Armchair GM: Comparing CBJ to Cup Winners
Examining the Blue Jackets' Players In Relation to Cup Winner Checklist, Searching For Identity
Primer
This breakdown is the first in a series that intends to look into the state of the current team, forecast potential for growth and identify potential offseason acquisitions by position group. Within, I’ll use excellent work by public analysts to set the table on the Blue Jackets’ trajectory toward their eventual goal: Winning the Stanley Cup.
Then, I’ll look at roster specifics before moving onto market analysis, final targets to fill the rosters and perhaps some looks into Waddell Trades of the past to theorycraft some possibilities.
The Blue Jackets are heading into a big offseason. This past season was marked by unspeakable tragedy, a united locker room and leaps forward from key players in Sean Monahan, Zach Werenski, Kirill Marchenko and Kent Johnson. Adam Fantilli and Denton Mateychuk filled out full-time roles, gaining confidence and effectiveness as the season wore on, and flashed some of the highest offensive promise on the team.
This large forward step was a welcome relief for many fans who were eager to watch a team that has suffered misery after misery this past few years. The end of both John Tortorella and Jarmo Kekelainen’s tenures were different degrees of disasters, seeing the team losing Pierre-Luc Dubois for nearly nothing (and then paying to offload his return), Seth Jones departing and his substantial return sputtering out of the gates (Cole Sillinger, David Jiricek, Jake Bean and Adam Boqvist), Mike Babcock being hired, fired, Pascal Vincent criticizing the “globetrotting” of the Russian forwards, comparing David Jiricek to a teenage daughter wanting a car, sullying Kent Johnson for not blocking point shots… I think you get the point.
Don Waddell came in, (drafted Cayden Lindstrom, Charlie Elick among others ) and immediately signed Sean Monahan and hired Dean Evason. Those moves underpinned the dramatic evolution of the team but the individual improvement drive of each of the players shouldn’t be underestimated. The first step out of the basement is huge but finishing one game out of the playoffs is the worst of both worlds. A good moral victory but one that degrades the Blue Jackets’ potential to get better (along with falling in the draft lottery).
It’s now critical that the Blue Jackets take continued steps forward and build off of the momentum less they toil in mediocrity like the Buffalo Sabres, Detroit Red Wings or Ottawa Senators.
Information from Don
The Blue Jackets have the full freight of the salary cap to make moves, the return from David Jiricek locked and loaded in the chamber, a Norris-nominee in Zach Werenski and a young fleet of young players ready to improve. Waddell has professed that he believes the Blue Jackets have the right nucleus in the room.
“I truly believe after what I’ve witnessed this year we have most of the pieces in that locker room,” Waddell said. “Obviously there’s going to be some changes. There’s (unrestricted free agents) and there’s some needs that we need to address, and we will do everything in our power to address those needs this summer.”
Last season, Waddell believed he could have the defensive situation (the goals against) addressed fairly quickly. That wasn’t true this past season, but “fairly quickly” is still in play.
The Blue Jackets scored, especially at 5v5, at the best clip in the league.
In terms of shot generation, the Blue Jackets finished 10th in Score and Venue Adjusted 5v5 Shots for Per 60 over the season and 11th in Score and Venue Adjusted 5v5 xGF/60. While their finishing was top shelf, they’re still an above average 5v5 offensive volume and danger team. They’ll need to be more than above average to go deep, so there’s still room for improvement, but the framework for playoff shot generation is certainly there.
Among those top ten teams, the Blue Jackets were by far the worst defensively in both shots against and goals against. Dean Evason, at his end of season press conference, mentioned both special teams and the 5v5 defense must all improve.
It’s safe to say that improving either the goaltending, defense, or both are going to be critical priorities going into the offseason.
“We have a lot of pick assets that we can use for trades,” Waddell said. “There’s gonna be some challenges there, but I think every summer, there’s deals to be made. It’s what pieces we’re willing to give up for it. Having the draft capital is always important. We have two first-round picks this year. Our goal is to make sure we do everything that we’re capable of doing to try to make this team better.”
The objectives are more or less clear, be aggressive in improving the team and that the defense is the priority, but Waddell is playing his cards close to the vest. He has mentioned that he wants to add “around the edges” for the forwards, I’m assuming, and has mentioned improving the D but also in wanting to bring back Provorov and Fabbro, which wouldn’t leave many spots on the roster for improvement.
What makes this exercise difficult is the sheer volatility of the offseason, made even more difficult by putting two first round picks in play. It’s normally a bit easier to filter out players who are too good to be dealt without spending something significant, focusing on bounce-back or breakout picks, but two first round picks (plus the potential for utilizing future first and/or second round picks should the opportunity knock) opens plenty of doors.
Top Down Perspective
The big picture objective is to construct a team that is capable of winning a Stanley Cup. The Blue Jackets, most likely, won’t be able to do that until their young players are at the height of their powers (true value primes usually start at 23) which I think should inform some of the offseason strategy. Everything prior to their primes is building experience and competitive advantages prior to pumping their window full of the best possible players.
Given the resurgence from the team, and the messaging coming surrounding Waddell’s hire, it doesn’t appear that the Blue Jackets are taking a long-term rebuild approach. Unfortunately, they didn’t really have the lottery luck that typically prescribes success in that avenue (no lottery wins, high picks in poor drafts, only Fantilli being an above average selection at the position perhaps) so perhaps their first wave containing good players in Marchenko, Voronkov and Chinakhov, and their veteran group now having Zach Werenski and Sean Monahan means Waddell’s Carolina-style approach (get better by making incremental progress and maintaining strict cap efficiency) is the best available option.
Don Waddell might simply want to build a good team (and a good locker room) that becomes both a force for development (off-ice attitudes can be infectious, desire to win can’t be taken for granted, hockey nerds learning from hockey nerds, playing with good players teaches better play, etc) and a competitive advantage (players will want to join, re-signings may be at a discount, on-roster players are better and therefore more valuable trade assets, better teams mean it’s easier to take risks with 1st round picks etc.)
At the end of the day, all moves must be evaluated by their capacity to help win a Stanley Cup with Adam Fantilli and late-stage Zach Werenski on the team. That doesn’t necessarily mean trading current players for ages around Fantilli’s age but it also doesn’t mean spending assets for strictly current competitiveness (unless that competitiveness adds valuable experience that helps insure Fantilli or KJ or whoever reaches their respective ceiling). Building a contender is complex and we can’t rule out that different strategies can all be pursued, especially in the context of Florida and Vegas.
In pursuit of moving toward the Stanley Cup, we can turn to excellent analytics work from Shayna Goldman and Dom Luszczyszyn. Separating their single number metrics to offense and defense has brought new clarity to the roles of players on cup winning teams. If you looked at Stanley Cup Contenders relative to the old checklist you could always sort of tell the playstyles and roles went this way, but quantification, especially separating offensive and defensive impacts, is a good thing because it means we can study and examine.
I’ll poach some of Dom Luszczyszyn’s playercards primarily because it’s his data that that has formulated the contender list. I thought that HockeyStatCards was using the same information but there are certainly different values.
It’s worth mentioning that the top of the Blue Jackets’ roster might be a little distorted based on their uncanny high level finishing. The model will take underlying numbers into account, so I wouldn’t say they aren’t believable, but this might be a local peak of value on the still generally upward slope of the Blue Jackets.
Elite Core
Werenski is for sure a Franchise Defenseman. Will he perform at these heights again? That remains to be seen but it’s quite clear that he’s actualizing his very real skillset and deploying it to maximum effect under Dean Evason.
Sean Monahan would have counted as a Cup Winner Franchise Forward but I don’t know that we should expect that going forward. He flourished in the wake of a tragic offseason and formed a formidable pairing with Kirill Marchenko.
Marchenko established himself as a breakout star. Someone who’s defensive impact is hard to bet on continuing but I said the same thing last year. His defensive aura, strengthened by a wicked takeaway stick, is very real and deployed in all zones. He played against top matchups and tilted the ice quite distinctly. His recently signed short term contract could become a liability if that market value figure holds, or if he gets better, and the cap keeps exploding.
In the short term, the Blue Jackets will need Monahan and Marchenko to continue performing at their very high near-Franchise level. In the longer term, it’s not too hard to see them sliding down into the defensive roles as “shutdown forwards” both defensive and offensive. If they’re not Kucherov and Point four years from now, perhaps they can be Hagel and Cirelli.
Kent Johnson and Adam Fantilli are still very much unfinished projects but perhaps we can make a rough guess as to what they’ll be, or what the Blue Jackets will need them to be, in the coming years.
Kent Johnson very much broke out this year and while his defensive impact doesn’t look like anything special, he played against top matchups with often little help. At the same time he authored an offensive breakout and was the best transition forward on the roster. There’s still plenty of room to grow but this is a promising start to say the least.
We hope Fantilli is the Franchise Forward. Last season he certainly wasn’t. He played mediocre competition most of the year and didn’t really find a way to drive play on his own. His worst minutes came with ZAR and Olivier and his best with Voronkov and Marchenko.
Fantilli took a step at the end of the season, the last 25 games or so were dramatically better than even the 15 prior where he was Monahan’s replacement, so there’s still signal that he’ll be making improvements in short order.
For now, Fantilli is an ahead of the curve 5v5 point scorer but very much behind the curve as a play-driver. If the latter part doesn’t grow, Fantilli could struggle to outperform his contract (points and goals drive money, play-driving drives wins). Jack Hughes and Tim Stutzle made large leaps in production and underlying performance in their D+3 seasons. They both had better underlying numbers during their D+2 than Fantilli but neither had the raw point production capacity at 5v5.
If these two can supplant the above two forwards and leap into Franchise and Star Status within the next two years, the Blue Jackets are well positioned to compete with the players they have currently on the roster.
Support Core
The rest of the roster, who I wouldn’t really grade as core pieces but are certainly critical to being a good team, have mixed results.
Jenner, in a limited sample, looks like a volatile but primarily offensive force. He’s a team leader and a strong point in setting the identity of the team. That said, he’s turning 32 this offseason and hasn’t completed a full season in quite some time. Players who are as reckless with their body as he is are bound to have some sort of shot blocking or otherwise injury.
Additionally, he’s got one year remaining on his contract. The likelihood that he stays at this impact level through a competitive window are dramatically low.
Dmitri Voronkov grades out as a strong offensive force especially via xG generation but not very good defensively. If there’s an in-house solution to Jenner, it would certainly be him as he already grades out as a Scoring Forward. The Blue Jackets are going to need another forward to fill out this support core.
Fabbro grades out as by far the best secondary defenseman. His performance next to Werenski was very good and he even stepped up as the season went on and chipped in some goals.
His market value is a bit spooky. I can’t see the Blue Jackets being all too eager to pay him $7.6 million without understanding his performance away from Werenski. If he can form the backbone of a second pair, operating as either of these Support Core defensemen, CBJ would probably be happy to pay that money.
His Evolving Hockey Projected Contract (provided that the market explosion doesn’t dramatically distort some of these values), if signed with CBJ, comes in at $5,499,000 x 5 years. If Don Waddell can get him on shorter term, there’s no reason he shouldn’t be a Blue Jacket.
The Rest of the Defense
The problem, outside of the atrocious rotation of bottom pairing defensemen in Christiansen, Harris and Jack Johnson, is the two veteran defensemen signed by Jarmo Kekelainen to shortcut competitiveness. Neither have any business on a competitive team based on their performance this past season but Provorov was held at the deadline and Waddell keeps saying he wants to sign him. His market value is $4 million which, honestly, feels accurate to me.
Severson has been dramatically volatile. He’s out of favor but he’s got some of the best offensive and defensive skills on the roster. They just don’t connect, an all tools no toolbox type situation perhaps. His underlying metrics are some of the best on the entire roster. He has the performance history to be a true play driver and a sudden actualization of his potential could mean the Blue Jackets have more boxes checked than you might think.
I, personally, see no reason he can’t be at least an offensive scoring defenseman down the lineup, how he was played his final season in New Jersey, but he seems to continually put himself in horrible situations. Time may have run out on thinking he’ll ever really get it together.
Mateychuk doesn’t have a card, though I’m not particularly sure why, and he’s hard to project to one of the current Stanley Cup Winner roles as he’s still a young and malleable defensemen. He’s scored well at every level he’s played but he’s also taken charge of the play on-ice, given what we saw of him in Moose Jaw and the AHL you’d have to think he could be a sort of Franchise Defenseman (likely defensive) but I’d be open to the support D roles as well.
He’s good at retreiving the puck, which is a sign he can survive more difficult matchups and help drive play. His defensive impacts this past season were good, partially due to the low-event nature of his ice-time, but the shot volume and offensive metrics need to improve. Given the underlying data from the tracking project, his capacity to get shots into the middle of the ice was already around second best on the team. It just seems a matter of time.
Prospect Projection
We hope Cayden Lindstrom finds his way somewhere into the contending picture as well but we should be cautious until we start to see NHL impact. He’s a good skater (with honestly plenty of room to improve) and a Waddell draft pick which suggests he’s going to get plenty of runway.
David Jiricek, perhaps very recently, would have been pencilled in as a Franchise Defensemen or at least Scoring Defensemen and now he’s gone, so we have to be careful here.
Gavin Brindley’s season didn’t go as planned, he scored in bunches to start the season and then found himself down the lineup in a defensive role and couldn’t find any production. When I watched, he looked very much like Gavin Brindley. I feel somewhat comfortable to project him into a Support Forward role.
The Blue Jackets have a couple of other forward prospects of note, perhaps Jordan Dumais, Luca Del Bel Belluz, James Malatesta and Luca Pinelli, who may become something. I’m personally not sold that they will elevate to major roles on any sort of cup contender but there’s still time.
Defensively, the Blue Jackets have Charlie Elick and Luca Marrelli. The latter found something of an offensive renaissance and the former has performed well as a large, generally good skating physical defenseman. Whether or not they’ll have roles isn’t quite clear yet.
What’s clear, at least from the big picture perspective, is that the Blue Jackets don’t really have “Shutdown” varieties of either position and not anyone that I’m overly confident will be 3 to 5 years from now.
Contender Trends
Before moving forward with the analysis, I’d like to talk a bit about an emerging trend among contenders. I think this trend has implications on how the Blue Jackets should approach acquisitions this offseason.
What specifically Florida showed specifically was that it’s easy to find good defensemen for cheap and that you really only need one who is an all-situations difference maker. Their specific tendency to surf and track back to the zone rather than ask players to back skate is another tactical wrinkle that’s important (I believe we see the same from Dallas and Edmonton) in getting excellent performance from previously struggling defensemen.
The construction of Vegas’ cup winning team, and specifically D-corps, was heavy on center and forward talent and had more diverse and distributed pairs with a “matchup” pair on the third pairing. (Relative to the Tampa pairs which were Hedman, Shutdown Pair, Sheltered Offense pair). The pairs, ultimately, will be a reflection of the talent available, there isn’t an overly rigid construction philosophy outside of non-loaded top-pairs.
The Blue Jackets have their top guy in Werenski and an exciting future piece in Mateychuk, but the rest remains to be seen. Given what we’ve observed, that is the most changeable component of these contenders. Only Hedman was drafted in Tampa, only Ekblad in Florida and technically none in Vegas though that’s a special case.
What has boosted the most recent Cup winners to success, and the Dallas Stars on this current run, has been in acquiring star power at the expense of defensive solidity or depth. Dallas acquired Rantanen despite their right side being comprised of Ilya Lyubushkin, Cody Ceci, Matt Dumba or now Alex Petrovic. Thomas Harley is elite, Miro Heiskanen has been injured and Esa Lindell is a no doubt defensive stopper.
I don’t believe that the Columbus Blue Jackets need stars now, given that Dallas only recently added Rantanen and Florida acquired Tkachuk after being a playoff team, but I think it’s worth evaluating the team with respect to that offensive potency. Producing offense in the most intense and defensively stout environments possible is a prerequisite for winning a cup.
Identity Formation
The Blue Jackets, as a nascent competitive team, still don’t have an overly strong identity. It does, however, look like one is forming and I think we can use that to create an internal spine that helps us identify priority targets.
Florida created a strong identity (over the top aggressiveness and defending in the offensive zone first) that helped them solve one of the most difficult problems in the NHL (which defensemen are actually good?) by making the position as easy to play as possible. You can perhaps say the same of Carolina.
Each Stanley Cup winner has a diverse attack, isn’t singularly identity aligned, and the Blue Jackets already have the makings of different layers.
Sean Monahan and Kirill Marchenko, and their third wheel whichever it is (Dmitri Voronkov or Yegor Chinakhov), already point the Blue Jackets in the direction of a heavy-forechecking attack. They dominated possession early in the season primarily because of each of their capacity to strip pucks and expose weakpoints of the opposition’s transition. They’re heavy on puck recoveries and bring a below-hash off-wall game that would be the envy of most contenders.
Adam Fantilli, their franchise forward hopeful, is an almost maniacal competitor but primarily an electric puck handler. He grew throughout the season but he may eventually be one of those kinds of tenacious forwards. His late season demolition of Ryan Leonard followed by counter attack goal remains a tantalizing example of his potential.
Cayden Lindstrom, recently debuted in the WHL playoffs, is a skilled player with tremendous tenacity. He’s downright mean, crosschecking nearly everything he sees and he’s a completely powerful athlete. We’ll see where his back, and time away from the ice without development, takes his ultimate upside but the identity is clear.
Charlie Elick lacks some skill but he certainly has hitting and gumption. His development path to at least a bottom pairing defensemen is clear and he at least has some capacity to move the puck.
Given the draft, the youth and the front offices lavishing praise on veteran leaders in Boone Jenner, Mathieu Olivier and Erik Gudbranson, it’s not hard to read through the lines and see a team vision forming. They aren’t my ideal style of players and they certainly aren’t perfect, but a coherent identity filled with players that contribute to wins is critical and these players can lay the foundation for the future forwards.
If the Blue Jackets leave this draft with Brady Martin and Kashawn Aitcheson (both will highly likely be gone before CBJ’s first pick at 14) their desire in becoming Bullies of the East won’t be so subtle (though it will be heavily contested by the Florida Panthers). It may even be wise considering New Jersey looks like they’ll be contenders during whatever window CBJ has and there’s no reasonable person who believes CBJ will be able to keep up with Hughes/Bratt/Hischier/LHughes/Nemec in a pure rush run-and-gun contest.
I think now is perhaps the appropriate time to talk about Kent Johnson. At first blush, he isn’t what you’d imagine to be an identity-aligned player. Largely, that’s okay. If he can perform when situations get intense, and I think his play toward the end of the year suggested his deception does scale up, he’s got the skillset to be the outlier. Carolina had Marty Necas, Minnesota had Kevin Fiala and Marcus Johansson, Florida has Sam Reinhart. Versatility is important so that doesn’t mean Kent Johnson is an outright misfit. That said, he was an effective forechecker despite still leaving value on the table with his diminuitive frame.
The Critical Role of Defense
A, perhaps, understated part of the potential identity is the freedom it gives and resulting aggression in defensemen it enables. Florida, in particular, has waves of heavy forward lines and re-entry attacking but also set their D free.
Niko Mikkola is not the typical archetype of defenseman that an NHL coach allows to charge up ice with reckless abandon but charge up ice he does. The linked X.com clip shows that his aggression is key offensively but I would also point out that without his joining the rush and flying up ice, Carolina would have likely won back possession.
The Blue Jackets, especially given the similarity in north focused transition over building through possession and in having aggressive defensemen, are positioned well to become at least a stylistic analogue to Florida (To say nothing of Waddell shepherding Carolina who may have been a strong inspiration to Florida). Dean Evason and Paul Maurice have both preached making aggressive mistakes.
Zach Werenski and Denton Mateychuk, to say nothing of Damon Severson even, love charging up ice and getting into the mix. Any defense acquisitions could align with this idea. The Blue Jackets might not need prototypical shutdown defensemen but aggressive stoppers who are comfortable covering ice and can problem solve the tricky situations that are bound to come from overaggression.
The identity, at least as far as I can see, is coming into focus: heavy, forecheck and offensive zone possession oriented forwards (specifically good ability in playing beneath the hashmarks and goal line), aggressive counterattacking, early defending D who play a critical part in the offensive attack.
The Blue Jackets are not yet at the point where their forwards are so possessionally sound that they can insulate poor defensive D, in fact quite the opposite, but that might be an intended end point and something to consider when theorycrafting starpower acquisitions.
It’s important to note, especially when evaluating the CBJ team offensive vs defensive metrics, that Evason’s forechecking structure and exit schemata are designed to trade security for offensive potential. Chipping pucks north quickly may result in great offensive opportunities, moving towards the offensive zone without giving the other team opportunity to get back in their structure, but also may result in a rubber-banding effect where the formation gets fractured and re-entries and re-groups lead to a ton of offense against (this was observed in the tracked data).
This is different from the “build from the back” passing oriented and slow pace offense that you can observe from teams like Toronto or New Jersey who then have much better on-ice shot share metrics but who also don’t have the “finishing”. Their offensive security then results in their players being graded out as good defensively via on-ice metrics. Because, primarily, they are (good possession play is good defense just as good puck transportation through the neutral zone is) but some context and nuance is required when evaluating teams that aren’t quite there yet.
Similarly, his forecheck style coming from underneath the offense (and sometimes leaving F1 behind the play) is exchanging the likelihood of distrupted opposition transition for increased threat if the turnover is created. Perhaps this explains Evason’s team’s tendencies to have high shooting percentages. The ideas, create turnovers and then find the opposite side of the ice, might lead to prioritizing danger over volume (though that isn’t entirely borne out in the data).
Some of the 5v5 offensive results, and corresponding poor defensive results, are designed outcomes. That isn’t to say a team can’t be good defensively while playing Dean Evason hockey (see: Minnesota Wild) but both puck decisions/chips/north play must be improved as must the defensive ability of the players who are asked to put out some of the “fires” that the risk tradeoff creates.
Cup Checklist Objectives:
Find Shutdown Players
Matchup Forwards
Shutdown Defensemen
Grow Fantilli, Kent Johnson and Mateychuk
Maintain Werenski, Monahan, Marchenko
Integrate Lindstrom, Elick, Brindley (Perhaps Two Years From Now)
Replace Jenner, Provorov, Severson, Gudbranson
Find a Star Goaltender (Jet Greaves? 👉👈)
Next Article
Next time out, we’ll look more specifically at the roster and line projections to ascertain which specific areas of the roster could use the most improvement. Dean Evason has ideas on how lines are constructed and deployed, and Blue Jackets core players have specific skills and deficiencies, so finding players who fit may yield the most gains for our dollar.
At the end of the day, the objective is always to build the best team possible for the lowest cost possible. Here’s to hoping Don Waddell’s got some exciting plans.
Great work as always. I really want to see Lindstrom and Marchenko at some point in the future. I think that duo has disgusting potential. Curious what you think of Marrelli.