"To sit here and say we're a Stanley Cup team, there are steps to take there,” Waddell said. “Do I believe that we're heading that direction? Absolutely. Do I believe we can get in the playoffs and win some rounds with this hockey club? Yes.”
That will be music to the ears of CBJ players, who had no hesitation when asked Thursday after a 4-2 victory over Florida if they consider themselves a playoff team. The win over the Panthers extended the Blue Jackets’ win streak to three games and moved the team to within a point of the Eastern Conference’s last wild card spot as well as three points of the second-place tie in the Metropolitan Division.
READ MORE: Blue Jackets add Garland | 5 things to know about the deal
With 21 games to go, it will be no easy task to clinch a playoff spot in the tightly contested East, but the Blue Jackets feel they have a squad that can get there.
“Yeah, absolutely,” forward Mathieu Olivier said. “This is the vibe in the room right now. We’re playing for playoffs, and we’re getting ready for playoffs. We’re aware of the challenge. It’s not gonna be easy, and the East, it’s really good this year. We were just looking the other day and I guess with our points total, we’d be in first in the Pacific, which is crazy, and we’re out of the playoffs in the East right now. But that just means every game is a must-win for us, and it’s a playoff mentality.”
Much of that has been built through a strong culture in the locker room, with the Blue Jackets becoming a tight-knit group over the last year and a half. That bond helped push the team from consecutive last-place finishes in the Metro to within one win of a postseason berth a year ago, and the belief endured even as the team hit the halfway mark of this year struggling to keep the pace.
But the Jan. 12 appointment of Rick Bowness as the team’s head coach has led to a 13-2-1 record in his tenure, and the Blue Jackets keep passing tests as they come along. With that in mind, goalie Jet Greaves agreed with Olivier’s assessment that the Blue Jackets believe they’re postseason-ready.
“Yeah, absolutely,” Greaves said. “I think it’s such a close group in here, and that’s such an important thing in trying to make a playoff push and make a run in the playoffs is having that closeness within the group, and I think we have that here. I think there’s so much depth on this team, guys that are in the lineup, guys that are out of the lineup. I think that’s so important, too – every guy stepping up every night.
“We care about it a lot and care about each other a lot and trying to find a way to get in the playoffs, we’re excited about the opportunity. We feel good about the group.”
Adding Garland should only strengthen that belief, as the Blue Jackets acquired an eight-year veteran who has averaged 20 goals and 49 points per 82 games in his career. Garland should fit in as a middle-six wing whose size (5-10, 165) belies a strength and competitiveness that makes him one of the harder players to battle in the NHL.
While his numbers have dipped a little bit this season – he has a 7-19-26 line in 50 games – Waddell attributes some of that to the struggles in Vancouver, which is in last place in the league by 12 points. When Garland hit the market, Waddell was looking to add to his forward group, and talks with the Canucks intensified in recent days.
“We wanted to add a forward, someone that could score and help the top six, the top two lines,” Waddell said. “So we went in with that thinking. As it progressed through Wednesday, Thursday, we talked about a few players – as you know, there's some other players that were moved – and we had really focused on Connor and were able to continue those dialogues with Vancouver for multiple days Wednesday, Thursday, and then finally got it to the finish line.”
Another attractive part of the deal is that Garland signed a six-year, $6 million AAV contract extension with the Canucks that won’t kick in until next year. As Vancouver fell into last place and started a rebuild, Garland became available, and now the Blue Jackets have a productive forward locked up just as the salary cap starts to rise in the coming years.
“The other thing, contracts this league continue to escalate,” Waddell said. "We're getting a player that's 29, soon to be 30. Cost certainty is important because as you go into free agency, guys that are 33, 34 years old all want the same five-, six-year terms. Getting a guy at his age knowing what the cost is, it was perfect for us.”
Waddell acknowledged that he likely would have been a seller at the deadline were it not for the recent CBJ turnaround, especially as the Blue Jackets have forwards Boone Jenner, Charlie Coyle, Mason Marchment and Danton Heinen as well as defenseman Erik Gudbranson set to become unrestricted free agents over the summer.
Waddell decided before the Olympic break, though, that this team deserved to stay together. He originally entertained trying to sign some of those players during the break but after conversations with players and agents decided to table those discussions until the offseason.
He liked what he heard during those talks and didn’t see a pressing reason to lock up players, noting that if the two sides want to stay together, they’ll be able to come to terms down the road.
In the meantime, everyone who went into the week as a Blue Jacket stayed that way, and now a group with a strong sense of belief has every chance to accomplish its goals.
“These guys have proven they can be a very good team, and I always look at they deserve to have the opportunity to take it to the next level,” Waddell said. “I’ve never gotten caught up with the UFAs, that you have to turn them all into assets. I just don’t buy that. There’s years if you’re completely out of it, maybe it’s a little different.
“But if we’re competing as we’ve competed all year, to pull some kind of asset out of that locker room that’s done a pretty good job for us, just to get something for three, four, five years down the road, that doesn’t make sense to me.”
