Our divisional preview makes its final stop in perhaps the least metropolitan of all the Metropolitan Division, Columbus. We’ve gotten to Washington and Philadelphia, and he Devils, Rangers, Islanders and Carolina and now the last stop ends close to Pittsburgh in neighboring Ohio.

The Blue Jackets made a great run in 2024-25, the tragic and devastating loss of Johnny Gaudreau in late summer galvanized a team that played with a ton of emotion, passion and heart throughout the season. Almost all observers expected Columbus to be extreme last place finishers, yet they ended the season on a six-game winning streak and only two points out of the playoffs behind Montreal and New Jersey. (On a tangential note, in that sense it’s a shame last year wasn’t the 84-game regular season coming in 2026-27, had CBJ had two more games, they just might have been able to jump into the playoffs last year with the way they were rolling at the end of the season).

Advertisement

Now as we flip to 2025-26, we’ll see what the Blue Jackets have for an encore.

Key changes

Additions: Columbus made a fairly significant trade in June when they picked up forwards Charlie Coyle and Miles Wood from the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for a prospect and draft pick. The Blue Jackets added defensive forward Isac Lundestrom as a free agent for a reasonable $1.3 million cap hit over two years, which might sneakily quietly effective if he can get back to his 16-goal, 29 point season of 2021-22. CBJ added veteran defender Brendan Smith on a PTO and while more of a “hold” than addition, the team ended up giving Ivan Provorov $59.5 million reasons not to test free agency to keep him around on a seven-year contract ($8.5 million cap hit).

Losses: A few light scoring veteran forwards left in free agency (James van Riemsdyk, Sean Kuraly, Justin Danforth, Kevin Lebanc and Luke Kunin), though that description might be a little unkind to JVR who put up a 16-goal, 36 point season. Goalie Daniil Tarasov was traded to the Florida Panthers in a move that surely won’t haunt the rest of the Eastern Conference. Jack Johnson (PTO in Minnesota) also ambled on down the road.

Advertisement

Projected lineup (from nhl.com)

Dmitri Voronkov – Sean Monahan – Kirill Marchenko
Boone Jenner – Adam Fantilli – Kent Johnson
Yegor Chinakhov – Charlie Coyle – Cole Sillinger
Miles Wood – Isac Lundestrom – Mathieu Olivier

Zach Werenski / Dante Fabbro
Denton Mateychuk / Ivan Provorov
Damon Severson / Erik Gudbranson

Elvis Merzlikins
Jet Greaves

The Blue Jackets are seemingly always on the verge of a youth movement with all the high draft picks they’ve had over the last 25 years, but this time it actually looks like it’s coming through. Fantilli and Johnson scored 50+ points last season with room still to grow even more. Voronkov (47 points in 73 games) wasn’t far behind. Sillinger has shown some growth and improvement. Marchenko has turned into a budding star no one talks about (31 goals, 74 points last season). Mateychuk is working his way up the ranks.

Advertisement

Then some prime aged players are doing big things – Werenski (82 points) was a legit Vezina contender. Sean Monahan dealt with injuries but still produced 57 points in 54 games in the rare “$5.5 million free agent signing that actually worked out”. Provorov got his career back on track after a few lackluster seasons at the end of his stint in Philadelphia and Fabbro was plucked off waivers and instantly became a solid option on the back-end.

The big questions

Is the Jet about to take flight? Goaltending over the course of Columbus franchise history has not been a pretty picture, outside of the seven seasons Sergei Bobrovsky spent in Ohio during the 2010’s. The Jackets traded Tarasov to clear the way for 24-year old Jet Greaves to take a full-time spot in the NHL. Greaves could be the one they’ve been waiting on, he’s got a .924 save% and two shutouts in 21 career NHL games, including a 7-2-2 record and .938 save% in 11 games of work in the big league last season (including five-straight wins in mid-April that helped put the team on the edge of playoff contention). That’s not a ton to go on, but given how the season ended there’s valid reason for optimism in the CBJ crease for the first time in a long time to see how much Greaves can do with the opportunity.

Will the Colorado trade pay off? There was a reason that the Avalanche wanted to dump 33-year old Coyle and soon-to-be 30-year old Wood. Salary considerations were in play, but the arrow in 2024-25 was pointing down on both of those veterans. Columbus will hope the two vets will be able to boost a mostly young forward group, but the flip side of the coin is that Coyle ($5.25m with one year left on his contract) is the second-highest paid forward on the team. They’ll need a sizeable bounce back out of him, and putting hopes in that basket may or may not pay off.

Advertisement

Potential Outcomes
Here we paint some pictures of a semi-realistic best and worst case scenarios for the upcoming season..

Reasonable best case scenario — Greaves picks up where he left off in April and the young core of Columbus keeps getting better. The three new forwards fit in well and Columbus continues to be a very tough night at the office for their opponents. Coach Dean Evason continues to work his magic and steers the Blue Jackets to their second-straight 40+ win season for the first time since John Tortorella in 2018-19 and CBJ is able to go a step further and make the playoffs.

Reasonable worst case scenario — The magic wears off for Greaves, or his workload needs to be limited to such where Elvis Merzlikins (three straight sub-.900% save% seasons) has to play a lot and to continued unimpressive results. The progression of many of the core isn’t in a straight-line of steady improvement and Columbus deals with more growing pains and lingers towards the bottom-half of the division.

—
Columbus is arguably the team with the most variability in the division this season. One has a pretty good idea for everyone else as to a path where they are headed, give or take a little. This is mostly because Columbus has the most young players projected to be in key spots in the lineup, which can have divergent outcomes. Last year was an impressive one for many, and CBJ ended up with 89 points — probably at least 20 more than the near unanimous consensus was at the beginning of the year. If the train keeps rolling in that direction, the Jackets could build on that even more.

Advertisement

But on the flip side of the coin, this franchise has certainly dealt with the opposite results over the past 25 years where everything is not moving harmoniously in that sunny outlook. Progress is rarely smooth and constant, and the overall dynamic depth of this team still is in the balance.

It wouldn’t be extremely shocking to see the Blue Jackets finish in the 3rd/4th area and be a playoff team, or at least right there competing for a spot. At the same time, it doesn’t take a lot of mental gymnastics to imagine a very different season where they’re at or near the very bottom of the division if things don’t work out as neat and nice. Columbus was one of the most pleasant surprises last season, a true feel good type of story. They won’t be sneaking up on teams as much this year.