![\"Columbus](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/marchenko-scaled-e1776814417625.jpg\")
<\/p>\nCOLUMBUS, Ohio \u2014 At this time last year, I was strutting around like Mick Jagger doing the Harlem Shuffle. It wasn\u2019t a good look. And it won\u2019t be repeated this year.<\/p>\n
My bold predictions mostly landed in 2024-25 \u2014 admit it, you were impressed \u2014 but I whiffed like Eugenio Suarez this time around, hitting on only two of the eight predictions. If you strained credibility, you could say I was partly right on a third.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s no bragging this spring. It was a tough Blue Jackets season all around. As former coach John Tortorella used to say, \u201cSometimes you gotta eat it.\u201d<\/p>\n
1. Playoff drought ends<\/p>\n
The prediction: \u201cWe\u2019re stepping out to say the playoff drought ends in April. Wins: 46. Points: 99. Seed: sixth.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result: This looked pretty good by middle to late March, but, as you know, the Blue Jackets couldn\u2019t hold it together. They finished with 40 wins and 92 points, and they landed 11th in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jackets\u2019 playoff drought now sits at six years, the second-longest in franchise history and the third-longest active streak in the NHL. Only the Detroit Red Wings (10) and San Jose Sharks (seven) have gone longer than Columbus and Chicago (six) without a postseason berth.<\/p>\n
Grade: So close, but so far away.<\/p>\n
2. Jet Greaves takes off<\/p>\n
The prediction: \u201cIt\u2019s hard to predict playing time. The Blue Jackets have 15 back-to-backs on the schedule, so there\u2019s work for two here. But we suspect Jet Greaves is cleared for takeoff.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result: Greaves did, in fact, claim the No. 1 job from Elvis Merz\u013cikins, and not just once. When the season opened, Dean Evason kept both Greaves and Merz\u013cikins busy, but Greaves eventually took over the top spot.<\/p>\n
When Rick Bowness was hired to replace Evason in mid-January, he started with a clean slate, too, and Merz\u013cikins\u00a0played well enough for a while to keep it a timeshare. Eventually, though, the Blue Jackets were turned over to Greaves down the stretch for a second straight season.<\/p>\n
Grade: Nailed it.<\/p>\n
3. Egor Chinakhov \u2026 boom or bust<\/p>\n
The prediction: \u201cA truly bold prognosticator would say that Chinakhov is going to score 30 goals in a breakout season, or that the situation is going to get messy until the 24-year-old Russian is traded. We\u2019ll know by November.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result: Well, we may have known where this was going in November, but it wasn\u2019t made official until Dec. 29, when the Blue Jackets traded Chinakhov to Pittsburgh for veteran forward Danton Heinen, a second-round pick this summer and a third-round pick in 2027.<\/p>\n
Chinakhov could neither stay healthy nor in high gear in Columbus, but there were at least a few six-week stretches where he looked like an impact forward. He had issues with Evason, though, and he clearly shut it down amid his frustration with playing time.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a shame, too. If the Blue Jackets had waited two weeks and made the switch to Bowness before they had traded him, who knows how Chinakhov would have responded? Instead, he went to Pittsburgh (18 goals, 18 assists and 36 points in 43 regular-season games) and became what many thought was possible.<\/p>\n
Back to this exercise: We expected a resolution to this earlier in the season, and we were wrong. Instead, it might be something that haunts the organization for the next decade.<\/p>\n
Grade: Nope.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n We predicted Kirill Marchenko would become the third Blue Jacket to join the team\u2019s 40-goal club. He finished with 27. (Russell LaBounty \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
4. Kirill Marchenko joins \u201940\u2019 club<\/p>\n
The prediction: \u201cPut Marchenko in the Blue Jackets\u2019 exclusive 40-goal club, which currently has two members: Rick Nash (twice) and Cam Atkinson.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result: Marchenko didn\u2019t sniff 40. In fact, he failed to match his 31 goals from 2024-25, mostly because he faded badly down the stretch when the pace and physicality of games picked up in late March and April.<\/p>\n
One of the reasons we pointed to in expecting Marchenko to keep climbing was an improved Blue Jackets\u2019 power play. In fact, the power play backpedaled, especially down the stretch.<\/p>\n
Of Marchenko\u2019s 58 goals the last two seasons, only eight have come with a man advantage. That\u2019s a big reason his goal scoring hasn\u2019t elevated into that next stratosphere. We thought that this had a chance to change this season. We were wrong.<\/p>\n
Grade: Miss.<\/p>\n
5. Boone Jenner\u2019s here to stay<\/p>\n
The prediction: \u201cIt says here that Jenner will sign a contract at some point this season \u2014 it doesn\u2019t sound as if talks have started seriously yet \u2014 that will keep him in Columbus for his entire career. The player and the franchise don\u2019t want it any other way, it seems.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result: It\u2019s still possible that Jenner signs an extension, but it didn\u2019t happen during the season, which is what was predicted.<\/p>\n
Jenner, the Blue Jackets\u2019 second-longest tenured captain, remains a pending unrestricted free agent, and while both sides continue to say they want to get an extension signed \u2014 and they want Jenner to play his entire career in Columbus \u2014 it\u2019s not really clear where this is going.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jackets want to get fast. They can\u2019t be too comfortable signing too many players heading into their mid-30s to contracts with term. All things considered, there\u2019s as good a chance now as ever that Jenner plays next season in a different jersey.<\/p>\n
Wouldn\u2019t that be strange?<\/p>\n
Grade: Fail<\/p>\n
6. Fewer fights for Mathieu Olivier<\/p>\n
The prediction:\u00a0\u201cHis \u2018most-feared fighter\u2019 status will cause some young roughs to step to the champ, but mostly it will make the middleweights and part-time scrappers shy away from the challenge. It can be really hard, actually, for some guys to get a fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result: Olivier went from a league-high 15 fighting majors to nine fighting majors, tied for third in the league. Only Tampa Bay\u2019s Curtis Douglas and Boston\u2019s Mark Kastelic (10) had more scraps.<\/p>\n
We were correct that Olivier found fewer takers this season, but he also missed 21 games due to injuries. In other words, he may have gotten close to 15 if he\u2019d been able to stay in the lineup all season.<\/p>\n
Ironically. Olivier was injured and missed the final 2 1\/2 weeks of the season after breaking his hand in a fight with Kastelic on March 29. It turned out to be a major loss for the Blue Jackets, too many of whom shied away from battles without Olivier around.<\/p>\n
Grade: We\u2019ll take it.<\/p>\n
7. Special teams \u2026 really?<\/p>\n
The prediction: \u201cWe\u2019re not going to say the Blue Jackets should be top 10 in either or both. But we\u2019ll predict they are in the top half of the league on both sides of the ledger, which means their special teams will be a benefit to the cause, not the typical energy drain.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result: Will we ever learn?<\/p>\n
We said the Blue Jackets would finish in the top half of the league in both, which isn\u2019t exactly predicting excellence. It\u2019s predicting a result that\u2019s slightly better than mediocrity, and they still failed.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jackets\u2019 power play, which can do everything right at times except score, finished 22nd in the NHL (18.9 percent). The penalty kill was a woeful 28th (76.0 percent).<\/p>\n
Grade: What a fool believes.<\/p>\n
8. Look who\u2019s back!<\/p>\n
The prediction: \u201cIf the Blue Jackets are above the (playoff) bar at the March 6 trade deadline, couldn\u2019t you see GM Don Waddell acquiring former captain Nick Foligno from the Chicago Blackhawks?\u201d<\/p>\n
The result: Well, you know.<\/p>\n
In fairness, we did note in our bold, wrong prediction that it would \u201cbe a thrill for Foligno to join his brother, Marcus, with the Minnesota Wild, should the Wild be in the playoff picture.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s exactly what happened, too, when the Folignos were united when Chicago sent Nick Foligno to Minnesota in a March 6 trade.<\/p>\n
Keep an eye on Foligno this summer, though. He and the Wild are in a tough first-round series with the Dallas Stars, so his after-hockey plans are on hold.<\/p>\n
But he knows he\u2019s retiring to Columbus, and you wonder if a front-office job \u2014 or maybe a broadcaster\u2019s microphone \u2014 is in his future.<\/p>\n
Grade: Oh, no. Did we just double down?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLUMBUS, Ohio \u2014 At this time last year, I was strutting around like Mick Jagger doing the Harlem…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5108],"tags":[3644,5180,897,230,5179,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-557893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-columbus-blue-jackets","8":"tag-blue-jackets","9":"tag-bluejackets","10":"tag-columbus","11":"tag-columbus-blue-jackets","12":"tag-columbusbluejackets","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116448112020513724","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}