I know what you’re thinking: “It’s pretty lame to have a guest post already when you haven’t come up with any original content yourself!”. Well you’re right, but this insight was just too well thought out and worded not to share. This came from an ongoing email thread amongst some fellow CBJ hockey fans and myself, most of whom I’ve never met in person. Contributor Bob McCracken sent the following email below on 12/28/11. I have copied and pasted this as-is with the exception of a few formatting changes.

From: Bob McCracken
To: A bunch of bastards

After giving much thought to the comments below and considering the fact and applying a bit of logic here is my assessment of fixing the Jackets and the facts I considered:

Facts considered:

63% of the Jackets roster wasn’t on the team in 2009 and 44% of the Jackets roster wasn’t here a year ago.

22% of the roster to start the season had less than 1 year of NHL experience. Currently only 3 are left on the roster Clitsome, Johanson and Moore and they are getting serious minutes for young players.

Plus half the roster are 27 or younger and 18 of the 23 are under 30.

The big 3 (Wisniewski, Carter and Nash) have played less than 25 games together as a group.

Several prospects in the system who could contribute in the next few years (Atkinson, Calvert, Savard, Jenner, etc). Atkinson and Calvert are close and both are aggressive, high energy scoring forwards.

General thoughts:

The NHL and NFL are hard cap leagues which spreads flattens the talent throughout the leagues. Although several teams in each league are consistently competitive every team has weaknesses. Therefore you can provides teams the ability to move up or down quickly from year to year. A few examples are look at Florida (currently 3rd in eastern conference) who were terrible last year or the Caps was the top seed last year in the Eastern conference (currently 11th in eastern conference).

Winning in the NFL and NHL is about momentum, a winning culture and expectation, injuries and winning the close games.

The Jackets lose a lot of 1 goal games and games in the last few minutes.

Conclusions:

Chemistry is an issue. Young players and a roster that has not played very much together is a killer. Hence we have seen improvement in play but still few wins. I think if you keep blowing up the roster (which they already have the last 2 years) there isn’t much hope for wins. Having said that the reality of the NHL is that if you are not in the playoff hunt you are sellers at the trade deadline with your players who are UFA’s. With Juice, Pahlsson, McKenzie and Propal are all UFA’s, would not be surprised if 2 or all of them are moved for the right price (perhaps good blueline or goalie prospects who are NHL ready or very close.

With solid young roster and several good prospects plus the potential for a top 2 draft choice this year the Jackets are becomin deep in talent at forward. The blue line is a weakness and goaltending is spotty.

Overall I think this is a coaching issue and perhaps a GM issue (much harder to determine).

Keep in mind I was in favor of keeping Hitch. Hitch is a proven coach having won a cup and taken the Jackets to the playoffs and other teams to the playoffs. Teams with good coaches have bad years but good coaches don’t become bad coaches all of a sudden. Think of Andy Reid with the Eagles in the NFL. This is professional sports every one is good and every one wants to win and the difference between winning and losing is small.

However Arniel (and Howson for that matter) have no track record in their current positions so you can only use their records with the Jackets to determine their effectiveness. The question is, is it just part of their learning curve or are they not cut out for their jobs? Consider several NFL examples, Wade Phillips and Norv Turner have been given multiple opportunities with good teams but have never had success so one can conclude they are not head coaching material. However Bill Bellichek is considered the best coach in the NFL by many. He was fired from his first head coach job in Cleveland and was within a couple games of being fired in New England when he got a break and his popular QB (Drew Bledsoe who was popular with the team, fans and mgmt) got hurt and got the chance to play an young upstart QB in Tom Brady.

But overall creating a winning culture and building chemistry fall to the coach. Unfortunately Arniel hasn’t proven he can do that. Although I wouldn’t make that change until after the season. This is a lost season and he does deserve the opportunity to turn it around.

Find the right coach and next season we could see them make a nice playoff run.

Bob McCracken

Leave your feedback in the comments below or hit me up on Twitter at @derdrache. I’ll make sure any comments get passed Bob’s way. I’d like to thank Bob for contributing to the discussion. It will sure be interesting to see where we go from here.

Editors note: Apologies in advance if this fragmented and aimless. I’m dusting off the part of my brain that writes something other than technical manuals.

Everybody wants to be a part of something special. Something bigger than them and that which is immediately around them. I’m no exception to that rule and by rough estimates neither were any of the 200 (or 75 if the fire marshal is reading) people who gathered today for the 2nd annual (of what I assume will be many) Cannon Fest. Once again the Buffalo Wild Wings on 5th Ave in Grandview was gracious enough to play host to the event. The wait-staff couldn’t keep the wings or the beers flowing quickly enough thanks to some generous drink and food specials offered by owner Greg May (@gregin120). Door prizes were made available by the Jacket Backers, the official booster club of the CBJ organization.

In attendance were all of the usual suspects I’d hope to see at any CBJ shindig as well as many new faces. I was given the opportunity to put some faces together with names I’ve seen scrolling through my Twitter client for years including some of my favorite sources for all of the latest CBJ news and info (lookin’ at your @greegor23 and @LoriSchmidt). Undoubtedly some of the highlights of the evening were provided by @Skraut_ when he shared the fruits of his talents and efforts by offering two outstanding new Blue Jackets videos. If you can’t see this guy’s passion for his work in the videos themselves, it was unmistakable when he was given the mic to discuss what drove him to create each of these small masterpieces. The first video presented is a response to the optimism that seems to be flowing about the CBJ faithful in response to management’s off-season moves to improve the team. I present the appropriately named “Kickstart My Heart”.

As if this wasn’t awesome enough, he brought a 2nd offering as well. While I love “Kickstart My Heart”, I’ve always considered myself a bit of a CBJ evangelist so  his next video really resonates with me.

Personally, I see it as a call to action to everyone that’s part of this ‘something special’ that we all get to enjoy. When I say everyone I mean from each fan, player, member of the ice crew to even the coffee and donut slingers at the soon-arriving Tim Horton’s mega-store at the arena (that’ll be one medium double-double and a ten pack of TimBits assorted by the way). We all have our own role to play and the time to act is now. Let’s roll up our sleeves and show the NHL that Columbus era is about to begin.