The Columbus Blue Jackets continue another tough start to the NHL season. After a decent month of October in which the team sat in a wild card spot with a 5-4-1 record, they have absolutely plummeted in November. In six games, they’ve only secured one of a possible 12 standings points and allowed 29 goals against. That’s almost five goals against per game.
A tough question to answer over the last several seasons has been around the Blue Jackets’ leaky defense and goaltending. It’s something that’s been discussed ad nauseum. Are the team’s remarkable goals against statistics due to a lack of a structured defensive system, or is it a personnel issue – be it on defense or between the pipes? Let’s discuss.
Blue Jackets’ Defensive System & Sample Size
Blue Jackets’ new head coach Dean Evason was hired due to his work with the Minnesota Wild. In each of his three full seasons leading Minnesota, he led them to the playoffs as a surprise team. They never had an abundance of high-end skill and were significantly handicapped from a salary cap perspective, but he found a way to get more than the sum of parts out of his team. Part of the reason was his commitment to structured defense and blue-collar, hard-working approach to getting things done.
We’ve seen glimpses of that approach executed from the Blue Jackets early this season. It’s manifested in the team playing in far more competitive games than previous seasons. We’ve seen it in the timely goals scored from unlikely players like Mathieu Olivier and Zach Aston-Reese. However, this new normal for the team hasn’t fully taken hold – hence the losing record.
A new system to a hockey team takes time to implement. We saw this clearly with the Winnipeg Jets when Rick Bowness took over as their head coach. In the first season under his tutelage, the team made the playoffs by the skin of their teeth as the last seed in the Western Conference. The second season is where they really came together fully understanding the expectations from day one, and they had a huge bump to the fourth best team in the NHL. This season they’ve continued that success to become the best team in hockey following similar systems, with new head coach Scott Arniel who took over after being an associate coach under Bowness.
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