfway mark.
The Jackets have not gotten off to the start any of us would have hoped. If we break this season down into three 10 game segments (the last one will be 11 for the point of this debate), you can start to see that this team really hasn't taken any steps towards improvement.
In their first 10 games of the year, they were off to a decent enough start at 6-4-0 (12 points). It is worth mentioning that they did not exactly have an easy schedule to kick off this season, with 7 of those games having been against teams who were in the playoffs last year.
We hoped this would be a good enough start to propel them into November with some momentum. That didn't happen. The next 10 games saw them go 4-4-2 (10 points), including a four game losing skid during their longest road trip of the season.
Since then, they have played 11 games, going 3-4-4 for just 10 points. Break it all down, they are basically playing at a roughly 85 point pace. That's not going to get them into the playoffs.
Last season, the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference was won with 91 points. This season, it looks like it's going to take a fair bit more than that. As of today, the pace set looks to be closer to 101 points.
Now, at some point, some of these teams will level off and the pack will start to separate. The key here is, you want to be on the upper tier of that separation. Not the lower tier, which is where the Jackets sit right now.
If they can't get out of the bottom of the Eastern Conference by the time the season hits its mid-point, it may be too late for them to start making a push.
The next 10 games are crucial.
With all of the above in mind, I don't think it's going to take 100+ points to get the final playoff spot in the East. But, it will take more than it did last season. For arguments' sake, let's assume roughly 96 points.
For that to happen, the Blue Jackets need 64 points in their final 51 games of the season. Can they win 27 or so of those games, and get to overtime in another 10 of them? It's not impossible. But, they haven't shown that they can win at that pace yet, so I am skeptical.
That has to change in the next 10 games. Ideally, at the mid-way mark, they would be around 48 points. Simple math here, that's a 96 point pace. To do that, they need to find 16 points in their next 10 games.
I don't see that happening. But, can they find 14 and get to 46 points? That's a little more likely. It would only take a record of something like 6-2-2.
That could give them enough of a push to instill confidence as this season wears on. But, if they are any worse than that? It may be time for more GM Don Waddell to make sweeping changes as this team looks towards a different future.
The schedule gets no easier.
Of the next 10 games, 7 are at Nationwide. That's the good news. The bad news is, 7 of these games are against teams currently in a playoff position: Anaheim (twice), Vegas, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Minnesota, and the NY Islanders are all in this run.
Two of the others (Ottawa and New Jersey) are teams that should be in playoff positions, and likely would be if not for key injuries. The only game we can look at any differently is against the Buffalo Sabres, who are in last place in the East.
These 10 games take place over a 23 day span, so there can be no complaining about the schedule (aside from that odd two stops in California just ahead of Christmas). This is about as easy as they are going to get it, all things considered.
Fingers crossed that they can take advantage of the lighter load and find at least six wins by the time we revisit on January 5th.