Things Not So Blue In Columbus

Of all people, Sergei Bobrovsky has kept the surprising Blue Jackets afloat. (Credits: Mike Strasinger/AP Photo)

Today we bring you the NHL’s feel-good team of the Western Conference – a team we define as overachieving, critic-defying, and in the best sense of the word, lingering. The Columbus Blue Jackets, winners of two games in a row and 10 of their last 15, earn the honor in the West.

The Columbus Blue Jackets, admittedly, did not have to do much to “overachieve” this year. Expectations for the struggling franchise were so low coming into the season that anything better than a last-place finish in the Western Conference was to be received as a surprising success. In a way, judging the Blue Jackets this season was presumed to be like judging a dance recital performed by an eager lineup of 5-year olds: as long as they don’t fall completely out of rhythm, run into each other and tumble in a giant heap, the solicitous audience will applaud their efforts.

The fans in Columbus were not selling their team short. After a summer in which the team dealt away its one and only game-breaking talent, Rick Nash, they were simply being realistic. The players they got back in the Nash deal weren’t jersey-sellers, while the players that remained behind inspired little optimism themselves. Without Nash, the primary scoring duties fell to the aging Vinny Prospal, the concussion-prone RJ Umberger and the as-yet-unproven Mark Letestu.

Prospal, the Blue Jackets’ leading returning scorer, finished the 2011-12 season with 55 points. Only two other teams in the NHL returned a leading scorer with less than 55 points. One was the Minnesota Wild, who remedied their scoring woes with the addition of Zach Parise in the offseason, and the other was the St. Louis Blues, who swore to such a defensive style of play it’s a minor miracle that TJ Oshie and David Backes weren’t suffocated by December. By contrast, the Blue Jackets dumped their most vaunted offensive weapon in July, and surrendered a Western-Conference-worst 257 goals October through April.

Part of that defensive disaster was due to ineptitude on the blue line – Columbus ranked 25^th in shots against per game – but a bigger part of it was due to flimsy goaltending. The Blue Jackets’ number 1 last season, Steve Mason, whose name belies his ability, finished the year with a goals against average of 3.39 and a save percentage of .894, unsightly marks ranking 44^th and 43^rd, respectively, among 45 qualifying goalies. Their number 2, Curtis Sanford, posted more respectable numbers, but, ya know, he’s Curtis Sanford. Needless to say, the Blue Jackets had to make a change in net, if simply just for the sake of change.

(There are many ways a GM can deliver a defeatist message to a team. Handing back the starting goalie job to a netminder with more holes than Camp Green Lake has to be at the top of the list.)

So GM Scott Howson took to the trade market and set his sights on Philadelphia’s Sergei Bobrovsky (Jay Onrait is Canada’s John Buccigross). Bobrovsky, once the goalie of the future for the Flyers, struggled after a terrific 2010-11 rookie campaign, and was rendered expendable when the Flyers emptied their piggy banks on Ilya Bryzgalov. In June, Howson sent three draft picks to Philadelphia (a pool of youth he would soon replenish in the Nash trade) in exchange for Bobrovsky, and Columbus had its new netminder. Howson had not gone out and acquired a Vezina Trophy candidate, but he had made an upgrade and perhaps more importantly, told his team he cared.

Bobrovsky rewarded Howson’s gamble with an un-Mason-like lesson in masonry in the season opener, registering 32 saves on 34 shots and outdueling Nashville’s Pekka Rinne in a 3-2 shootout win. But in his next 11 games, the young Russian won just twice, lost some starts to Mason, who quickly lost them back to Bobrovsky, and by March 1^st the Blue Jackets ranked second-to-last among Western Conference teams in goals against and dead last in the standings.

20 games into the 2012-13 season, Columbus found itself in the exact same place it was 20 games into the 2011-12 season, with almost the exact same record. The only leg up this year’s team had on last year’s was an additional overtime loss. And losing in overtime or a shootout is no more fun than losing in regulation, even if the New Jersey Devils are convinced otherwise (9 OT/SO losses this season). 

And yet despite the Blue Jackets following their own tracks from 2011-12, something still felt different after 20 games this year. The team was competing, night and night out, and though their tracks were the same, their strides were longer, more ambitious. They didn’t let up so easily, so passively, but were nipping at their opponent’s heels for sixty minutes. They tailgated teams down the highway, refusing to fall back simply because they didn’t have a 4-cylinder engine the way they would have a year ago. Indeed, through their first 20 games, with a record of 5-12-3, the Blue Jackets had played 13 one-goal games.

Entering the final two months of the season, they knew they were close. A goal here and a goal there, and 15^th place in the West would look more like 11^th or 10^th. So the gritty Blue Jackets kept scrapping and clawing, buoyed by the sight of the summit in front of them. On the other side of that crest, they knew, lay precious points, lined up and ready to be collected like gold stars in a game of Mario Brothers.      

In their ensuing ten games, starting March 3^rdagainst Colorado, the Blue Jackets were assiduous in skating through every star out in front of them. Of a possible 20 points in those games, Columbus picked up 18, losing only to Chicago and Vancouver (both in shootouts) in the process. Eight of the ten games were decided by one goal, the outliers a 3-0 win over Detroit and a 5-1 spanking of Calgary. The Blue Jackets won twice in overtime, twice in the shootout, with Bobrovsky playing all ten games.

Just a month after reminding Flyers fans why they let him go, Bobrovsky reminded them again why they believed in him in the first place. Over the 10 games, Bobrovsky allowed just 10 goals, posted a save percentage of .967 - .967!! – and picked up two shutouts. In his two losses, he stopped 37 of 38 shots against Vancouver on March 12^th, and 39 of 40 against Chicago on March 14^th. Undeterred, he turned around and notched a 39-save shutout against Phoenix on March 16^th in a 1-0 shootout win. In case you were wondering, that’s a combined .983 save percentage, a number more fit for a Stephen Strasburg fastball than any hockey goalie’s shot-stopping tendency.

After the culminating 5-1 win over the Flames on March 22^nd, the Blue Jackets were tied for 8^th in the West with San Jose, having leapfrogged six teams in less than three weeks. Thanks to Pittsburgh embarking on a little run of its own, the Blue Jackets’ surge went mostly unnoticed, a lack of celebrity befitting the team’s understated style. But for a team with a slender payroll of $53 million – the sixth lowest in the League – its steak was equally impressive.

After all, the Penguins have 6 top-100 scorers in the NHL. The Blue Jackets have none. There are only two other teams without a top-100 scorer – the Predators and the Coyotes – and neither team has recorded a points-steak longer than 5 games this season. The Penguins also boast 4 top-60 goal scorers in the NHL. The Blue Jackets boast none. Again, only two other teams are without a top-60 goal scorer – the Senators and the Canucks – and even these two playoff-bound squads have not earned points in more than 7 consecutive games.

Overall, no other team in the League lacks individual distinction like Columbus does, and somehow the Blue Jackets have found a way. Though they stumbled a bit after the streak, losing three straight to Nashville, Vancouver and Edmonton to drop back to 13^th in the West, they have rebounded with wins over Calgary and Anaheim and now sit just 1 point out of the playoffs.

They still don’t score much (last in the West with 2.31 goals per game) and their futile power play is less threatening than waves lapping the shores of a lake. But they are one of only 8 teams in the NHL who have 8 players with 15 or more points, and their company in this category represents the NHL’s aristocracy. Columbus’ claim to the same offensive fame as the high-flying Penguins, Blackhawks, Ducks, Canadiens and Maple Leafs – the five highest-scoring teams in the League – may be puzzling, but it is first promising.

Still, this Blue Jackets team is founded on the stingy ways of Bobrovsky and a confident blueline led by Americans Jack Johnson and James Wisniewski. Columbus is 7^th in the West – and rising – in goals against, surrendering an average of 2.58 goals per game. The team’s penalty kill succeeds at a stifling 85.7% rate, good for 2^nd in the West. Since the Blue Jackets found their form in early March, they have lost just once when scoring 3 goals or more.

Meanwhile, Bobrosky, a year after finishing with a save percentage south of .900 and a goals against average north of 3.00, is first in the West in the former category (.927) and fifth in the latter (2.13). In 25 starts last year, he failed to record a single shutout; in the same number of starts this year, he has earned three.  

As the Blue Jackets head into the final 12 games of the season, the playoffs beckon. For a team that entered the season a unanimous last-place pick, their mere contention in the postseason race is a success.  

But don’t try telling that to Prospal, Johnson and Bobrovsky. Don’t try telling that to anyone on this Columbus team, a group as feisty and defiant as they come. They have their sights set on higher goals, and hopefully a few more one-goal games.

If their season so far is any indication, the Blue Jackets will get their wish. 23 out of their first 36 games – and 10 of their first 15 wins – have been decided by one goal. The closer the game, the looser they play.

To see the Blue Jackets sneak into the playoffs as the 8-seed would be to see those 5-year old ballerinas go pirouetting across the stage in perfect unison. If they do, they’ll likely face the Blackhawks, a team they have lost to four times this year by a combined – you guessed it – 4 goals. They won’t be intimidated by the juggernaut from the West because they’re not intimidated by anyone. No, in the playoffs, where 1-goal games are abundant, Columbus will feel right at home.