If you wanted to describe the status of the Columbus Blue Jackets as a club with a ten-second video clip, it would be easy to find.
A video of a person breaking his bat with piety Patrik from Laine from Friday morning says it all: twelve matches, one victory and the season ends for the second year in a row before Christmas.
You can watch the video in the embed below or from this link.
Everyone inside the club feels bad.
The Finnish player’s pain was crowned by the completion of the coach’s measure in the third set. New head coach Pascal Vincent benched both Laine and the team’s most expensive player, the Yankee forward Johnny Gaudreau – and for a reason.
Flabby superstars don’t deserve any more right now.
And it’s not that the players – especially Laine – don’t care. The desire is there, but there is no appetite. We are talking about two excellent hockey players who have been put in a position by the club management that they should never have been put in. There are no two to lead.
The disastrous sampling of twelve matches leaves no room for explanation: Gaudreau 1+2 and -8. Gaudreau has scored one goal this season, and it was also empty. Laine, who has recently returned from illness, has one goal and -3 in four matches.
Columbus absolutely can’t stand the fact that the opponent’s top players train the above-mentioned duo night after night. The unfortunate fact is that as the team’s leading players, these two are at best average in the NHL.
The situation could be another part of the winning mechanism, where the responsibility of the leading player would be on others. It’s no coincidence that Johnny Gaudreau had the best years of his career so far in Calgary and Laine in Winnipeg.
Columbus’ top promise of Adam Fantill at the age of 19, he exudes more natural leadership than Lainee and Gaudreau. This is the cold and harsh truth.
The fact that Columbus has actually played better than the fall of fiasco a year ago only underlines the duo’s stomach ache. This team has a blank due to the young talent, but the ship is not leaking from the bottom, but from the bow. The situation is exceptional and completely unsustainable.
Gaudreau’s power statistics combined last season and this season is -40. The reading is unforgivable for a player enjoying 9.75 million accounts.
Alongside such readings, Lainek (-17) appears as a candidate for the Selke award. The Selke award is given annually to the league’s best defensive forward.
The fishing line doesn’t end with Kekäläinen
The operation of the ice level is still a continuation of the choices made in the upper layers. The disaster at hand is undeniable Jarmo Kekäläinen creation. Kekäläinen simply bet on the wrong horses when hiring top players. The player trade that brought Patrik Laine to the city failed miserably.
It’s hard to criticize grabbing Gaudreau, who scored 115 points last season, when he became available. Especially since it has been difficult for Columbus to hold on to its superstars or attract them to the city.
At the same time, however, it can be stated that the question marks regarding Gaudreau’s quality of character or level of athleticism were already known in advance.
Gaudreau has always had a reputation as a soft player. In Calgary, not a single playoff spring could be called a real success for the Yankee player. When things got tough, Gaudreau disappeared from the picture.
Columbus has some talented youngsters in their system, but the big picture is leaking. Kekäläinen has often tried to talk about things in the best way specifically through young people, but failed to mention that the development of young people is rarely, if ever, beautifully linear.
Kent Johnson, Cole Sillinger, Yegor Shinakov, Adam Boqvist and so on. Many of the team’s young people have been needing lately like the deceased Mika Myllylä Tarnevan swamp. Johnson’s club sent him to the farm, Sillinger hasn’t scored a goal yet and Boqvist doesn’t want to play.
Kekäläinen has failed the hardest in selecting coaches, building a culture and selecting key players. This platform is run by the wrong players and that’s why everyone feels bad – and that’s why no coach is completely successful with this group, at least not yet.
And that’s why this team won’t see Christmas either.
It is difficult to see under what conditions Kekäläinen will continue in office. The club’s Finnish boss has talked about playoff goals several times this fall, even though nothing on the ice level supports the idea. For a year and a half, the top players have not been at a level that would support such talks.
However, Kekäläin doesn’t seem to be running out of fishing line.
However, the explanations will end if this season is also packaged – once again – before Christmas.