It was an odd season, in more ways than one.
And in browsing through some of the statistics of the 2019-2020 Columbus Blue Jackets season, a few stood out more than others - at least to me.
On this Black Friday, The Five reviews some of the most stand-out figures of last season.
#5: 2
Number of Blue Jackets who scored shootout goals.
A total of 12 Blue Jackets attempted a total of 21 shots in shootouts this year, and only two of those 12 found the back of the net: Pierre-Luc Dubois and Gustav Nyquist, who each scored twice. Oddly enough, only three Jackets had three or more attempts in shootouts this season: Nyquist (4), Dubois (3), and... Nathan Gerbe (3). Go figure.
That said, one of my favorite moments this year came in a shootout:
#4: 3rd
The regular season rank for goals allowed.
...and it's the best rank in franchise history. Columbus gave up 187 goals in their 70 games this season. Only Boston (174) and Dallas (177) gave up fewer, and they faced nowhere near the amount of blue line injuries that the Jackets did over the course of the season.
#3: 0
The number of times Columbus scored more than five goals this season.
If you include the ten postseason games, the Jackets played 80 games this year. And while they scored five on several occasions, they failed to score six or more goals this season. The last time that happened? The 2003-2004 Blue Jackets, led by coaches Gerard Gallant and Doug MacLean (!), scored five times in three games, but never hit a half dozen.
With health, blossoming young players, and the additions of Max Domi and Mikko Koivu, the odds the Blue Jackets repeat this in the coming season is almost nil.
#2: 2.5
The difference between the Blue Jackets point total and their preseason over/under.
Before each season starts, you can place a bet on the over/under of how many points any given team is going to have by the end of the season. For the Blue Jackets, that number was 83.5.
And they had 81 points with a dozen games left to play! Talk about outperforming your expectations, and they did so with a record number of injuries.
Shove it, Vegas.
#1: .941
The postseason season save percentage of Joonas Korpisalo.
...and it was good enough for the best save percentage of any qualifying goalie in the postseason bubble. Elvis Merzlikins was actually higher - at .946 - but he didn't play enough minutes to qualify.
Of course, his 85-save performance in the first game of the first round certainly gave that number a boost.
