2021-22 CBJ Season Wrap-Up

COLUMBUS, OH - It’s easy to forget that only one team out of the current thirty-one NHL franchises gets to lift Lord Stanley’s Cup at the end of the playoffs. The odds aren’t in your favor. Far from it. But that fact doesn’t make losing any easier. All thirty-one teams begin the year with at least a glimmer of hope that this could be their year, the year they go all the way. And when you’ve constructed a roster with as many stars as the Blue Jackets had this season, they thought their chances were as good as any. 

So what went wrong for the Jackets this year? The easy answer would be to look at Mika Zibanejad, who the Jackets gave a significant package to acquire from the Buffalo Sabres in the offseason. Brought in to be the teams definitive top line center, finally taking the pressure off long time Jackets captain, David Krejci, Zibanejad looked to be set up for success with Patrick Kane and Max Pacioretty riding on his wings. A star studded line featuring one of, if not the, best setup men in the NHL in Patrick Kane and a proven sniper in Max Pacioretty coming off another season at a 40 goal pace. But the top line struggled to find chemistry out of the gate, finishing many games as a negative in the +/- column and not producing at the rate you would expect for a top line with such offensive prowess. Zibanejad wasn’t able to produce at the rate the Jackets had hoped when bringing him aboard, but wasn’t to blame as he finished third on an offensive starved Blue Jackets roster with 26 goals and 58 points in 82 games played. 

Max Pacioretty, the intended scorer on Zibanejad’s top line, did a decent enough job holding up his end of the bargain, finishing the year second in team scoring with 64 points in 82 games, and tied for the team lead with 30 goals. The other player on the team with 30 goals was Jackets center Nazem Kadri who finished out the year on the team’s top line between Pacioretty and Kane. David Krejci, who spent most of the year as the team’s second line center, led the team in points this season scoring 23 goals and 43 assists for 65 points. The veteran had another consistent and productive year in his most limited minutes ever in a Jackets uniform. Columbus also got decent production from their top defensive pairing seeing Quinn Hughes lead the back end with 41 points and Pietrangelo posting 33 himself. Goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury did more than his fair share as he started 65 games for the Jackets, posting 39 victories with a 2.39 GAA, .920 SV% and finishing third in Vezina voting this year.

Which leaves us with the player who was arguably the biggest issue for the Jackets and one of the team’s biggest offensive stars, Patrick Kane. Kane was never able to find chemistry with his linemates this season, though he was given every opportunity as he led the Blue Jackets forwards in ice time for the season. And though we know that +/- isn’t the best statistic to use, Kane was by far the lowest player on the team posting a -16 on the season, with his closest teammates coming in at a -4. When there’s a discrepancy that large amongst your own team, you know something just wasn’t quite right with the star forward this season. 

Columbus now has lots of difficult decisions to make in the offseason. A majority of their stars are under contract for next season, though the team does see several of those stars’ contracts expire after next year. This could be the final year for the Blue Jackets to make a deep run in the playoffs or the Blue Jackets could look to turn the page to their new core of Hughes, Svechnikov, and Beniers, and deal some of their veterans away to replenish some of their prospect pool that’s diminished from multiple years of deadline acquisitions in pursuit of Stanley Cups.