An Off-Season Look at ... The Columbus Blue Jackets

by Jes

The Columbus Blue Jackets finally got it right and canned Doug MacLean this summer. Thanks to his lack of direction, and buy-high, sell-low philosophy, the Blue Jackets were hamstrung with a bunch of expensive veterans and short on actual talent.

Unfortunately, it will take a year or two for Dougie's mistakes to be off of the books for the BJs, and the dearth of prospects in the organization makes this team's future less than bright.

Here is the BJs roster as of today ... lots of expensive, old crap.


Amazingly, the BJs have lots of room under the cap, and will shed the contracts of Fedorov, and Foote after this season.

The BJs could be better, but they are beset by organization-wide underachieving.

Nik Zherdev - Signs a lucrative deal, and then sleepwalks through the season with 32 points. The BJ's are thinking of trying him at center, and it seems he'll pout if that happens. What a baby!

Rick Nash - 27 goals at that salary? Yeesh...

Sergei Fedorov - Perhaps he should play back at defence, because 42 points in 73 games is just awful.

Really, there isn't anyone on the roster, save for the surprising Norrena and hard-working Chimera, that really give you good bang for their buck, and play to their full potential. Even with the coaching change, Columbus still sucked eggs last season.

This season? It'll be more of the same. The BJs have one of the worst defence corps in the league, and shaky goaltending.

The forward corps LOOKS to be fairly decent and balanced, and will need to play up to its potential for the BJs to have a sniff of success.

In the end, this club will be fighting with the Hawks and Oilers for dead last in the conference.