Columbus Blue Jackets state of the team analysis: roster reset, PDO cliff, and the long road back to relevance

The Columbus Blue Jackets enter American Thanksgiving in the NHL basement for the second straight year, yet the mood around Nationwide Arena is noticeably different than it was twelve months ago. A front-office overhaul, a franchise-record contract for a home-grown star, and the league’s youngest opening-night lineup in more than two decades have replaced the existential dread of 2023-24 with a quieter, more deliberate kind of hope. This Columbus Blue Jackets state of the team analysis digs into what has actually changed, what the underlying numbers say about the “rebuild on the fly,” and how soon the organization can realistically expect to escape the lottery conversation.

Columbus Blue Jackets state of the team analysis: why the record still looks ugly

The Jackets woke up on November 17 with a 6-10-2 record, good for 14 points and the second-worst points percentage in the Eastern Conference. Goal differential (-19) is once again grisly, and the club has been shut out three times in its last nine outings. Yet the eye test and the analytics both say Columbus is no longer the passive, easy-zone-entry team that opponents feasted on under the previous regime. According to Natural Stat Trick, the Jackets are controlling 49.7 % of expected goals at 5-on-5, a six-point jump over last season and the first time since 2020-21 they are hovering near the 50 % break-even mark.

Head coach Pascal Vincent has installed an aggressive “weak-side overload” that sends the weak-side winger hard down the wall to out-number forechecks. The result: Columbus has already recorded 21 games with 30+ five-on-five shots, something it accomplished only 18 times in 82 games last year. The problem, of course, is finishing. Team shooting percentage sits at 6.9 %, 31st in the league and a full point below the 32nd-place club. If that number feels unsustainably low, that’s because it is—league average usually lands between 9.5 % and 10.5 %. In other words, the Jackets are creating the chances; the puck just isn’t going in.

Columbus Blue Jackets state of the team analysis: the PDO cliff and what it hides

PDO (shooting % plus save %) is a blunt tool, but it remains the quickest way to spot teams living on either side of the luck spectrum. Columbus’ 96.4 five-on-five PDO is dead last in the NHL, dragged down by the aforementioned shooting woes and an .894 team save percentage that ranks 29th. Only Chicago and San Jose have received worse goaltending. The good news: single-season PDO almost always regresses toward 100, which means the Jackets should bank some “free” points in the second half even if the roster stays static.

The bad news: regression can cut both ways. Elvis Merzļikins’ .885 save percentage is the worst of any No. 1 goalie with 15+ starts, but his goals-saved-above-expected (GSAx) of -7.4 is only the fifth-worst mark, suggesting the defense is also leaving him out to dry. Backup Daniil Tarasov (-4.1 GSAx in six starts) has fared no better. Until one of the two provides average NHL goaltending, any talk of a surprise wild-card push is fantasy. Jarmo Kekäläinen gambled on Merzļikins’ five-year extension; new GM Don Waddell has already begun surveying the market for a short-term stabilizer—names like Logan Thompson and Joseph Woll have come up in trade chatter, though price tags remain high.

Columbus Blue Jackets state of the team analysis: youth movement by the numbers

Columbus iced an opening-night roster whose average age (25.6 years) was the youngest any club has rolled out since the 2005-06 Penguins. That number is not cosmetic. The top line is a case study in developmental patience:

• Kent Johnson, 21, has been moved to center full-time after spending 58 % of his rookie shifts on the wing. Through 18 games he owns a 54.1 % xGF% and has already doubled his 2022-23 takeaway total.
• Kirill Marchenko, 24, leads the team with eight goals despite averaging only 14:46 per night. His shot rate (11.3/60) sits in the 92nd percentile among forwards, per Evolving-Hockey.
• Cole Sillinger, 20, is winning 53.4 % of his draws after finishing last season at 43.9 %, the largest single-year improvement by any pivot with 200+ face-offs.

Down the lineup, rookie Denton Mateychuk has stepped straight into the second pair alongside Zach Werenski and is logging 18:56 a night, the heaviest rookie workload in franchise history. His 12 points in 18 games would put him on a 55-point pace over a full season—only three rookie defensemen have cleared 50 since 2010. The early returns suggest the 2022 first-round pick was worth the wait.

Columbus Blue Jackets state of the team analysis: the Johnny Gaudreau conundrum

No discussion of the present roster is complete without addressing the elephant in the room: Johnny Gaudreau is on pace for 12 goals and 54 points, which would be the worst full-season output of his career. Vincent has tried everything—flanking him with Boone Jenner for puck retrieval, loading him on the top power-play unit, even giving him shifts with speedsters Yegor Chinakhov and Justin Danforth to jump-start transition. Nothing has stuck. Gaudreau’s individual expected goals (ixG) has cratered to 3.8, half of last year’s 7.6 through the same number of games.

The analytics suggest the winger is still generating entries (22.4 per 60) at an elite rate, but once inside the zone he is passing up looks he used to snap off. Sportlogiq tracking shows Gaudreau is taking 0.9 shots per game from the inner slot, down from 1.6 in 2022-23. Whether the decline is physical, psychological, or systemic, the Jackets can ill afford a $9.75 million cap hit producing third-line numbers. A summer trade felt unthinkable 18 months ago; now the front office is quietly exploring retention scenarios that would open up cap space for 2025’s deep UFA goalie class.

Columbus Blue Jackets state of the team analysis: salary-cap sheet and future flexibility

One benefit of tearing down the previous management structure is that the books are remarkably clean. According to PuckPedia, Columbus has just $48.3 million committed to 13 players for 2025-26, assuming Adam Fantilli’s $8.95 million mega-extension kicks in. That leaves roughly $35 million in projected space with the cap expected to rise to $83 million. Werenski, Jenner, and Gaudreau are the only players with any form of no-move protection, and Gaudreau’s is a limited 15-team no-trade list that becomes a full NMC only in the final two seasons.

The club is also slated to have four picks in the first two rounds of the 2025 draft—its own first-rounder, Colorado’s second (from the Erik Johnson trade), Los Angeles’ second (from the Ivan Provorov deal), and an additional third that could become a second if Vancouver makes the playoffs. In a draft year headlined by phenoms such as Michael Misa and James Hagens, stockpiling lottery tickets is prudent. The Jackets could conceivably package one of those seconds with a prospect to land the goaltending upgrade they desperately need without touching the long-term core.

Columbus Blue Jackets state of the team analysis: what success looks like this spring

Ownership has already signaled that standings points matter less than process metrics in 2024-25. Internally, the front office has circulated a three-step checklist:

1. Finish the season with a five-on-five xGF% above 50 %—something the franchise has never done over 82 games.
2. See at least three skaters under 23 clear 40 points, reinforcing the idea that the youth wave is ready to carry offense.
3. Stabilize goaltending to league average (.905 or better) from January onward, even if that means a mid-season trade.

Hit two of those three and president of hockey operations John Davidson will consider the campaign a success, regardless of final placement. The long-term vision is to mirror the 2022-23 Devils: bottom out just long enough to collect high picks, then leap from lottery odds to 100-point contention in a single bound. Whether Columbus possesses the same caliber of cornerstone talent—think Jack Hughes or Nico Hischier—remains an open question, but Fantilli’s early comparables (Evgeni Malkin, 2007) at least give the fan base permission to dream.

Columbus Blue Jackets state of the team analysis: key games ahead

The next six weeks will tell us if the Jackets can stay within shouting distance of the wild-card pack or if they’ll pivot toward another top-five pick. Circle these dates:

• December 5 vs. Toronto – A national-TV measuring stick against a top-five offense.
• December 14 at Seattle – First look at 2022 draft classmates Shane Wright and Fantilli head-to-head.
• January 4 vs. Chicago – Bedard’s only visit to Nationwide; a sell-out crowd could provide emotional lift.
• January 11-20 – A five-game road trip through Western Canada that historically has torpedoed Columbus seasons.

If the club emerges from that stretch within five points of the second wild card, expect Waddell to shop for a rental goalie. Fall eight points out and the front office will likely protect its lottery odds, recalling top prospect Oscar Plandowski for an extended look.

Columbus Blue Jackets state of the team analysis: bottom line

The standings still sting, but every meaningful indicator—age curve, cap space, prospect pipeline, underlying shot metrics—tilts in the right direction for the first time since 2019. The Columbus Blue Jackets state of the team analysis boils down to a simple truth: the record lies more this year than it did last year. Once the shooting luck normalizes and the goaltending finds a league-average pulse, the Jackets should climb toward the 85-point mark, a 15-point improvement that would match the largest single-season jump in franchise history. Contention is not here yet, but the blueprint is finally coherent, the youth is arriving on schedule, and the long road back to relevance finally has mile markers that point forward instead of back.