In our preview story
for Sunday's game against Tampa Bay, I wrote about how while the Blue Jackets are going through a difficult time, they're trying to stay loose and stay upbeat despite all the losses.
"You gotta try to stay loose to some extent," Oliver Bjorkstrand said before Sunday's game. "You can't sit around being depressed all day. It won't help you win games, either."
And that's fair. It's tough enough mentally to be grinding to the end of a lost season, and focusing on the negatives won't help the situation.
But there is another side to the situation as well. Head coach John Tortorella wants the Blue Jackets to remember this feeling so as to use it as motivation. In other words, you don't want it to happen again going forward, as the stretch run should be able playing meaningful hockey (as it has been in past years) rather than playing out the string.
"We are trying to have decent days … but they also have to understand, as I've said, live in it too and hope you never get back to this situation," Tortorella said. "I think it's important to learn what this life is about when we're in it like this, but we're not going to sit here and grind them in it either."
It's a balancing act. The guys care -- see Elvis Merzlikins'
comments after last Thursday's loss
-- and no one wants to be seen as not taking the last few games of the season seriously. They do have to try to have some fun in the final days, and nothing would be as fun as winning.
But as Tortorella said, this is a radical departure for a lot of people in the union blue sweater (at least those who have been around for a while, though those players are a little bit few and far between thanks to all the injuries and trades).
Think of someone like Bjorkstrand, who made his NHL debut down the stretch of the 2015-16 season, the last one in Columbus without playoff hockey. Each of his last four seasons have ended with team success in the form of playing in the best postseason in sports, so it's pretty much all he's known.
It's not easy, and this is new territory for someone who has become one of the trusted pillars of the CBJ core. But as Tortorella said, there's a lesson to be taken from everything that's going on right now.
"No one wants to be irrelevant," Tortorella said. "And that's what we are this time of year. You watch all the other stuff, all the preparation, the talk about (playoff) series. No one wants to be in this situation. This is a bad one. This has been a bad year. I don't think anything has really worked out throughout it for quite a long time. But you can't look back, you have to look forward. You have to try to learn from some of the things that have happened."
