1. Will the momentum carry over?<\/p>\n
Columbus was expected to finish well outside of the race for the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season but ended up two points behind the New Jersey Devils for third in the Metropolitan Division and the Montreal Canadiens for the second wild card from the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
This season could determine if that upward trajectory is the new norm. Even last season, full of positives, was mired by inconsistency.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jackets won 5-3 against the Detroit Red Wings in the 2025 Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series at Ohio Stadium on March 1, capping a four-game winning streak. They were 1-7-1 in the next nine games, denting postseason hopes that six straight wins to finish the season couldn\u2019t rescue.<\/p>\n
That experience could be invaluable in taking the next step.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always say, March and April, for some reason, they\u2019re harder to win in than October and November,\u201d general manager Don Waddell said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make any sense, but that\u2019s what we talk about. And we went through a dip in March. To be honest, I was wondering if we were going to get out of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did. That\u2019s a strong sign of this locker room.”<\/p>\n
2. Can the defense rise to the occasion?<\/p>\n
There was plenty of offense last season. The Blue Jackets averaged 3.26 goals to rank eighth in the NHL and fifth in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
The entire lineup seemed to produce. Kirill Marchenko<\/a> and Adam Fantilli<\/a> tied for the team lead with 31 goals. Kent Johnson<\/a> (24), Zach Werenski<\/a> (23) and Dmitri Voronkov<\/a> (23) combined for another 70.<\/p>\n But the problem was that output was matched with an average of 3.26 goals against, eighth worst in the League.<\/p>\n The production is fine, but the defense needs to tighten for it to mean much.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to keep the puck out of the net more, right?\u201d coach Dean Evason said. \u201cLike, we\u2019ve talked about our scoring was good this year. We\u2019ve got to keep the puck out of our net. So, our defensive game has to be better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. Will the momentum carry over? Columbus was expected to finish well outside of the race for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-67822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}