Advertisement

All hail the Columbus Blue Jackets, conquerors of hockey cynicism

Getty Images
Getty Images

At this point it’s gone from amusing to surreal to patently ridiculous.

The Columbus Blue Jackets, a consensus pick to finish outside the Eastern Conference playoffs if not the bottom of that conference, have a three-point lead for the top spot in the entire National Hockey League at 27-5-4.

The Columbus Blue Jackets are the betting-odds favorite to win the Stanley Cup.

The Columbus Blue Jackets’ coach John Totorella, whom not even their fans thought was the right man for this franchise at this point in either of their existences, is going to win the Jack Adams in a rout.

The Columbus Blue Jackets can tie the 1992-93 Pittsburgh Penguins for the longest single-season winning streak in NHL history with a win over the Washington Capitals on Thursday night, which would be their 17th straight.

The 1992-93 Penguins had Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Ron Francis, Larry Murphy, Joe Mullen and Scotty Bowman behind the bench.

The Blue Jackets … don’t.

[Join a Yahoo Daily Fantasy Hockey contest now]

Short of a catastrophic injury to their goaltender or an unexpected in-season contraction to the Original Six by the NHL, the Columbus Blue Jackets are going to be a playoff team in 2017, and potentially a Presidents’ Trophy winner. It’s one of the most inexplicable runs in recent sports history, one of those ‘were it not for hockey’s place in the pecking order’ stories that should be dominating the chat shows on ESPN.

Yet there seems to still be a collective keeping-at-arm’s-length about this team and its run, not only by the mainstream media but by the hockey world. Maybe we’re too stunned to process it. Maybe we’re conditioned to believe the next team to go on a run like this will be as unsustainable as the previous ones. Maybe we have streak fatigue this season. Maybe it’s a John Tortorella thing. Maybe it’s a 2000 expansion team thing. Who knows?

If they win – OK, when they win – on Thursday, we imagine there will be a full embrace of the Blue Jackets. The sports world loves streaks. Maybe Sports Illustrated will even say they “saved hockey” on its cover.

So how the hell are they doing this? It’s a frustrating dissection. There’s some logic to it. There’s some magic to it. There are some intangibles that defy measurement but that those who are close to the team swear have been factors. And yeah, there’s been a mountain of luck behind that 103.53 PDO (5 on 5, zone and venue adjusted), but who gives a [expletive] at this point – Hillary was leading in Michigan, too.

A few reasons why it’s currently the Blue Jackets’ world and we’re just living in it…

***

They’ve Gotten Better

Blue Jackets fans have taken up arms to battle the evil forces that dared say a team with a PDO through the ceiling and a Corsi (5v5) that was lingering at 46 percent after the first month of the season had unsustainable success. But this is one of those “you’re both right!” type of deals, even if the analytics community is taking its biggest loss here since the Oilers signed Mark Fayne.

The Blue Jackets have worked on several of the underlying problems that could have easily led them down the path of unsustainable success like the Maple Leafs, Flames and Avalanche teams that came before them in the “flashes of brilliance, descent into hell” mode.

They’re not a possession monster by any means, but a 51.24 Corsi (5v5, zone and venue adjusted) puts them No. 11 in the NHL and squarely on the positive side of things. And interestingly, it rises to 53 percent when the Jackets are trailing by a goal.

But then again, that could be a sample size thing, because …

The Jackets Never Trail

Dmitri Filipovic did an interesting study recently on teams leading or trailing so far this season, and the numbers for the Jackets are absolutely stunning.

Those were before Tuesday night’s win against the Edmonton Oilers. They’re leading 47 percent of their total time on ice – by far the best in the NHL this season. They’re trailing only 18 percent of the time, which was second-best to Minnesota at the time of the graph-making.

Getting a lead in front of a Sergei Bobrovsky-led defense that’s leading the NHL at 2.03 goals-against on average is a pretty good recipe for success. The Jackets have scored the first goal of the game 25 times, best in the NHL. In their 27 wins, they’ve scored first in 20 of them.

Go back to that “trailing by a goal” possession number: The Jackets are second only to the Penguins in winning percentage when their opponent scores first, going 7-3-1. But again, we’re burying the lead on the leads: The Jackets have only allowed their opponents the first goal 11 times in 36 games, which is also leading the NHL this season.

The [Expletive] Power Play

What Columbus is doing on the power play should be legally regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms – it’s smoking hot, leaves their opponents staggering and never seems to run out of bullets.

The Jackets are currently scoring on the power play at a 28.3-percent clip. That’s with the third-fewest power-play opportunities in the NHL this season (106).

For context’s sake, here’s the Jackets power play vs. every top power-play in the NHL since 1990:

NHL
NHL

Again, unless you have Mario, Ovechkin or Lidstrom, this just doesn’t happen.

The Jackets don’t have them, but they have power-play leaders that are a microcosm of the rest of the team’s surprising offense: Cam Atkinson and Alexander Wennberg, both making the leap as offensive studs this season, leading the Jackets with 18 and 17 points on the power-play respectively; Nick Foligno, recapturing his touch, scoring seven goals; Sam Gagner, rescued from the scrapheap, with six goals; and of course the kid none of us saw making this impact this early, Zach Werenski, tallying a Lidstrom-like 15 power-play points.

(By the way: What a season Brandon Saad is having at even strength, scoring 33 points on the year and just two of them on that power play.)

Over the course of this 16-game winning streak, their overall power-play percentage matches that of their season: 28.3, going 15-for-53. But in the last 11 games of the streak, the Jackets have gone 13-for-37, or an astonishing 35.1-percent. They’ve scored power-play goals in 10 of the 16 wins. And, again, when your goalie is going that well and you’re basically spotting him a goal in 63 percent of the games in this streak, you’re going to do OK.

Speaking of which…

Bob

Bobrovsky’s elite status was always there. His health always wasn’t. He came into the season in the best shape of his career, and it shows: He’s started 32 of the Jackets’ 36 games, and is right there with Devan Dubnyk and Carey Price for the Vezina: .934 save percentage, 1.92 GAA.

Ask the Canadiens what kind of confidence having that kind of netminding instills in the rest of your team, especially on offense. Ask Tortorella what kind of difference having that level of elite goaltending has when you’re playing an aggressive style around the rest of the ice.

Alright, let’s deal with it …

Getty Images
Getty Images

Tortorella

John Tortorella’s contribution to this success has to be acknowledged, but so does the fact that he’s not the same John Tortorella.

Sure, he’s testy, but he’s not volcanic. He’s toned down his act significantly, partially on the advice of management and partially due to the work he’s done away from the rink on himself and partially because the Vancouver experience humbled him. He went from the Rangers to the Canucks to a team that was willing to hire him because of his previous relationship with its president, and a team whose expectations weren’t in the same conversation as those of his previous two stops.

Sure, his team is playing aggressively, but not aggressively stupid: Who would have figured a Tortorella team that’s depicted as “hardworking blue collar grit grit gritty” would only be No. 20 in the NHL in blocked shots (527)?

So what has he done? How do we credit him? Aaron Portzline of the Columbus Dispatch made an attempt to find out what he’s done behind the scenes to get these guys to play this well, and came back to the notion of trust:

The players left Columbus last April with a clear idea of what would be expected of them when training camp convened in September. If that didn’t drive home the point, Tortorella crafted letters to each of the players and put them in the mail in late June.

The exit meetings and the letter could be seen as Tortorella’s first expression of trust. Here’s what’s expected of you, now go do it.

When the players showed up at training camp in dramatically better shape — many of them looked thinner, several of them acknowledged significant weight loss, and all of them look faster — it was the players’ first step toward earning trust.

(By the way: Full marks to assistant coaches Brad Larsen and Brad Shaw for working behind the scenes to get the players to buy into Torts.)

But here was the most interesting aspect of his coaching. Remember how the San Jose Sharks chilled out last season under Peter DeBoer after tension was at an all-time high under Todd McLellan? With days off and such?

Via Portzline, welcome to club Torts:

Tortorella doesn’t have a curfew for players, young or old. The Blue Jackets used to avoid staying overnight in certain cities on the road — Nashville, Vancouver, etc. — because the nightlife is a little too happening. Now, Tortorella welcomes it. “If you can’t trust a player to handle himself the right way, he shouldn’t be on the bus in the first place,” he has said.

The Blue Jackets have cut way back on practice time, not just morning skates but off-day practices. The players know that if they give Tortorella 45 hard minutes in practice, and play games at a highly competitive level, the schedule will continue. And he knows that if he works them less, he’ll get more of them at game time.

And now they’ve won 16 straight games, so one assumes they’re getting ample time to Netflix and chill.

***

There’s not a single factor behind this incredible season from the Blue Jackets, but a massive collection of things going right: The power play, the goaltending, young stars maturing at the right time, old players finding their touch, a style of play and a coach they believe in, and, as previously stated, a mountain of PDO-measured good fortune.

It’s a season both baffling and beautiful, illogical and inspiring. They’re conquerors of cynicism and conjurers of magic.

This has been 17 years in the making, this moment when the hockey world takes notice and the bandwagon expands. There’s still an unbelievable amount of work to be done fortifying that foundation – like winning a playoff round, for example – but the groundwork is there.

That ever-increasing fan base chanted ‘we want 16!’ in their win against the Edmonton Oilers. A win at Washington on Thursday night, and it’ll be ‘we want 18’ on Jan. 7 against the New York Rangers.

What a run. What a ride. What an unexpected, unpredictable season for the Columbus Blue Jackets and their long-suffering fans.

Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

MORE FROM YAHOO HOCKEY