Reverse Rebuild

Columbus Blue Jackets GM Andrew Payeur raised a lot of eyebrows when he completed the tear down of his team on April 19th by trading Evgeny Kuznetsov to the Vancouver Canucks for a package of younger assets. The deal left offseason acquisition and Bruins cast off Derek Ryan as the teams number one center, a role he never expected to fill in his NHL career. Maybe Payeur saw something in him that the rest of the league didn't? Since the trade, the Blue Jackets have been on a tear, going 8-1-2 and pulling within 4 points of the final wildcard playoff position in the Lemieux conference. The team's top line of Ryan along with Timo Meier and Jeff Skinner have found chemistry and is chipping in enough offense to eek out wins, while the rest of the defensive minded forward group shuts things down. This new found defensive identity has allowed goaltender Matt Murray to rebound from a rough start to the season behind a paper thin defense unit. Coach Bruce Cassidy has begun deploying lineups with 7 defenseman as a means to lower the dependency on the teams 6th defenceman whether that be Christian Djoos or Dylan McIlrath.

By contrast, the recently franchise tagged Kuznetsov has managed just 3 points in his 9 games as a Canuck and is a -6. The Canucks have lost 6 straight. Evgeni Malkin, traded only a few weeks earlier to the New York Rangers, had slightly more success in his new suroudings but not enough to prevent a trade to the Boston Bruins after only 24 games. The Rangers have been dropping down the standings since that trade and now sit only 5 points ahead of the Blue Jackets for 3rd in the Metropolitan division. Should this Blue Jackets roster somehow make it into the playoffs after such a profound tear down to the roster, calling it a "cinderalla run" may be an understatement.