from Michael Arace of the Columbus Dispatch,

Last season gave Blue Jackets management a bromide to drink and a pill to swallow. The bromide was a 15-1-1 flourish at the end of a season in which the team lost 508 man-games to injury. The pill was an amalgam of garish defensive statistics — the Jackets allowed more goals than all but five teams in the NHL and more shots than all but two teams — and another spring without playoff hockey.

John Davidson, president of hockey operations, and Jarmo Kekalainen, the general manager, drank the bromide. They did not swallow the pill.

Davidson said it in April: “We have a real good thing going on. Two and a half years ago, we were 30th in the league. (Last season) we were 16 games over .500 from Dec. 1 on, and we can be even better than that.”

Kekalainen said in September: “I know one thing going in — we’re healthy. So, that’s a real strong improvement for us.”

Clearly, there was still something wrong with the Jackets, who started 0-8 and got their coach fired. They are a cap team, to the point where they have to make two or three transactions before they can even think of making a waiver claim on goaltender Anton Khudobin. If you are a Jackets fan, you thank the owner for writing big checks and you wonder how the money has been spent.

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