Three seasons ago, Charlie Coyle was on the winningest regular-season team in NHL history.
The Boston Bruins showed up every night believing they would win, and they usually did just that. By the end of the 82-game schedule, the Bruins had racked up 65 victories, most ever for an NHL team.
Boston then took a 3-1 lead in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs against Florida, only to see the Panthers roar back and win the series in seven games.
Now a CBJ center who has made the playoffs in each of his first 13 seasons, Coyle noted that while it sure was fun to win almost every night during the season, that success might have been a detriment to the Bruins come the end of the year.
“The regular season is one thing, but we had it so good,” Coyle said. “Sometimes you need a little adversity; I think you do. It’s not smooth sailing the whole way. You need to learn stuff because then when you get into situations where crap is hitting the fan, it’s like, ‘Ahh, we’ve never been here. What do we do?’ You go through that stuff early, you learn from it and you move on.”
For the Blue Jackets, that adversity currently is in the form of their inability to close out games over the past few weeks. Columbus has points in nine of the last 11 games, but that time span also includes five overtime/shootout losses, and the Blue Jackets held the lead in the third period of four of those five games. In all, Columbus lost five games in November in which they had a third-period lead, leaving six points on the table in the process.
The Blue Jackets sit in last place in the Metropolitan Division, but if they had those six points, they’d be in a tie with New Jersey – tonight's opponent – for second place. That suggests two things – the Blue Jackets aren't far away from being in a good spot in the Eastern Conference standings, but the points left on the table are becoming an unavoidable storyline for the squad.
“We’re sick of talking about it,” defenseman Zach Werenski said. “I’m sure you guys are sick of asking about it, and I’m sure fans are sick of seeing it. At the end of the day, it’s on us to find a way to win in regulation and close a game out. I think that’s in here and that’s in this room, and it just comes down to doing it now.”
The biggest thing the Blue Jackets are looking for is the best answer to turning things around. Schematically, there’s been no underlying theme, which makes it more difficult to pinpoint where to focus their energies.
In some of the games that got away, Columbus appeared to be on its heels, too focused on protecting the lead and absorbing pressure until the dam burst. In other games, the Blue Jackets kept playing the same way as they did to build those leads, only to see mistakes at crucial times lead to a puck going in the back of the net.
There’s been some bad luck – see the one-in-a-million puck deflected by Mathieu Olivier over Jet Greaves in the final minute Nov. 10 at Edmonton – and likely some decisions the Blue Jackets would like to have back, too.
“Are we trying to figure out what’s going on? Yeah, for sure,” head coach Dean Evason said. “Do we see a pattern of some sort? No. That's what we go back and look at. Is there something – is it our defensive zone coverage? Is it cheating for offense? What is it? There’s several different things that we come up with, and the bottom line is we just have to stay the course, do what we do and believe that it’s going to turn around. That’s all you can do. You can learn from the past, but you can’t dwell on it, so we’re moving forward.”
In fact, the biggest thing the Blue Jackets may have to figure out is the mentality needed to get to the other side. Clearly, they’ve played a lot of good hockey to put themselves in positions to win, but while Werenski maintains there’s no “here we go again” feeling on the bench if things go wrong in the third, the team has met to talk about what it needs to do to finish games off.
There’s a risk of thinking about it too much and a risk in not addressing it, so it’s a fine line that has to be walked.
“It’s the same thing when you’re not scoring,” Evason said. “You start thinking about scoring, and then you’re not gonna score. We need to believe again that we just have to keep doing the same things over and over again, and then it’ll turn. When it does turn – as you guys know, you’ve been around long enough, as I have – when things turn, it turns. And we need it to turn, but we still have to do our work.”
It’s a message echoed by many of the team’s older players, including a new addition in defenseman Brendan Smith. The 14-year NHL veteran signed with the Blue Jackets last Monday and debuted with the squad Wednesday, and he’s seen a fair amount in his time in the league.
He’s brought a bit of an outside perspective, as well, and Smith noted his initial look at the Blue Jackets shows a team that just has to stay the course.
“Some of the guys would be like, ‘Hey, Smitty, what are you seeing?’ because it's also nice to have an outsider opinion,” Smith said. “And I'm just like, ‘Honestly, guys, I think we're doing really well. We're playing well. You know what, a couple of bounces our way, things would have been totally different and we're not even having this conversation.’
“I mentioned the hockey gods, but they’re funny. They have a weird sense of humor, and I think you just gotta continue to stay at it. I have lots of friends that are very good hockey players that told me that if we stay the course that we're playing, we're gonna win way more games than not.”
It’s frustrating in the moment, but the Blue Jackets believe that if they stick to their game, keep doing the right things and get a win or two under their belts, they’ll get where they want to go. Werenski said the Blue Jackets will be a "stronger, better hockey club” when they come out the other side, and Coyle agrees.
“It’s just having a belief that you can get the job done,” Coyle said. “Just about every team I’ve played on, they go through stuff like this. Most teams in the league go through stuff like this. It’s things I’ve experienced in my 14 years. I think the good teams can correct it. A little bit of adversity is good for us. It’s good for any team to go through that and come playoff time, you’ve seen a good chunk of things that can rock the boat a bit but you know how to handle it.”
