Let me paint a picture for you:
Somehow, the Blue Jackets are in the playoffs of the Stanley Cup, year after year – four years in a row now, to be exact. As far as I know, and correct me if I’m wrong: the only way a team can be in the playoffs is by picking up points by winning regular seasons. Stick to that piece of logic; it will be relevant throughout the rest of this article.
Okay, so the Blue Jackets are in the playoffs. But they will be immediately picked up by who they play first, right? From what I’ve heard, the Blue Jackets are not a good team – they do not need the attacking consistency to score or the defensive strength needed to hold on [insert team here]The unstoppable offense in Bay. They also have no reliable starting goal as a sort of depth in their governing roster, should anyone be injured.
But wait, what the heck? The jackets SWEP the team that was projected to win the Stanley Cup! The team of blue collars from podunk Columbus, Ohio shut down the high-powered Tampa Bay Lightning, which was projected to win the whole thing last year. But how ?! Sure, it had to be the trio of Artemi Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky and Matt Duchene, right? Once those guys are out, Columbus is back to square one and can’t be expected to make a legitimate playoff run again for a while.
Al, well, they somehow made it into this year’s playoffs as well, which no one could have seen come except they’ve done it the past three seasons – but the Toronto Maple Leafs have to make their easy work with their offensive line of $ 40 million, right? Despite the fact that the teams entered the round robin with almost identical regular season records, it still had that familiar ‘given’ feeling that Toronto should have the easy win.
What ultimately happened, for those unfamiliar with the situation, is that Auston Matthews, John Tavares, William Nylander, Mitchell Marner and the rest of the Leafs franchise have all been added to the list of people from the bubble out, sit at home, scratch their heads and wonder how they could possibly be bamboozled by the Blue Jackets – a team that does this consistently over and over again to their opponents.
Whew, okay, I have to drop the sarcasm, it’s exhausting to me and I’m pretty sure everyone knows where I’m with at this point.
Listen. In the spirit of the Columbus Blue Jackets playoff slogan in 2019, “It’s time.” It’s time to dump her and move on. Columbus Blue Jackets. It’s time to stop attributing their past successes to players watching the rest of the 2020 playoffs from their benches in houses that have garages – a disgrace in Columbus, allegedly. It’s time to take a look at the Columbus Blue Jackets and see them for what they are – a damn good team that shouldn’t surprise anyone if they win games.
Sure, they do not always make it easy. As evidenced by their quintuple overtime game on Tuesday night, they make it sometimes, really hard. Their game is not flashy, their victories are not always beautiful. We do not regularly ask for interstitial pieces from Alexander freaking Wennberg, but when it does, it’s extra lovely – we understand that we should not have a gift Sweed in the mouth.
Honestly, the approach of the snake-in-the-grass deployed by the Columbus Blue Jackets has been enormously useful – even if it is not intentional, and it has only snowballed as a result of false perceptions surrounding the league formed.
Somehow, opponents and non-Blue Jackets NHL fans look at our roster and their eyes shine right over names like Zach Werenski, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Pierre-Luc Dubois, David Savard and Cam Atkinson.
Critics characterize Nick Foligno as an old hash instead of someone who is perfectly capable of kicking asses and taking names, game after game.
Pundits have the knack of blaming Seth Jones’ ability and presence on the ice – his numbers are ‘poor’, despite skating circles around his opponents in a record-setting deadlocked 65-minute TOI game – not to tell him “I feel good “afterwards.
Joonas Korpisalo and Elvis Merzlikens are dismissed as green rather than inconsistent instead of as elite goaltenders who stun opponents with shutouts in games when it matters most.
Youngsters like Liam Foudy, Alexandre Texier, Emil Bemstrom and Vladislav Gavrikov do not push alarms until it is too late and they have not snuck a puck in the back of it.
In principle, people look at our roster and do not see names with star stripes, and do not realize that the sum of all the parts is what makes the Blue Coats bigger than life.
My message to the rest of the league is this: go straight ahead and keep underestimating the Columbus Blue Jackets. We can not wait to see where that gets you.
