Young Blue Jackets in nascent stages of building true chemistry

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A collection of notes, insights, ruminations and did-you-knows gathered throughout the week that was for the Blue Jackets:

Item No. 1: Experience imbalance

Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang played their first game together with the Pittsburgh Penguins on Oct. 16, 2006, the same year that Twitter was invented, Blu-ray discs became available and Pluto was downgraded from a planet.

Blue Jackets center Cole Sillinger was three years old. Rookie winger Kent Johnson was two days from turning four.

The Penguins are an extreme example — the only other three players with that much time together in major team sports are Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada of the New York Yankees — but the Blue Jackets’ early schedule this season has highlighted what it means to have a veteran club.

The Blue Jackets are the third-youngest club in the NHL this season with an average age of 25.7 years old. That’s not a surprise given the steps GM Jarmo Kekalainen began undertaking two years ago to rebuild — err, restart — the organization.

But there’s another way to measure the Blue Jackets’ relative youth, and it’s something that’s been glaring in early-season games against Carolina, Tampa Bay, St. Louis and especially Pittsburgh on Saturday.

Blue Jackets captain Boone Jenner is in his 10th season in Columbus. Zach Werenski is in his seventh. Goaltender Joonas Korpisalo is entering his fifth full season. Those are the only players on the roster who are in their fifth seasons as Blue Jackets.

There are five players in their first seasons: Johnny Gaudreau, Mathieu Olivier and Erik Gudbranson, plus Johnson and Nick Blankenburg, who each saw minimal action at the end of last season.

Seven other players are in their second seasons in Columbus: Jakub Voracek, Yegor Chinakhov, Sillinger, Justin Danforth, Sean Kuraly, Andrew Peeke and Jake Bean.

That’s 12 of the 18 players in the starting lineup on Saturday vs. Pittsburgh that have been Blue Jackets for a little more than one season or less.

So while most of the clubs the Blue Jackets have played in the first two weeks of the season have gone through major ups and downs together on and off the ice, have played thousands of shifts together, and have developed instinctive reads and interactions based on years of playing together, the Blue Jackets are still, really, getting to know each other.

Always the best graphic on the day #NHL rosters get set.#CBJ getting older, folks. Now the fourth-youngest team in the league. https://t.co/jgRpWkS1g7

— Aaron Portzline (@Aportzline) October 11, 2022

Former Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella used to refer to it as having “scars” from the tough lessons of the NHL.

“That’s the goal. That’s what we’re trying to build here,” said veteran winger Gus Nyquist, in his fourth season with the Blue Jackets. He started his NHL career with eight seasons in Detroit when the Red Wings were the league’s most veteran club.

“You grow closer and closer, like a little family,” Nyquist said. “That’s how it goes. You grow as a team and you start trusting every guy out there because you know what you’re going to get from them every night.”

The Blue Jackets had that nucleus of veteran players before Kekalainen made the call to “restart” at the 2021 trade deadline. In the span of a few months, Nick Foligno, Cam Atkinson, David Savard and Seth Jones were traded.

And now the cycle begins again, with Johnson, Sillinger and Chinakhov seen as major pieces in the Blue Jackets’ future, with more young help — most notably defenseman David Jiricek — on the way in a year or so.

In the meantime, there will be growing pains.

Tampa Bay, which blew the doors off the Blue Jackets in the home opener, has eight players who have been on the roster for six or more seasons, including Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov and Victor Hedman, who have played together for 10 years.

Carolina, which pulled away from the Jackets in the season opener, has a cluster of players — Jordan Staal, Jaccob Slavin, Sebastian Aho, Brett Pesce and Teuvo Teravainen — who have been teammates for seven seasons.

Nashville and St. Louis have similar nuclei that have bonded through years of playing together. And then there’s Pittsburgh, where Crosby, Malkin and Letang have played together since most of the Blue Jackets players were in elementary school, and others (Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust and Brian Dumoulin) have spent the past seven seasons together.

That continuity and confidence were on full display Saturday when the Penguins spotted the Blue Jackets a 3-1 lead early in the second period and never flinched. They ended up with a 6-3 win when the Jackets came unglued defensively in the final period.

“You see it in the little details,” said Voracek, who spent nine years with Philadelphia before his trade back to Columbus in the summer of 2021.

“You might not see it right away, but it’s there at the important parts of the season, at the big moments in games. Those little plays, little details. We got that way on the power play in Philly, where it was just automatic. Guys were always where they were supposed to be. Not a half-foot to the right or left, but right there. We know how it moved.”

Voracek, 33, sat in his locker stall in the corner of the dressing room earlier this week. He was here once before when the Blue Jackets were building something they thought would be special with Rick Nash, Derick Brassard, Steve Mason, Voracek and others but it never came to fruition.

Ultimately, the players have to be good enough to deserve to stick in the NHL. Then the player has to commit to staying in Columbus long enough for roots to develop and the Blue Jackets have to foster an organization that is attractive enough to keep players. Let’s be clear: all of these have been issues at different times in Columbus.

The Blue Jackets believe they have the talent to make the playoffs this season, but they’re just in the nascent stage of growing together as an organization. The growing pains are, well, painful, as Saturday’s embarrassing loss to Pittsburgh showed.

“You can see where it’s going here, right?” Voracek said. “I’ll probably be gone by then, but everything is going to be happening here. You can just see it.”

Item No. 2: Blankenburg’s big move

With all of the buzz generated by Blue Jackets rookie defenseman Nick Blankenburg, it’s worth revisiting the moment when his hockey career took a surprising and dramatic turn.

It happened about a month into the 2016-17 season, when Blankenburg — after being cut by two North American Hockey League clubs — was playing midget hockey for Victory Honda, a Tier I elite program out of Detroit. That’s the same level as the Ohio AAA Blue Jackets.

Blankenburg, 18, was the oldest player on the club and no more than a second-line forward … until Victory played at a showcase tournament in Pittsburgh.

“We had one defenseman get hurt and another get kicked off the team,” Blankenburg said. “So we had only four defensemen and we still had two games to play (in the tournament).

“Our coach (Brian Burke) came into the room and said ‘Does anybody want to play D? We could really use somebody.’ Everybody kind of looked around, but nobody said anything. So I raised my hand and said, ‘Sure, I’ll go back there.'”

Blankenburg played those two games, then went back to forward for two weeks before the blue line was hit again. One player was injured, another joined a major junior program, and another quit.

“So I went back on defense and played well for a couple of games,” Blankenburg said. “And then coach Burke and I decided that we should probably be considering switching to D full time.

“It’s crazy how things work out.”

Burke, who is still coaching Victory Honda today, said Blankenburg’s transformation was instantly staggering.

“I told him, ‘Look, if you really don’t want to do this, I’m not going to make you do it,'” Burke told The Athletic this week. “But he talked to his parents about it and came back the next day and said ‘I’m in. I’ll do it.’

“Really, to be honest, the world truly and literally opened up for him right from that point on. Things started happening for him on the ice. He just started gaining more confidence and having more and more success.”

brb watching this Blanks celly on repeat pic.twitter.com/Q0x4mU6BaV

— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) October 21, 2022

One year later, Blankenburg joined the Okotoks Oilers of the Alberta Junior Hockey League, one level below the Canadian major junior programs. That’s where a scout for the University of Michigan noticed him and how Blankenburg made his way to Ann Arbor, where he slowly started to generate NHL interest in a four-year run with the Wolverines.

The Blue Jackets signed him as an undrafted free agent last spring after Blankenburg turned down offers from several other clubs. After getting a taste of the NHL late last season, he was a healthy scratch for the first three games this season.

But since he’s come into the lineup, Blankenburg has been one of the Blue Jackets’ best players; certainly one of their best defensemen. None of this happens if Blankenburg didn’t heed his coach’s call.

“It’s a great story,” Burke said. “Nobody could have predicted the success that’s come his way.”

Item No. 3: Snacks

• Injured right winger Patrik Laine (elbow) continues to skate and shoot pucks, adding a little more power to his shot each day. The Jackets are sticking with the original timeline for recovery — three to four weeks — but it’s looking more likely that Laine will make the trip to Finland for two games against Colorado on Nov. 4-5. The Blue Jackets will depart for Helsinki next weekend after an afternoon game in New Jersey on Oct. 30.

• The NHL allows clubs participating in the Global Series games to bring along an extra goaltender. Joonas Korpisalo, who had hip surgery early last April and has yet to appear in a game, is expecting to make the trip, likely as the third goalie behind Elvis Merzlikins and Daniil Tarasov. Korpisalo was born in Pori, Finland, a coastal city about 90 minutes west of Tampere, where the games will be played.

• The Blue Jackets released their “Reverse Retro” sweater this week. They plan to wear them for six home games this season: Nov. 23 vs. Montreal, Dec. 4 vs. Detroit, Dec. 9 vs. Calgary, Dec. 27 vs. Buffalo, Jan. 16 vs. the New York Rangers, Jan. 31 vs. Washington.

#CBJ release their “reverse retro” sweater to be worn six times this season. First game with the new duds will be Nov. 23 vs. Montreal. pic.twitter.com/fHXYIHQucl

— Aaron Portzline (@Aportzline) October 20, 2022

• After a slow start to the season, second-line center Jack Roslovic has started to be a difference-maker again. He might have been the Blue Jackets’ best player in Saturday’s loss to the Penguins, scoring his first goal of the season on a short-handed breakaway and later assisting on Kent Johnson’s first NHL goal. One other thing to note about Roslovic’s play so far this season: He’s been the club’s second-most reliable player on faceoffs, with a 52.1 percent win rate that’s second only to Boone Jenner (64.9 percent).

• Second-year center Cole Sillinger is off to a slow start. Let’s not call it a sophomore slump just yet, but Sillinger is pointless through six games with only seven shots on goal. Larsen has cut his ice time, too, with Roslovic drawing more and Sillinger less in recent games. He played under 10 minutes (9:47) in the mid-week win over Nashville.

• A retired NHL scout reached out this week with an interesting thought after watching Blankenburg’s recent games. The small, undrafted blueliner reminded him of long-ago Blue Jackets defenseman Duvie Westcott (2001-02 to 2007-08), who was listed at 5-foot-10, 191 pounds and went undrafted, signing with the Blue Jackets after playing college hockey at St. Cloud State. Blankenburg may be more skilled, and Westcott was certainly more physical. Older Blue Jackets fans will no doubt remember Westcott’s beatdown of Detroit’s Sean Avery during the 2002-03 season. Westcott suffered a series of concussions in the NHL and finished his career in Europe, retiring in 2015 after three seasons in Germany.

• Blankenburg and Voracek connected on a beautiful goal in the Blue Jackets’ comeback win over Nashville, with Blankenburg attacking through the right circle after Voracek won a puck battle high in the zone and delivered a perfect pass. Voracek, who sits just a couple seats over from Blankenburg in the dressing room, has been impressed. Others have compared Blankenburg to St. Louis’ Torey Krug or Minnesota’s Jared Spurgeon, but Voracek went a different direction. “That’s the natural instincts of that player,” Voracek said of Blankenburg’s game-winning goal. “There’s no reason for him to not have a career just like Kris Letang’s, in my opinion. I would push it that far, and I told him that (after the game). The work that he’s put in, how much better he got over the summer … that’s impressive. But his timing is really something. That’s really what it’s all about.”

• Jenner will play his 596th NHL game today when the Blue Jackets play in the Garden, putting him fifth on the franchise list. By the end of this week, he should pass David Savard (597) and close in on Nick Foligno (599). He’s on pace to play his 600th game on Nov. 5 in Tampere, Finland, joining only two other Blue Jackets to have played in 600 games for the franchise: Rick Nash (674) and Cam Atkinson (627).

• Zach Werenski’s goal last week vs. Vancouver was the 77th of his career, moving him past Nikolay Zherdev and into 10th place on the franchise’s all-time list. Werenski is tops among Columbus defensemen.

• Winger Kirill Marchenko has started his AHL career with a four-game point streak. He has 4-2-6 and a plus-5 rating heading into today’s matchup between AHL Cleveland and Lehigh Valley. He also has 10 shots on goal and a shootout goal. Marchenko has played on a line with center Brendan Gaunce and winger Carson Meyer.

• Defenseman David Jiricek has three assists in the last two games for AHL Cleveland. He’s played on the right side of the Monsters’ top pair with Gavin Bayreuther to his left, putting up a plus-4 rating so far this season. The AHL tracks time on ice by player, but doesn’t make the information public. The AHL office this week said the numbers aren’t public because the league doesn’t trust their accuracy, but they’re in the process of working on a solution.

• Winger Emil Bemstrom had two more goals Saturday for AHL Cleveland, including the OT game winner. That’s four goals in four games this season and six in eight career AHL games.

• The NHL waiver wire provided a blast from the past this week when Philadelphia claimed winger Lukas Sedlak off waivers from Colorado. Sedlak spent six seasons in the Blue Jackets organization, including three seasons in the NHL (2016-17 to 2018-19) before signing to play in Russia. After three seasons in the KHL, he signed with the Avs and returned to the NHL. Now he’s reunited with Tortorella in Philly.

• Don’t look now, but the supposedly awful Flyers are fast out of the gate (4-1-0) under Tortorella. Just catching two periods of a game this week you can see a huge difference in their pace of play. The Flyers in recent seasons have played in slow motion. This year’s club does everything at full throttle.

(Photo of Nick Blankenburg skating against Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin: Aaron Doster / USA Today)