Few teams have been forced to make as many roster adjustments as the 2019-20 Columbus Blue Jackets.
Throughout the past several months, injuries throughout the lineup have forced head coach John Tortorella to piece together victories with a club flush with AHL call-ups and rookies, making the Blue Jackets the ultimate “next man up” team.
“It’s been a crazy year that way,” Tortorella said during a Wednesday appearance on Hockey Central. “When it first started happening we made a pact amongst ourselves that we’re not going to spend a lot of time talking about it.”
Back in October, few would have predicted Columbus would be in the playoff picture down the stretch considering the mass exodus over the summer with the departure of Artemi Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky, and rental Matt Duchene in free agency.
Turns out, that season of ongoing speculation may have actually primed Columbus to learn how to block out noise and focus on the task at hand.
Fewer still would have put them in the mix once the injuries started to roll in, early and often, and to some of the team’s most vital players. And yet as of March 12, when the league was put on hiatus due to coronavirus concerns, the Blue Jackets sit in the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference.
“The situation we’ve been in this year is just trying to stay afloat and trying to stay about our business with all the injuries. It’s been a situation that, just the camaraderie of it all, I think that’s been the most rewarding part of it for us,” Tortorella said.
“You know, we were supposed to be a lottery team when we were a healthy team — according to the pundits — and then when we had the injuries, it’s been fun to see guys and the team itself just stand together and try to find ways.
“We’ve had to play differently and I think they’ve bought into that. So it’s been a pretty cool year that way, in just trying to survive here, and I think that’s been very rewarding in the locker room.”
As things stand right now, the team is without eight regulars: forwards Josh Anderson, Cam Atkinson, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Brandon Dubinsky, Nathan Gerbe, and Alexandre Texier, and defencemen Seth Jones and Dean Kukan.
“This year, it’s been an eye-opener to me and it’s really kind of knocked me back a little bit and made me realize that if you try to just play under a team concept and you have a team play as a team, I think you can compete in the league,” he said. “I think sometimes we get caught up in the starpower and this individual player, that individual player carrying a team. We’ve had to play as a team and it’s been really rewarding for all of us just to see that you can stay competitive going about our business that way.”
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