This is head-scratching and mind-numbing, isn't it?
How can the Blue Jackets, a team that's shown us over and over again that it's able to swat away a bad loss and forge ahead with no issue, suddenly fall victim to two blowouts in a week?
And not just any ordinary shellacking – in losses to both the Edmonton Oilers and now the Boston Bruins, the Blue Jackets were no-shows.
That's concerning for many, including John Tortorella, who has instilled in this group that they don't have the respect of their opposition yet. Not after a 50-win season, not after a strong start to the next season. They're far away from the upper echelon of the NHL despite being among the top teams for the better part of a year.
It's earned trust, and they've not earned it yet.
What's befuddling is how they've reached this point: they opened 20-11-1, sat in first place in the bloodbath Metropolitan Division for almost a month and woke up today only two points from the top spot (counterpoint: they're four points from ninth in the East).
Now this is being written only two regulation losses later, but two losses that encapsulate their mounting problems. The Blue Jackets scored one goal against the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday night. One. Sergei Bobrovsky needed to be perfect for them to win, and that's happened more often than they'd like.
They lost 7-2 last night in Boston, a game in which captain Nick Foligno said they looked flat, disengaged and lacked emotion. That's not exactly encouraging.
It's fair to wonder if they're teetering on a shaky rope right now.
They've dropped three of their last four, three of which could be considered winnable games. They can't score at even strength (save for Thursday) and their power play is headed toward the cliff. Bobrovsky's got to play every night, or close to it, just to give them a fighting chance – but we'll see if Tortorella opts to use Joonas Korpisalo on Wednesday against Toronto, giving Bobrovsky a night off before using him Thursday in Pittsburgh.
You don't want to make too much of these mid-December games, but we're probably too close to it right now. Every team – even the great ones – go through dry spells like this and most (if they're good enough) find a way through it. The Blue Jackets have been among the NHL's best 5-on-5 teams all season long, a formula that's helped them rack up wins and points while their power play offers nothing.
A couple of months from now, we'll have better idea of what this current funk means for the Blue Jackets in the long term. It could be a blip on the radar and something they use to rally together, or it could be something worse.
Which leads to me a sanity checklist, of sorts:
1. Are the Blue Jackets better than they've played? Probably.
2. Is it OK to be concerned about this current stretch? Yes.
3. Can they play poorly at times, have positive overall trends and still be a good team? I think so.
4. Breathe.
Listen, it's really important for the Blue Jackets to right themselves. Right now.
Does it comfort me that their top players have yet to make a true offensive impact? No, but I also think they've earned the right to continue playing through it, as painful as it's been on some nights. You don't just throw caution to the wind and blow it up because you lost a few ugly ones in December.
The Blue Jackets have built this team patiently and let it develop patiently. They're not going to do something crazy and risk throwing it off-track just for the sake of sending a message.
But are they at a pivotal juncture? You'd better believe it. Good teams will nip this, trash it, and play with a special flavor of pissed off for the next couple of weeks.
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