All Aboard the Playoff Train
Storylines Into and Out Of the Deadline
Don Waddell committed to his team and bought at the deadline. Whether or not it is the right choice is not something we’ll know in the short term but I certainly applaud him for going in a definite direction. This wasn’t last years non-committal own-rental-ing but a genuine bid to improve the team.
The Team Quality
The Blue Jackets are a great 5v5 team. If the game was played entirely in this state, they’d have a good case for being a top team in the East. Considering two teams ahead of them, Florida and Ottawa, are nearly out of the picture it’s possible they’re the third best team in the conference.
According to HockeyViz, which has one of the most well adjusted xG models, the Blue Jackets are, give or take, a top 10 5v5 team in terms of chance share (read as perpendicular distance from the red line).
Since Bowness’ arrival, they have played a “lower-event” game on the backs of significantly improved defense. Plenty of confounding variables there, including a weak strength of schedule, but when the run up to the deadline looks like that, what else are you going to do?
The team believes they’ve been this good all along and were held back by some mistakes and poor luck (recent comments by Werenski suggests they think they’re better than this too). Whether or not that is true is something we’ll discover over the remainder of the season.
The evidence for their claim is contained in the above data.
The finishing of it all aside, there’s only one streak where the Blue Jackets were regular losers of 5v5 chance share. It happens to coincide with a certain, mind-boggling deployment decision.
Ivan Provorov remains the gift that keeps on… taking? Gudbranson at 20+ minutes should be a giant flashing warning sign as well but we already knew that this team was going as far as Werenski, and friends, would take it.
This is the key data to pin your hopes of the playoffs on. The Blue Jackets, at 5v5, are a better team than Washington and Pittsburgh, though certainly close enough that we’re within the margin of error.
New York Islanders, Boston, Buffalo, Detroit and Montreal all lose their minutes at 5v5. Three of those teams are basically already locks for the playoffs and this is where that early season run of nonsense and defensive mistakes becomes incredibly frustrating. If this 5v5 is their true potential, they should be locked in right now.
The other side of the coin is the relative Special Teams struggles.
The Penalty Kill is still a major weakpoint as are the penalties. Though their PK% hasn’t collapsed, they’re ranked 13th at 79.1% since Bowness joined, the chances against are considerable.
They’re poor penalty drawers, as we can see with the generational complaining of Rick Bowness lately, and they’re poor penalty takers. Marchment, Jenner and Wood have shown no signs of slowing down.
The finishing, on both counts, looks like it’s surging upward and the play of their youth means it might not be done just yet. Alas, finishing remains unpredictable and therefore our hands a bit tied.
The Blue Jackets players, by all accounts, believe we haven’t even seen the best this club has to offer. If that’s true, perhaps they are the third best team in the East and, given their veteran style, could be primed for more than a first round exit.
Until they actualize their stretch of 5v5 play and prove their Special Teams can be good, however, they’re still a team on the outside looking in.
Fantilli Upswing - Emerging Chemistry
Adam Fantilli has been a much better player this season than he was last season. That isn’t too say he’s been a True 1C or taken the leap into stardom but the reorganizing of his game has taken place and there’s a lot of reason to believe The Leap could happen shortly.
A storyline heading into the break was the offensive struggles of the top-line. It was worse when all three weren’t there, Sillinger had no capacity to help that line, but the underlying numbers were still quite poor and they visually struggled to chain moves together in clean sequences.
This side of the break, they look almost entirely different. The chemistry is clicking and they’ve strung together offensive passing sequences that the Blue Jackets legitimately haven’t seen in years.
The highlights here are fantastic and the line playstyle looks very healthy. They are sharing the puck, processing their environment, moving through space without stagnation, it’s all quite good.
The concerns with Fantilli pre-draft, and through his fledgling NHL career, have always been a tendency to be puck-dominant, tunnel-visioned and a preference to shoot off of extended carries. None of those flaws are evident in the tape above. A ton of passing sequences, some very high level puck carrying sequences and lightning quick play-linking.
He has been better this year mostly because he’s compartmentalized his game and become a bit more stable. At the same time, it felt like he lost a lot of spark and certainly a lot of finishing touch. A lot of the “heliocentric” characteristics that felt like a double-edged sword. If these games are an indication, he could be coming out the other side of a development window more stable and teammate aware while retaining dominant flashes.
The above chart has been undermined a bit because of the most recent scoring surge but Fantilli is still under his “shooting talent adjusted” expected goals (the far right column). He is sixth worst in the league relative to his small-sample predicted shooting talent. More games like the above and there’s potential for a very big surge on the way to the playoffs.
Offense isn’t everything, though. Absent Werenski, this line very much struggled to win their matchups under the hood. Bowness has some work to do with the D pairs, it doesn’t help that Provorov and Gudbranson really struggle to move pucks, but if they want to be more than an offensive second line they’ll have to be able to do more on their own.
The Marchment injury throws a wrench into these plans.
The Kent Johnson Thing
Kent Johnson was needlessly scratched after one of his best underlying creation games of the season. He made it back into the lineup by the grace of Boone Jenner’s mystery injury.
He was incredible against Nashville. As much as I fundamentally disagree with Bowness’ process here we should still be highly encouraged by his insistence on offense from the young wing. If Kent Johnson is liberated to take risks and attack the offensive zone, especially without the puck, it’s easy to see him leap into the success he had just last season.
The game against Nashville might have exaggerated some of his abilities. They played a very passive neutral zone block that means slower build-up was necessary which might simply have played into some of his preferred means of creation. His work in the offensive zone on the walls, and in staying in motion, was also excellent. We saw the continuation of those tendencies against Florida.
It’s not so much the high level plays that are so encouraging but moreso the motion. Kent Johnson had a tendency to stagnate offensive zone play, to slow the game down even in the neutral zone (most of the time), but to play a very prescripted and interesting style. He doesn’t have the athleticism to get caught in the offensive zone but did have some quite brilliant off-puck movement. Now, he’s married those two and is creating more plays while killing fewer as a result.
He is now the best creator of controlled offensive danger (at 5v5 per 60 minutes) since Rick Bowness has arrived. Don Waddell was right to be patient, hopefully roster additions and ice-time take him the rest of the way.
Veteran Centers Playing Dominant Hockey
Charlie Coyle has been a monster all season. Lately, his defensive details and facilitation with the puck have seemingly taken another step forward. He’s scoring light out, especially with his most often pairing in Zach Werenski, which is adding just another enticing dimension to his profile.
Coyle - Defending, Forechecking, Rush Facilitation and Scoring
Since Bowness has joined the Blue Jackets, Charlie Coyle ranks 4th in the NHL in 5v5 points/60 (among players with minimum 50 minutes, first among players with 200 minutes). Without Coyle playing the way he has, this season is lost, without him producing since Bowness arrived, the Blue Jackets likely pivot.
Monahan - Forechecking into Slot Passing, Rush Facilitation and Scoring
The other veteran center, Sean Monahan, has also been excellent lately. His linemates have rotated a bit more but he has rediscovered much of the form that drove him to success last season. He doesn’t have the incendiary chemistry alongside Marchenko and Werenski to play with anymore but whatever ails plagued him early this season are clearly gone.
Now, Monahan’s forechecking and play connection are deployed together to create a ton of slot passes and high danger chances. He and Coyle have become the first unit penalty killers and they’re created a high danger chance, if not a goal, every game so far.
Depending on the status of the Marchment injury, it might just be time to let him and Marchenko become a dominant force together again. If not, he and Kent Johnson are really figured it out too.
The Deadline Addition
Don Waddell made one of the bigger additions of the trade deadline overnight by trading a 2028 2nd round pick and a 2026 3rd round pick for Conor Garland. It’s a good deal. The equation is complicated by Garland’s age, already signed extenstion and his current performance trend.
The Blue Jackets are running a minor deficit of secondary futures. They further diminished this cache with this deal while preserving all of their most valuable picks. They still have a first round pick to stock the pipeline with and they still have St. Louis’ 2nd round pick which could be one of the earliest picks in the second round.
These will most likely be used to fill out the second wave and add some supporting talent around Lindstrom, Smith and Andreyanov, but they could be interesting spending currency around the time as well.
The “bigger issue” is ultimately that Conor Garland is now the longest contracted player in the Blue Jackets organization. He’s turning 30 next week and signed for 6 years after with the first 3 years having an NMC.
The cap is going up, and the corresponding hit being less and less painful each year, but signing up for more potential supoptimal cap-hit entering Adam Fantilli’s prime is a bit concerning. That he serves as insurance, and leverage, against the upcoming class of UFAs helps mitigate the damage it can do.
This extension is the bigger driver of risk here. A 2nd and a 3rd won’t be overly missed even if Garland doesn’t work out. If he doesn’t regain form, the contract is guaranteed to be painful the the deal a poor one.
I mention this because the current trend is quite drastic. As the team descended in quality, Garland’s adjusted impacts fell off a cliff. It’s easy to wright this off as coach-led issues, and I don’t think you’d be wrong to do that, but it’s something to consider.
The Waddell Index strikes again.
The biggest reason to bet on Conor Garland returning to form, aside from the microstats we’ll get into in a second, is that he played with generally poor teammates on a bad team, against tough competition and ate bad starts. This is a bet Don Waddell has placed routinely and one that has paid off big in the short term with Mason Marchment and Charlie Coyle.
While it’s easy to fear the downturn, let’s focus a moment on the positives. The apex of Conor Garland was an absolutely brilliant play-driver on a third line otherwise bereft of talent with Dakota Joshua and Teddy Blueger.
Every year, even though the last you have been down years from an adjusted impact perspective, Conor Garland grades out extremely well in LB-Hockey’s Play Through Contract metrics.
I want to specifically point your attention to his down-low playmaking which has remained at that level for a few years and is a skillset that projects to fit alongside a host of the Blue Jackets’ young players whether it’s Fantilli, Johnson, Marchenko or even Sillinger (should he find his finishing).
It’s inside the peripheral skill fits where Garland looks like a potentially inspired addition. The play-through-contact is already necessary but he’s an excellent transition facilitator and all-around playmaker while also being consistent and helping the Blue Jackets tilt the penalty differential (both directly via drawn/taken and also in the context of on-ice drawn/taken seen below).
In the worst case scenario, or perhaps best case, Garland could even be seen as the sort of right handed playmaker who could create goal-line bumper passing looks on the powerplay.
Though this sounds perfect to slot into the top six and alongside the talented finishers already there, Garland hasn’t necessarily played the nicest with this brand of players. His top seasons came on third lines and he was generally the guy on a line tasked with creating offense.
When I think of where he would fit perfectly, it feels more like a Jenner-Monahan-Garland line than it does a KJ-Monahan-Garland line. His game should work alongside the skilled players, and Vancouver is it’s own microchosm and not perfectly generalizable, but he might just be overly puck-touch oriented and with not quite enough off-puck facilitation despite the playmaking.
The great thing about that specific aspect is that Rick Bowness gets to experiment with these lines and test them out rather than relying on theory specifically.
All-in-all, there’s a lot of potential in this deal though each explicit positive is met with a caveat. That’s the nature of it and is the only explanation he could be had for merely a 2nd and a 3rd.
The Deals Not Done
Hindsight is 2020 but I do find it curious that a tiny 30 year old with a 6 year extension was so preferred in place of the tiny Fantilli-partner we already had on the roster. Different players within this microstat view already, Brindley’s value is driven by tenacious neutral zone checking but competence elsewhere, but he’s also 20.
Speaking of pint-sized former Blue Jacket former Wolverines who play much larger than their size and that the Colorado Avalanche traded for, Nick Blankenburg. Prior to Dante Fabbro’s joining, and Mateychuk and Severson’s performance this season, Blankenburg was the best partner Werenski had for years. Andrew Peeke, Jake Bean and Adam Boqvist aren’t much to write home about, and Blanks was always injured, but the point remains.
Don Waddell mentioned his pursuit of depth defense and ultimately couldn’t find any replacements. The Avs paid a 5th for him. That should have been easy for the Blue Jackets to do. They already have Egor Zamula is the slow, defensive oriented defenseman. Why not get a right-handed different skillset style at the same time?
Mathieu Joseph hasn’t been a particularly good player this year but he has been a good defensive one. The Blue Jackets have spare forward depth in Brendan Gaunce, Zach Aston-Reese and Danton Heinen but Joseph has championship experience with Tampa. He signed a minimum contract but was put on waivers prior to it at the same time. I would have taken him but he signed with his former coach.
All-in-all, an incredibly strange deadline. Blake Coleman seemed a shoo-in to move to a contender. St Louis didn’t really sell any of their good players, both Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou stayed. Colton Parayko famously didn’t which caused Jarmo Kekelainen to make his team worse but also spend fewer assets in doing so. Yzerman really struggled.
Wrap Up
The job, at least as a fan, is much easier going forward. Perhaps even as an analyst the constraints are in place. We’re not worried about maximizing future value or making big decisions, it’s find a way to win and get this team a deep playoff run.
Compared with Detroit, Montreal, Boston and Buffalo, Pittsburgh and the New York Islanders, I think you have to be optimistic about the Blue Jackets’ relatively quiet deadline. Garland has home-run potential and perhaps more upside as a recent acquisition than the struggling veterans in Brayden Schenn and Justin Faulk.
Even before new roster considerations the Blue Jackets had technically taken the lead in terms of HockeyViz’s playoff odds.
Objectives:
Maintain Coyle, Monahan, Werenski, Greaves
Ignite Fantilli, Johnson
Improve Penalty Kill and Penalty Differential
If the Blue Jackets can manage these three things, perhaps there’s individual hardware to go alongside a playoff run.