NHL Trade Rumors: Why Blue Jackets Have to Tear Team Down

The Columbus Blue Jackets did a great job in the offseason trading for Jeff Carter and signing James Wisniewski. However, sitting in last place in the Western Conference with  a 9-22-5 record has been unacceptable. 

It’s why the Blue Jackets have to tear down their team during the trade deadline this year, and rebuild it with parts that fit with their organization. 

From the Columbus Dispatch the Blue Jackets general manager Scott Howson has said that something has to be done to fix this team. 

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This last five-game stretch has given us a little more clarity. We’re just not good enough as a team. The first six or seven weeks of the season, it was too disjointed. We had (James) Wisniewski out. We had (Jeff) Carter out. We had (Radek) Martinek out. We had (Mark) Dekanich out…It was just too disjointed to get a clear picture. The picture is becoming clearer now. We aren’t playing well enough and…me as management has to find a solution to help the team. 

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However, Blue Jackets fans have to ask themselves, “Which players would be on the table?”  

Howson went onto say in that same Columbus Dispatch piece: 

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Everything’s on the table. We’ve got to look at everything. We’ve got to seriously look at everything. Now that’s different than saying, ‘I’m going to phone every GM tomorrow and say who do you want, (Rick) Nash, Carter or (R.J.) Umberger?’ but we’ve got to look at the whole situation and we’ve got to consider everything. 

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This team is very broken right now. Not blowing up this team would mean they’re going to be stuck in the same rut of losing games, instead of fixing the problem.

They rank near the bottom of the league in goals per game with two, goals against giving up three per game, while only converting on 15 percent of their power plays and keeping teams from scoring while they’re on the penalty kill 74 percent of the time.  

Columbus has a long way to go before they are competitive in a tough Western Conference. They have a lot of big players that are not meshing together that can draw a lot of interest from other general managers.  

Trading away your most popular players is not the most popular thing. However, if it brings a winning hockey team into town, then it will bring the fans back after the initial backlash. 

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