Jackets try to defy odds; plus statistical surprises

Veterans Michael Peca (left) and Adam Foote are making a last-ditch stand in Columbus. Both could be gone in deadline deals. Jamie Sabean/Getty Images

Judging by their place in the standings, they don't look like much.

The Columbus Blue Jackets, formed in time for the start of the 2000-01 NHL season, have never been considered a playoff contender. This season appears no different, given that they are parked in 12th place in the Western Conference standings, five points behind eighth-place Vancouver after having played two more games than the Canucks.

The Jackets have given up 14 more goals than the paltry 150 they've scored and they're an uninspiring 2-5-3 in their last 10 outings.

Still, five points is, well, just five points. And in an era of two- and three-point games and head-to-heads where there are points you gain that your opponents don't, well, five points is nothing. That's not to say the Blue Jackets can make it to the postseason, but there are finally some players on board who seem to want to try.

"I don't think anyone knows what the future holds," said Michael Peca, a veteran who is savvy enough to know that if the Jackets don't win their next two starts (Thursday at Ottawa and Saturday at Montreal), he may well be a trade-deadline option for Columbus. That doesn't mean he wouldn't like to help the Jackets find their promised land.

"We're trying to be the first team in franchise history to make the playoffs," he said during a recent swing through Toronto. "I know that might not be easy, but we're trying to stay together as a team and make that happen. I think the older guys here understand how it works and that you can't do any more than you can do, but while we're together, we want to keep it that way. We don't want it to be the case where pieces are getting traded off [because the team doesn't have a shot come Feb. 23]. We want to have this team kept together."

That's not an easy lesson to learn or even teach in Columbus, a franchise that can be likened to the Matthew McConaughey character in Failure to Launch. Columbus came into the league with the Minnesota Wild, one season after the Nashville Predators. Those franchises struggled much like the Jackets, but in recent years they've soared. Columbus has always stayed home at playoff time.

The Jackets have paid a price for that. There has been a succession of coaches and last season ownership ousted general manager and president Doug MacLean, who was there two years before the Jackets' first game was ever played. Not much has changed in that time, but with Ken Hitchcock, the highly successful former coach of the Dallas Stars (1999 Stanley Cup Champions) and Philadelphia Flyers, now driving the bus, the team feels it is close. So close it can almost taste that first postseason berth.

For much of the season, the Jackets were within a win or two of that coveted spot. Hope has faded recently, largely because they have been losing the games that a young team on the rise simply needs to win. After a memorable 5-1 victory over Detroit, the Jackets have fallen to the St. Louis Blues, 5-1, and Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-1. That brought back all the old doubts about Columbus.

It hasn't been easy changing the mindset of losing. Critics -- Hitchcock is sometimes still among them -- argue that the Blue Jackets aren't there yet largely because they haven't embraced the challenge. The loss on Tuesday in Toronto set the veteran coach on edge. At practice the following day, he and the coaching staff left the ice so the players could run things. The idea, Hitchcock later told the Columbus Dispatch, was that the Jackets needed to learn to "invest more in each other. They have to learn to trust each other, lean on each other and push each other to a different level than we're getting right now.

"In my opinion, we're not invested enough to be successful. We have to invest more and it can't always come from the coaching staff. At some point, it has to come from the players."

It's a big part of the Hitchcock philosophy that leadership and success come not from the top down, but from the bottom up. Veterans like Peca, a former captain in Buffalo, and defenseman Adam Foote, the current captain and a standout with Colorado during the Avalanche's most successful seasons, come into play.

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