In case you missed it, the Columbus Blue Jackets were incredibly injured in 2022-23.
The Blue Jackets finished with 545 man-games lost, second most in the NHL.
Much of the discourse in the aftermath of Brad Larsen's firing was the insinuation that he was a scapegoat for management and that no coach, not even Scotty Bowman, could have managed to have a successful season with the injuries facing the organization.
And I think that's a very dangerous way to think.
Yes, the Blue Jackets were incredibly injured. Per @NHLInjuryViz, only the 2000-01 Coyotes and 2021-22 Islanders had more in-season man games lost (which don't take into account offseason injuries or players that were never going to play a game for that team for one reason or another). There's no getting around that 535 in-season man games lost is a brutal hand to be dealt. They had zero (!) players dress in all 82 games. Early season injuries to Zach Werenski and Jakub Voracek were massive blows to an already fragile roster.
But it's a slippery slope, blaming injuries for lack of success.
The Colorado Avalanche, for example, did not have captain Gabriel Landeskog for one game this season. They won the Central Division and registered 109 points in the standings. The Vegas Golden Knights were without Mark Stone for large chunks of the season and won the Western Conference. Boston started the season without Brad Marchand and Charlie McAvoy and won the President's Trophy.
Injuries aren't a bug, they're a feature. Injuries happen every year to every team. This year, the Blue Jackets were hit worse than usual with injury issues, compared to prior seasons and also to their peers. But this wasn't a playoff team with or without injuries. They started 3-9-0. Werenski played in all 12 of those games. What the club is admitting when they use injuries as an excuse is that the depth within the organization is lacking. Injuries merely exposed that truth.
Losing Justin Danforth hurts around the margins, but don't act like the club losing players like him, or Jake Bean, or Nick Blankenburg, or Yegor Chinakhov was the reason why the club finished within a point of last place in the NHL. Yes, it would have been nice to see all of those players have an extra season of full development. But none of them are difference-makers (yet). They lost depth players.
So if you want the excuse for a bad season to land squarely on injuries, I'll grant that you're not entirely wrong. But the full story is the lack of depth, and that's partially by design. This club is clearly in the midst of a re-tool. They're young and inexperienced because they are turning over the roster to the next wave of players. Injuries exposed their lack of depth. The Avalanche are the defending Stanley Cup champions. Landeskog is, arguably, their third-best forward and fourth or fifth-most important player. They proved that they have the ability to withstand an injury to a key player.
But go off about how big of a loss Werenski is to this team. All you're really arguing is that the team is in worse shape than you may care to admit.
