What a difference a year makes.
On Jan. 7, 2025, the Blue Jackets played their 41st game of the 2024-25 season, a memorable 4-3 shootout win at Pittsburgh that snapped a nearly decade-long losing streak in the Steel City.
More importantly, though, the victory moved the Blue Jackets to 18-17-6, good for 42 points and a tie with the Penguins for the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference.
Just shy of 365 days later, the Blue Jackets again have 18 wins as they’ve reached the halfway point of the schedule. They even have one more point in the standings. And this time around, they happen to be not in a playoff position but in last place in the East.
Indeed, there’s a major logjam in the conference, with every team in the East boasting a points percentage of at least .500. Columbus remains ahead of its pace from a season ago, yet they are six points behind the final playoff spot and must pass seven teams to get into a postseason position.
It’s just been that kind of year for the Blue Jackets, who must make up major ground to end a five-year postseason drought. A season after the goals often went in fairly easily, with the team finishing seventh in the NHL in scoring (3.26 goals per game), this year it’s been more of a struggle to get things going.
Columbus is 20th in the NHL this season with 3.00 tallies per game, while defensively, they’re in a tie for 25th with 3.32 allowed per game. The advanced numbers show a CBJ squad that may just be perfectly middle-of-the-pack, as not only have the Blue Jackets posted an even 89-89 goal differential at 5-on-5, they’ve posted an expected goals share of 50.03 percent per Natural Stat Trick and are nearly exactly breaking even on shot attempts as well (2,039 for, 2,047 against).
The moral of the story? They’ve played both well enough to win and also to lose, and a number of lost leads in third periods and slightly outscored special teams have meant this season has yielded more losses than wins.
If there’s good news, though, the recent 4-1-1 stretch could be a harbinger of things to come. Not only have the Blue Jackets outscored the opposition 16-9 at 5-on-5 in that six-game span, they have major advantages in high-danger chances (57-40) and expected goal share (54.3 percent) per Natural Stat Trick.
Here’s a look at three factors that could be key for the Blue Jackets in the second half of the season as well as a couple places the team needs to improve to get where they want to go.
Three Things To Like
Jet taking off: When goaltender Jet Greaves announced himself to the NHL last spring with a five-game winning streak that nearly propelled the Blue Jackets into the playoffs, he showed he has what it takes to play at the highest level.
Yet, it was fair to wonder how it would translate to a full season of work. Any goalie can get hot for a stretch of games, but doing it on a night in, night out basis is a bigger ask.
But so far, Greaves has answered just about every question, posting a 12-10-6 record, 2.64 GAA and .910 save percentage. That latter number has increased to .922 in his 12 appearances since the start of December, and Greaves is ninth in the NHL in goals saved above expected this season per MoneyPuck.com among goalies with at least 15 appearances.
“He’s a very calm guy and plays a calm game,” head coach Dean Evason said. “It allows us to follow that.”
Mateychuk’s rise: Defensemen are supposed to take the longest to master the NHL game, but we’ve seen the learning curve get flatter and flatter the past few years. There are a number of young defensemen making an impact in the NHL, led by No. 1 overall pick Matthew Schaefer, and Denton Mateychuk deserves to be in the conversation as one of the best of the bunch.
At 21 years old, the second-year blueliner is tied for 12th among NHL defensemen with eight goals, adds 13 assists for 21 points, and is plus-5 on the season. He’s been even better in the last seven games, posting a 2-7-9 line and plus-8 rating while averaging 25:14 of ice time. In the last eight games, he’s posted an average game score of 1.86.
Mateychuk recently passed the 82 games played mark for the Blue Jackets, and if he can build on what he’s done thus far, the 2022 first-round draft pick looks like another franchise cornerstone piece for the Blue Jackets.
Coyle Excels: The Blue Jackets added Charlie Coyle and Miles Wood in an offseason trade with Colorado to bring some more veteran voices to the lineup, and they’ve received exactly that from the two former Avs forwards.
But as The Athletic noted today, Coyle’s impact has been even more impressive than his six goals and 25 points would indicate. He’s also been one of the best defensive forwards in the NHL, often going up against the opposition’s best forwards and shutting them down. With Coyle on the ice at 5-on-5, the Blue Jackets have a 27-17 scoring edge and 63.2 percent of high-danger chances per Natural Stat Trick, all while Coyle is starting a significant percentage of his shifts in the defensive zone.
When Coyle has centered current linemates Boone Jenner and Mathieu Olivier, that line has a team-best mark of a 63.6 percent expected goals share at 5-on-5 per MoneyPuck.com.
“If we can get more of that mind-set that Charlie’s line has, the better off we’re going to be,” Evason said.
Areas of Improvement
Third-period struggles: Well, you have to tackle it here. Nine times this season, the Blue Jackets have led in the third period of games only to go on to lose, going 0-3-6 in those instances to leave 12 points on the table. Six of those lost leads were of the two-goal variety, and the Jackets' minus-21 goal differential in the third is last in the NHL.
In addition, the Blue Jackets have five wins this year – four of them against Eastern Conference teams they’re competing against for playoff positioning – in which they led in the third only to require overtime to finish off the victory, giving away key points in the process.
It’s a comeback league these days – when the NHL announced its midseason stats Friday, a full 42 percent of games featured a come-from-behind victory – so you’re never going to win every game you lead, but it’s also obvious the Jackets would be in a much better spot in the standings if they could finish off games more often.
There’s been a variety of reasons for the issues, and alternate captain Zach Werenski spoke Sunday of some schematic breakdowns that have hurt the team in key moments after Pittsburgh's comeback win. But the biggest area for improvement might just be mind-set, Werenski said.
“I feel like the first half of the game, we’re making plays,” Werenski said. “We have O-zone chances, we’re scoring goals, and then I know we have a lead and you don’t want to turn pucks over, but sometimes making a play is the right play. Sometimes we just chip pucks out and chip them in, and we’re just giving the other team the puck sometimes. I feel like energy can come from guys playing with confidence, making plays. It’s contagious.”
Johnson’s struggles: The Blue Jackets have built around a young core, and five of the top seven scorers on the team – Kirill Marchenko, Dmitri Voronkov, Adam Fantilli, Mateychuk and Cole Sillinger – are age 25 or younger.
Absent on that list this season, though, is Kent Johnson. The No. 5 overall pick in the 2021 draft tied for third on the Blue Jackets last year with 57 points, but he's been unable to get going on the scoring front this season with a 3-8-11 line in 40 games.
It’s clear that Johnson has skill in spades, but this year, he just hasn’t found a fit while bouncing from line to line.
“You talk about the buttons that we try to push with individuals and what have you, we asked KJ to concentrate on his 5-on-5 game and find some confidence in that area,” Evason said recently. “Don’t worry so much about the offensive part or the power play. We had a real good chat with him about doing all of those things. ... He’s gonna be on the power play again. He’s gonna play offensive situations for sure, but he’s making strides in that direction.”
With a shooting percentage of just 5.1 percent, Johnson has been a bit unlucky, but he's also gone from 3.8 shot attempts and 1.8 shots on goal per game to 2.9 and 1.5, respectively. Seeing the young offensive standout back on the scoresheet more could be a major key to success in the second half.
