It has been another subpar season for the Columbus Blue Jackets in the NHL standings. With 13 games left in the season, they are at the bottom of the Eastern Conference and fourth last across the league. It’s not going to be an easy ride for Ohio’s team to get to game 82 as they face a gauntlet of heavyweight teams with a lot on the line through the end of March and beginning of April. Let’s have a look at the teams they’ll be playing against and why they’ll be hard-fought.
Colorado Avalanche – March 22 & April 1
The Blue Jackets have yet to play the Colorado Avalanche this season. Last season, they lost both games in the season series with a minus-7 goal differential, allowing 11 goals. Another steamrolling from Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, and crew is possible as they have reason to be fired up.
They’ll be on the prowl as they chase the Presidents’ Trophy and the top seed in the Western Conference. MacKinnon will still be in the chase for his first Art Ross Trophy as the league’s leading scorer as he continues a Hart Trophy-worthy season. The team was freshened up by a few trade deadline acquisitions and they look like a legitimate Stanley Cup contender. It will be a good test for Columbus’ young players to be on the same sheet of ice as one of the top teams in the NHL.
Vegas Golden Knights – March 23
From one legitimate Stanley Cup contender to another, the defending champion Vegas Golden Knights. It’s on the tail end of a back-to-back, and on the road no less. This will be a particularly tough weekend for the Jackets. Despite their upper-echelon talent, the Golden Knights only have a three-point hold on a playoff spot. Every game will matter for them down the stretch and you can bet that they’ll be looking at the Blue Jackets as an easy target to get a couple more points from.
Although they’re missing their captain, most of the other players who they’ve missed for extended periods this season are back in the lineup. First-line center Jack Eichel is having a career year, and at age 33, former Blue Jacket Jonathan Marchessault is on pace for his first-ever 40-goal season. The Golden Knights play a stifling defensive system under coach Bruce Cassidy that will be tough for the Blue Jackets to punch through. And when they do make it to the net, it’ll be tough to slip a puck through goalies Adin Hill and Logan Thompson, who have been solid this season.
Arizona Coyotes – March 26
If the Blue Jackets are looking ahead to one game on the schedule, this could be it. As of now, the Arizona Coyotes are relatively even with Columbus in the standings. Honestly, when you look closely, there are a lot of similarities between the two teams. Both are young teams with poor defense and unproven goaltending.
The Coyotes have guns that can fire though, with five players expected to eclipse 20 goals this season. Clayton Keller is leading the way once again as a near-point-per-game performer and will probably create some magic at some point in the evening. Their first meeting of the season was a close 3-2 win for Arizona, but the Blue Jackets had 41 of the game’s 73 shots on goal. This one should be fun for Columbus and one that they’ll have a legitimate shot to win.
Pittsburgh Penguins – March 28 & March 30
It’s always a hard-fought game for Columbus against Sidney Crosby and his Pittsburgh Penguins. Steel City’s team has been in a tailspin during the 2023-24 season. They started on a high, adding a 100-point scoring defender in Erik Karlsson and a ton of other reinforcements to a team that only missed the playoffs by one point in 2022-23. However, the nearly 20 years of wear and tear on their core players, along with a bare cupboard, bereft of prospects from years of buying at the trade deadline, has caught up with the organization.
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A stellar season from 36-year-old Crosby hasn’t been enough to power the team back to relevance, and the next few years are going to be tough on them. Pittsburgh won each of the first two games these teams have played this season, both in 5-3 games. It’s never easy to play a game against three or four future Hall of Famers and they’ll be pushing extra hard to beat the Blue Jackets in this home-and-home series, to make their season go out with a bang instead of a whimper.
New York Islanders – April 4
The New York Islanders’ new head coach Patrick Roy is as competitive as they come. He’s going to be pushing his team as hard as he can to make up the three points that separate his squad from a playoff spot. Long Island’s team has had its moments in 2023-24 and they’ll put up a formidable front against Columbus.
It really doesn’t matter if they put Ilya Sorokin or Semyon Varlamov between the pipes, the two make one of the top goaltending duos in the NHL. The super-skilled Mat Barzal has been having a top-notch season and defenseman Noah Dobson has broken out as a player that should appear on many Norris Trophy ballots come June. They’ll be looking at the Blue Jackets as an easy target to pick up a couple of standings points in their chase for the postseason.
Philadelphia Flyers – April 6
Speaking of competitive head coaches, the Philadelphia Flyers’ John Tortorella is going to push his current team hard against his former team. If you had told anyone in September that the Flyers were going to be in a playoff spot all season long, you would have been institutionalized. Yet here we are, nearly April and the Flyers still hold the third-place position in the Metropolitan Division.
The Flyers won the first two games against the Blue Jackets this season by two and three goals, respectively, but Columbus punched back winning their last match on Jan. 4 in a shootout. On paper, the Blue Jackets have a real chance to win, but in practice Tortorella always makes his teams perform greater than the sum of its parts. Columbus will be bruised up if they wind up topping the gentlemen in black and orange.
Carolina Hurricanes – April 7 & April 16
The Blue Jackets face another legitimate Stanley Cup contender in their two games against the Carolina Hurricanes. The Canes have one of the deepest defense corps in the league, a goalie tandem that has been exquisite over the last month, and if that wasn’t enough, they added a 40-goal scorer at the trade deadline.
Jake Guentzel has been wreaking havoc on opposing teams in his first few games with his new squad. And you can bet that he, along with Sebastian Aho, Andrei Svechnikov, Martin Necas, and Teuvo Teravainen will be pushing hard to build chemistry as they head towards what they hope will be a long playoff run. They’re only a game back of the top seed in the Metropolitan and so they’ll hope to secure it with a potential four points against the worst team in their division.
Tampa Bay Lightning – April 9
It’s a similar story to the Avalanche, except the Tampa Bay Lightning’s star players are just a few years older. Multiple Hall of Fame players and among them, Nikita Kucherov is having another Hart Trophy caliber season while he chases his second league scoring title. As of right now, the Lightning’s grip on a playoff spot is a little less secure, but should be more in hand by the time this game happens on April 9. Mostly for Tampa, they’ll be trying to get into playoff form as they hope to get back to the Stanley Cup Final for the fourth time in five years.
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It’s never easy against the Lightning, who have been on guard when playing the Blue Jackets since they were swept by them in the 2019 Playoffs. In their last 11 meetings, Columbus has only won twice and have a minus-19 goal differential.
Florida Panthers – April 11
By most accounts, the Florida Panthers are the best team in the Eastern Conference. The Stanley Cup runner-up last year plays a bruising style of game. They’ve got world-class talent in Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk, as well as a soon-to-be first-time 50-goal scorer in Sam Reinhart.
In goal, they’ve got former Blue Jacket and future Hall of Famer Sergei Bobrovsky and Anthony Stolarz, who has been even better than ‘Bob’ statistically. There is no easy path to victory for Columbus here, unless the Panthers take the night off and rest some of their players in preparation for their playoff push.
Nashville Predators – April 13
The intensity of this game will depend on how long the Nashville Predators continue on this hot streak that they’ve been riding, which is currently at 13-0-2. The Predators will be another team pushing for a post-season berth, but they’re another team that has been playing greater than the sum of their parts. These teams last met on March 9, when Nashville was at the height of its powers. It was a close 2-1 finish, but only because of Jackets’ goalie Daniil Tarasov who made 47 saves. If the Preds regress to their norm, Columbus should have more of a shot at winning this one.
Here’s the thing. Regardless of how lackluster of a season it’s been for the Blue Jackets, there will still be a ton of talent on the bench across from them in every game they play. The next 13 games are going to be a gauntlet for this young Columbus team to run. However, it should be an incredible opportunity for development as they strive to be out of Draft Lottery contention in 2024-25.