The fact that John Tortorella is publicly ripping his team fewer than 30 games into the season is nothing but a good thing.
“Rob, are you crazy?”
Well, maybe. But let’s talk about this.
Remember all those years when the Blue Jackets needed just about everything to go right in order to win a few games? When Marc Denis needed to stand on his head, when Fredrik Norrena was posting three straight shutouts and giving you some false sense of hope because the rest of the team wasn’t any good?
Or, when Steve Mason’s out-of-nowhere run helped the Blue Jackets make the playoffs for the first time ever? Those were the “hope” days, when you turned the TV on and thought it’d be nice if you watched them win. These are different days, when a loss is as infuriating as it is unexpected, and you probably felt that way after Tuesday’s clunker at home against New Jersey.
But it’s all good. This is what you want.
Tortorella is pulling his hair out, not because the Blue Jackets are hapless and they’re staring down another lost season. They should be leading the Metropolitan Division, but their power play is shit-awful and several of their best players left the party a month ago and have yet to come back.
As a result, they’re in a dogfight and it’s not ending any time soon.
It’s a great situation for the Blue Jackets to be in, not because they’re underachieving in some areas but because the carrot in front of them is far more desirable than it was, say, seven or eight years ago here. The difference between what they’ve been in the first 28 games and what they can be is the difference between a really good team that’s got some lumps, and a well-oiled machine that’s primed to play late into the spring.
Forget all the hoping and wishful bullshit. The Blue Jackets are a good team. They’re a team composed of many good players who, on most nights, play better than their opposition and can get points in the bank because they’re deeper and have better habits.
This is the position you want them to be in. It's a young team with loads of potential, and the reality is that it's going to be a roller coaster ride to get there.
Can they become a great team? That’s for Tortorella to find out, and he’s going to push them with everything he’s got.
As he often says – good is the enemy of great.
"BETRAYAL" TV SPOT
In this latest spot for The Last Jedi, we get our first bit of dialogue from Rose Tico, the Resistance mechanic played by Kelly Marie Tran. We don't know much about her character but we know she gets swept up in the cause along with Finn, and somewhere along the line they'll run into Benicio del Toro.
YOU SHOULD BE READING
- This is excellent work from Jeff Svoboda on Tortorella's public call-out of his top players.
- Blue Jackets prospect Andrew Peeke (Notre Dame) is on Team USA's early WJC roster.
- Are the Blue Jackets good? Inconsistent? Here's what you should make of them (so far).
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