COLUMBUS
Womens Aaron Rodgers #12 Jersey , Ohio (AP) The Blue Jackets brass thought they had assembled a playoff-caliber team last season. They continued to believe it even
after Columbus started 0-8 and finished in the Metropolitan Division basement.
Team President John Davidson was as shocked as anyone by the result, but he
urged everyone to be patient. He and general manager Jarmo Kekalainen stuck to
their blueprint for a contending team built through years of promising draft
picks and strategic trades for up-and-comers and veteran grinders, staying well
below the salary cap. The patience has paid off: Picked by most analysts to
finish near the bottom again, the Blue Jackets shattered franchise records for
wins and points, and will be in the Stanley Cup playoffs that begin next week.
They lack a superstar goal-scorer like Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby or Chicago’s
Patrick Kane but have found the right combination of veterans, dynamic rookies,
reliable role-players and an elite goaltender in Sergei Bobrovsky, who is a
Vezina Trophy candidate again after overcoming a series of injuries. ”You know
sometimes you take a step backward? That was like taking five steps backward,
and it was very painful for the whole organization,” said Davidson, a former
player and broadcaster who had taken on a rebuilding project in St. Louis before
coming to Columbus in 2012. ”So you have to not get caught up in making goofy
deals that really are short-term,” he said. ”You really have to do things that
are still within the parameters of your game plan and let everybody else voice
(their) opinions.” There were apologies to the long-suffering fans last
offseason
David Bakhtiari Home Game Jersey , but no panic. No blockbuster trades, no headline-grabbing, free-agent signings. The core of the team that finished 34-40-8 was left intact,
complemented with a group of hot rookies that led the team’s AHL affiliate in
Cleveland to a Calder Cup championship. John Tortorella, the irascible coach
hired after last season’s flailing start, was given another season to imprint
his driven, no-nonsense culture. ”On paper, we all thought we were going to do
something last year,” said 27-year-old winger Matt Calvert, the team’s
longest-tenured player at seven seasons. ”This year, within the first month and
a half of the season, that’s when we really started seeing what we could do. We
started winning games
Authentic Aaron Rodgers Packers Jersey , we started feeling good about ourselves. You’ve seen guys step into roles they’ve never been in before and excelling.” A franchise-record
16-game winning streak from Nov. 29 to Jan. 5 grabbed attention and energized
fans in Columbus. Average attendance for all home dates this year is tracking
back up after a steady decline beginning in the mid-2000s. The 15,800 average is
the best since the 2006-07 season. The core of the current Blue Jackets began to
take shape around the time the organization’s first superstar was traded away.
Rick Nash, the captain and face of the expansion team throughout the 2000s,
helped win over college football-obsessed fans in central Ohio to big-time
hockey. But he was tired of losing and wanted a change. He was traded to the New
York Rangers in July 2012 in a five-player deal that brought stalwart center
Brandon Dubinsky to Columbus. The Blue Jackets also acquired Bobrovsky from
Philadelphia for draft choices, and Nick Foligno – now a top-line winger and the
Blue Jackets captain – came over in a deal with Ottawa. The experienced players,
along with draft picks Cam Atkinson, Calvert and David Savard, took the Blue
Jackets to the playoffs as a wildcard in 2014. They won the first playoff games
in franchise history but lost the opening series to Pittsburgh, also their
first-round opponent next week. The summer of 2015 brought 22-year-old Brandon
Saad, a key player in Chicago’s Stanley Cup run the previou ?s season, to Columbus
in a surprising trade. Calvert called it a turning point. ”He had playoff
experience,” Calvert said. ”He was a young guy who added some skill to our
lineup. I think that was a big thing we needed.” Another key piece was added in
January 2016 when the Blue Jackets shipped fan favorite Ryan Johansen to
Nashville in exchange for defenseman Seth Jones. The pairing of the 22-year-old
Jones with 19-year-old rookie Zach Werenski
Authentic Nike Mike Daniels Jersey , the eighth overall pick in the 2015 draft, has given Columbus one of the league’s best defensive tandems. Top contributors Boone
Jenner, Lukas Sedlak, Josh Anderson, Alexander Wennberg and Markus Nutivaara
were draft picks developed in the minors. One of the last puzzle pieces was Sam
Gagner, who signed a one-year free agent contract last summer for a
bargain-basement $650,000 and then had one of best seasons of his 10-year NHL
career. ”It’s not like other sports where you draft and players immediately play
for you,” Davidson said. ”It’s a terrible word in a lot of ways, but patience
has to be the strength of the organization when you’re building.” — Follow Mitch
Stacy at http://twitter.com/mitchstacy.
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