The six-game mark is, for most (or, really, all) teams, utterly meaningless as a milestone or progress marker in the NHL. It’s entirely arbitrary for the purposes of this article, a Tim Kurkjian-esque cutoff to illustrate the anomalous.
Given their historic lack of success at this mark, that grand-scheme insignificance is probably a good thing for the Columbus Blue Jackets.
In the franchise’s first 16 seasons, they were above .500 just twice at the six-game mark. One of those was the now-forgotten 2014-15 team – which marched into the season with absurd amounts of hype before being beaten down by injuries and imploding in November. That team started 4-2-0, which was, at the time, the second-best six-game start in franchise history.
Last night, the Blue Jackets tied the 2009-10 team at the top of that list, at 5-1-0.
Curiously, these three hot starts all immediately followed the only playoff seasons in Blue Jackets history. The previous two came crashing down. Will this one follow suit?
That 2009-10 team, like this one, started 5-1-0. They limped to the end of October, going 1-4-1 in the rest of that month’s games. A decent November (7-4-3) gave them a bit of hope before an abysmal December (2-9-5) knocked them out of the race. Rick Nash did Rick Nash things, posting a 33-34–67 line in 76 games. Antoine Vermette posted a career-high 65 points, while Jakub Voracek hit the 50-point mark for the first time in his career.
Anton Stralman wasn’t as good as his current-day self, but he posted 34 points to lead Columbus blue liners, just surpassing a prime Fedor Tyutin, who posted 32.
The goaltending, however, was trash.
Blue Jackets fans may have re-lived a bit of that 2009-10 season last night, watching Steve Mason get lit up for five goals. He finished that season with a 20-26-9 record, 3.06 goals against average (yikes!) and .901 save percentage (oof!). Backup Mathieu Garon was just slightly better, with a .903 save percentage.
Barring catastrophe, this squad’s goaltending is head and shoulders (and probably most of the abdomen, too) above that team’s.
Sergei Bobrovsky just came off of his second Vezina-winning season, and has been absolutely stellar so far, minus one so-so game in Minnesota. Joonas Korpisalo had a bad first start and a good second one, and has shown that he can shoulder the load temporarily if Bobrovsky goes down, as he did in the 2015-16 season.
The defensive corps is also elite, with Zach Werenski and Seth Jones forming what could someday (and perhaps sooner than later) become the league’s best pairing. There’s a ton of scoring talent at the top of the forward group, with the Panarin-Wennberg-Atkinson line grabbing the bulk of the headlines, but there’s enough depth there to produce during cold stretches.
That doesn’t meant that this group is without its flaws. The power play is mired in a drought, Nick Foligno is still playing out of position and the young guys (aside from Werenski) are still seemingly prone to stretches of inconsistent play. Still, looking up and down the lineup, this may be the most talented group the Blue Jackets have ever had.
If history is bound to repeat itself, though, they’ll crash and burn over the next few weeks. This team’s had a penchant for the unprecedented lately, though. After all, who would’ve predicted a 16-game winning streak, or 108 points last year?
They’ll have a chance to do something else unprecedented tomorrow night. A win (or overtime loss) would be the best start in franchise history.
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