Earlier this season, I wrote a piece on former Columbus Blue Jackets players who have ended up elsewhere in the NHL to begin the season.
For some names, it’s fun to just catch up to see where they landed. Good for Kevin Connauton, starting the season in Arizona. Mark Methot was a dependable Jacket and a fan favorite, so it’ll be fun to see him when the Jackets take on Dallas. And everyone’s excited to see Derek MacKenzie when the Jackets take on the Panthers.
But for other players, the legacy is much more complicated. Three names in particular stand out.
Many will still tell you Rick Nash is the most accomplished Blue Jacket in franchise history – and someone who might end up back in union blue at some point – but his story has turned rather complicated since he went to the New York Rangers.
Steve Mason turned in an out-of-nowhere stellar rookie season in net for the first-ever Blue Jackets playoff team, then was as maddening for the rest of his CBJ career as he was brilliant in his first season before being, mercifully, traded.
And Jeff Carter, well, there’s no reason to rehash that disaster of a deal, but the man who seemed to never want to be a Blue Jacket is still booed the second he steps off the bus in the capital city.
Seeing two of those players on the other side of the ice in the first two weeks of the season – Nash in Columbus on Friday night, Mason last night in Winnipeg – got me to thinking. What’s the appropriate way to feel about those players who hold such an outsized role in team history and still engender strong reactions from the team’s fan base?
This is, to begin, a loaded question. As a society, we seem to love to tell people how they should feel, which I've always felt more than a bit presumptuous.
So I’m not going to try to tell people what they should think. If you want to boo Steve Mason and Rick Nash and Jeff Carter when they come to Columbus, if you want to revel in Mason’s struggles when he loses to the Jackets like last night, if you want to take an extra bit of satisfaction from beating Nash and the Rangers, that’s fine. Some will, some won't, but no feeling is wrong or inappropriate.
And if you want to go to the game and say what you want to say, that’s also on you. You don’t get to throw things at a game, you don’t get to curse with a 5-year-old sitting in front of you, but if you want to boo your butt off whenever No. 77 for the Kings touches the puck, go for it.
This isn’t so much a treatise on how fans should act. It’s just talking through where things sit with each of those notable Blue Jackets.
There’s no doubt all three of those players left Columbus with complicated legacies. Starting with Nash, there’s little arguing he’s one of the top two players in franchise history along with Sergei Bobrovsky, if not No. 1. His point totals won’t be reached by anyone for quite some time, and for all of the complaints about his seemingly laissez-faire outward vibe, there’s no doubt he tried really hard to win a lot of hockey games for the Blue Jackets. His trade also allowed the Blue Jackets to turn the page on the rebuild that essentially led to the team’s current success.
There’s also the time he went after Sergei Bobrovsky and fought Matt Calvert in the same game, as though he had to live up to the villain label after his trade. There’s really no reason why this one had to turn sour, but I know for some it certainly has. It’ll be interesting to see if that ever changes or if time can heal all wounds.
As for Mason, he’s proved to be a difficult figure to understand. Much like Nash, he wanted to be a winner in Columbus, and his faults were flaws of performance rather than negligence. But his struggles very often became the team’s struggles – and did so for an extended period of time – making his trade the only tenable way for him to continue his NHL career. For some, there will always be joy in seeing a goal like Zach Werenski's that went over his glove last night. Putting faith in him was often an arduous task as a fan, one that's gonna be hard for some to move past and easier for others.
Carter, of course, really brought it all upon himself, from his initial reticence to come to Columbus to his hastily organized departure just 39 games into his Jackets tenure. He’ll hear it from the crowd every single time he steps in Nationwide Arena for the entirety of his career, which is probably fair.
As I said, you can make the choice how to respond to each. For some, the pain will fade over the years – it's just sports, after all. But fandom is an emotional experience, often a catharsis, often messy and often illogical.
It's just part of what makes this sport so interesting.
What A Game
Speaking of things I’ve been thinking a lot about over the past few weeks, I was lucky enough in March of last year to take in an event that pops into my mind quite often.
That was the NCAA hockey regional final between the Michigan Wolverines and North Dakota Fighting Hawks (or Sioux, if you’re so inclined). I covered the game for USCHO.com down in Cincinnati, and North Dakota's win seems to be following me now.
It feels almost impossible to write an NHL recap without coming across someone that played in that game. That’s partly true for me because two of the stars of that Michigan team were Zach Werenski and Tyler Motte, who are now with the Blue Jackets organization.
But I also keep noticing other players from that game in the league. Chicago had Nick Schmaltz, who starred for North Dakota on the CBS line with Brock Boeser (Vancouver) and Drake Caggiula (Edmonton). Winnipeg’s Kyle Connor, who was paired with Motte and J.T. Compher (Colorado) on Michigan’s nearly unstoppable CCM line, scored a goal against the Blue Jackets last night, too, while North Dakota defenseman Tucker Poolman was also in the Jets lineup.
I know a handful of other guys from that game – North Dakota defensemen Paul LaDue and Troy Stecher come to mind – have also played in the NHL in the year and a half or so since the game. Looking back, I was essentially watching a pro contest before it happened, with rabid fan bases wearing both maize and blue as well as Kelly green and white in the Queen City.
A day before that game, I got my first sense that Werenski was something special. With Michigan battling Notre Dame in the first round of the NCAA tournament, Werenski dipped into the slot from his spot on the left point, took a pass and wired a shot past the goalie to tie the score in the third period for the Wolverines.
It was a “Whoa!” moment, one that still sticks out, and this whole thing is a reminder of why I enjoy college hockey so much. It’s a quality product, with the sport’s top players sometimes right on the cusp of NHL stardom and even the average players likely ticketed for professional careers.
As I flipped open Twitter while readying for the Blue Jackets opener, I was just as excited to see tweets from college teams across the country preparing for their season openers at the exact same time. And last Friday night, I tripped down the road from my current homestead to watch Bowling Green host Michigan State in its first home game of the season in front of a raucous BGSU crowd.
From Ohio State to the Big Ten to in-state programs Miami and BGSU, there’s plenty of high-level hockey around the Midwest and the Buckeye State this year. It’s worth taking a look.
