Another Blue Jackets season without playoffs is in the books.
More: Columbus Blue Jackets down Carolina Hurricanes to end tough year with a bang
The narrative going into the offseason hasn't changed much for the Jackets, who are still getting buried by NHL "insiders" depicting the franchise as dire and hopeless. That's what happens when your record finished 27-43-12 just a year after it was only 25-48-9.
It was another painful season, for sure, but it wasn't all bad in Columbus.
This year's Jackets made some noticeable strides, and they're poised for more soon. Keeping that in mind, here are three ways the Blue Jackets have improved and three improvements they still need to make:
After dealing with a franchise record 563 man-games lost last season due to injuries, the Blue Jackets were bound improve in goal differential if they stayed healthier.
Well, they stayed healthier for the first four-plus months and the goal differential correspondingly improved. The Jackets also got improved goaltending from Elvis Merzlikins , Daniil Tarasov , Spencer Martin and rookie Jet Greaves .
That doesn't account for the entirety of a 53-goal upswing, but it certainly helped. The Jackets allowed 300 goals for a 30-goal improvement. Combined with 23 more goals scored (237), those were encouraging increases for a young team that lost its star rookie, Adam Fantilli, on Jan. 28 and then dealt with another rash of injuries in the final five weeks.
Another area the Jackets should feel good about is the number of times they led in third periods.
A year ago, they finished an awful season with just 22 third period leads, total, after finishing the 82-game season. This year, the Blue Jackets led 36 times in third periods for a plus-15 gain that would've been higher had the injury depletions not been so severe.
Turning more of those leads into victories is something that will be mentioned later in this piece, but you've got to have a lead first to protect it. The Blue Jackets gave themselves a lot more opportunities at doing that this season, which is an important building block.
Last year, the Blue Jackets only scored first 29 times while finishing 31stout of 32 teams in the NHL's overall standings. They went 14-10-5 in those games. This year, they scored the opening goal 45 times and went 20-15-10, recording points in 66.7% of those games.
More improvement is needed with turning first goals into waves of momentum, but increasing the frequency of scoring first by about 20% was a major step in the right direction.
The NHL added to its statistical breakdown available on its website this season with NHL Edge, which tracks measurables generated by data chips implanted in both the puck and jerseys.
One of the most interesting stats is "zone time," which tracks how long the puck spends in the defensive, neutral and offensive zones during each game. It's an enhanced way of determining generalized possession time, which is something the NHL used to provide after each game with its stat sheets.
These aren't good numbers for the Blue Jackets, who've spent far too much time in their own zone and not nearly enough in the offensive zone the past four years. This season, the Blue Jackets ranked below the 50thpercentile in the league in the defensive zone time (43.1%), neutral zone time (17.5%) and offensive zone time (39.4%).
Improvements in the offensive and defensive zones must get better for the Blue Jackets to start climbing in points.
As mentioned earlier, the Blue Jackets made great strides increasing the number of third period leads they generated. The reason that didn't result in a significant rise in the standings was because they coughed up too many of them.
The Jackets blew 15 of their 36 leads in the third and only won two of those games for an unsettling 2-2-11 mark that left too many points on the ice. Their point total could've easily reached the mid-70s had they won even half of the games they lost after leading late.
This one has proven to be a lot harder than it sounds. The past three years, the Blue Jackets have gone just 20-44-4 against the Metropolitan Division.
They've also struggled against the Atlantic with a 24-39-9 record, but the Blue Jackets particularly falter against teams they know the best ― especially the Pittsburgh Penguins , Washington Capitals , New York Islanders and Carolina Hurricanes . The flip side is what they've done against the Western Conference, going 42-42-12 the past three years with a 21-20-7 mark against the Pacific Division ― which houses the past two Stanley Cup champions.
If the Jackets can hang with those teams, there's no excuse for continually posting such a poor record within their own neighborhood. They simply cannot continue to stumble in the Metro if they want to make a serious bid for playoff contention.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: 3 Blue Jackets improvements, 3 shortcomings in 2023-24
