Good is the enemy of great.
According to reports, that’s what a new sign installed in the Columbus Blue Jackets locker room.
It’s a strong message that’s been delivered to the team as it gets ready for this season.
How strongly does head coach John Tortorella believe in it?
"Good is the enemy of great,” he said – on April 22.
That’s the mantra for this year’s team, then. Everyone knows what happened a year ago. Fifty wins, a 16-game winning streak, the best season in franchise history. It was a magical ride.
Of course, everyone knows how it ended, too, with a late losing stream and a five-game playoff run and loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
And now comes the caveat – it’s time to do it again.
The Blue Jackets might feel like they’ve turned a corner. Excitement abounds, and prognosticators see the team as a potential playoff squad.
But even achieving what the team did a year ago, let alone improving in it, will likely take a redoubling of efforts. In a league like the NHL, nothing is given.
“We have a team that can win,” team president of hockey operations John Davidson said at media day. “We have to go out and prove it, but I think coming into this camp with some of the good things that happened last season – you can’t live on last season – but it did prove some things. We have an attitude of, ‘You know what? This is a good hockey club. We don’t have to take a backseat to anybody, so why don’t we go out and play well? Why don’t we go out and make things happen?’
“We feel good about where we are as an organization. We just know that. We haven’t won anything yet, but we’re starting to position ourselves where we feel pretty good.”
To justify that, Davidson pointed to the way team members approached the offseason. They appeared to put in the requisite work, and all the right things were said.
“We hated how it happened last year in the first round,” defenseman Seth Jones said in a Q&A with NHL.com. “I think we need to earn more respect in this league and one year and a playoff appearance doesn't do that. I think we caught a lot of teams off guard, and I don't think we are going to catch as many teams off guard this season, so we have to be even better and on top of our game for sure.
But here’s the reality – words often mean little in these instances. Expectations have a funny way of burdening things, whether it’s a group of youngsters – think the 2015 Ohio State football team that returned most of its ’14 national title squad – or the previous two incarnates of the Blue Jackets that made the playoffs and then lived through disastrous follow-up seasons.
The world is a new one, and no amount of work will prepare the Blue Jackets for what this year’s challenges will entail. It’s a different team, too, one that must integrate a new star in Artemi Panarin, work in a number of young players and new acquisitions, and also replace a fair amount of scoring and veteran grit.
And you have to remember that last year, for all its successes, still finished 15 wins short of the ultimate goal.
“It’s going to be more difficult because it takes more layers of skin,” Tortorella said in April after his original quote. “It takes more layers of mental toughness. Listen, I’m thrilled we had an opportunity to play in the playoffs after (2015-16) coming into this year. I’m not trying to rain on that, but when you get there, you just don’t want to play five games.”
So the reality is you never know. The messaging, right now, is right on. Good can be the enemy of great. Respect in the league must continue to be earned.
It’s easier said than done, but at least the right things are being said.
“The players had such a good taste of what happened last year and they want to get back at it,” Davidson said. “I think there were valuable lessons learned. We never want to go through (2015-16) again. That was torture. I think we got through that and with the addition of the young players in particular, we’ve pushed our team to be a better team.”
