7 days until CBJ hockey: Meet the new division rivals

The Blue Jackets will be in a new division for the 2021 season, but what's new is also old.
The move to the Central Division, brought on by travel issues related to the Covid-19 pandemic, reunites Columbus with Chicago, Detroit and Nashville -- three teams that shared the old Central Division with the Blue Jackets from the team's inception in 2000 all the way through the 2013 season.
And those "rivalries" will likely become rivalries by the end of this year, as teams will play only divisional foes throughout the 56-game campaign. That means the Blue Jackets will play eight games this year vs. the Blackhawks, Red Wings and Predators -- not to mention fellow Central foes Carolina, Dallas, Florida and Tampa Bay.

Also, considering 52 of the CBJ's 56 games this year will be played in two-game series, there will almost certainly be some bad blood brewing as the campaign goes on.
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"I think I'm gonna be in the penalty box a little more than expected just with the hate you're probably gonna get on for a lot of these teams," CBJ captain Nick Foligno joked. "I don't think we're used to playing playoff series against every single team in our division. You think about it, that's pretty much what it is. That'll be unique, and I think it'll get the emotion into the game quickly."
It remains to be seen whether things will be easier or more difficult for the Blue Jackets -- gone are recent Stanley Cup winners Pittsburgh and Washington, but both 2020 Stanley Cup Final squads are in the division in Tampa Bay and Dallas -- but it's hard to imagine it won't be fun.
So without further ado, here's what Blue Jackets fans should know about each of those foes you'll see eight times this year.

Carolina

2019-20 result:38-25-5, fourth in Metro; lost in Eastern Conference opening round vs. Boston
New additions: Jesper Fast
Losses: Lucas Wallmark, Erik Haula, Joel Edmundson, Justin Williams, Trevor van Riemsdyk
Outlook: The only Metropolitan Division foe still on the CBJ schedule, Carolina enters the year pegged to contend for the division crown thanks to one of the strongest young cores in the NHL. The trio of Andrei Svechnikov, Sebastian Aho and Teuvo Teravainen gives Carolina an elite top line, while Dougie Hamilton was in the Norris conversation a year ago before suffering an injury vs. Columbus and forms a high-level top pair with Jaccob Slavin. The team was 11th in the league in both scoring and defense a year ago with a solid pairing in net in Petr Mrazek and James Reimer. The Hurricanes are expected to be in the mix at the top of the division despite the depth losses listed above.

Chicago

2019-20 result: 32-30-8, seventh in Central; lost in Western Conference opening round vs. Vegas
New additions:Pius Suter, Carl Soderberg, Lucas Wallmark, Mattias Janmark, Ian Mitchell, Nikita Zadorov, Corey Crawford
Losses:Brandon Saad, Alexander Nylander (injury), Kirby Dach (injury), Erik Gustafsson, Olli Maatta, Drake Caggiula, Slater Koekkoek
Outlook: It's certainly a new-look Blackhawks team, as Stan Bowman saw his aging core and decided to shake things up. It might not be fair to call it rebuilding, though the trade of consistent 20-goal scorer Brandon Saad might suggest that, but things went from bad to worse for the Blackhawks when young forwards Dach and Nylander went down for much of the season with injuries. They still have Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, rookie of the year finalist Dominik Kubalik and Alex DeBrincat up front, but this is still a team that finished in the bottom half of the league in both scoring and defense a year ago. There are major question marks in net with youngsters Collin Delia and Malcolm Subban taking over.

Dallas

2019-20 result: 37-24-8, third in Central; lost in Stanley Cup Final vs. Tampa Bay
New additions: Ty Dellandrea, Jake Oettinger
Losses:Corey Perry, Mattias Janmark, Roman Polak
Outlook:The Stars return pretty much the entire team that represented the Western Conference in the final a year ago, though there are two major injury notes. Standout forward Tyler Seguin and goalie Ben Bishop are both out until at least March, meaning the Stars will be without perhaps their two best players for the first half of the year. Forwards Alex Radulov, Jamie Benn and Joe Pavelski lead the way up front and Miro Heiskanen and John Klingberg hold down the blue line. It's a team that sort of mimics the Blue Jackets, as there's not exactly national star power but solid players across the board, and the team also was much like Columbus a year ago in that it placed 26th in the league last year in scoring but second in goals against. Repeating the defensive performance in net will be on veteran Anton Khudobin and youngster Oettinger, who is yet to make his NHL regular-season debut after a standout career with the U.S. National Team program and Boston University.

Detroit

2019-20 result: 17-49-5, eighth in Atlantic
New additions: Vladislav Namestnikov, Bobby Ryan, Sam Gagner, Troy Stecher, Marc Staal, Jon Merrill, Thomas Greiss
Losses:Madison Bowey, Trevor Daley, Christoffer Ehn, Brendan Perlini, Justin Abdelkader, Jimmy Howard
Outlook: It can't get worse for the Red Wings, who were on pace for one of the worst seasons of the salary cap era when the NHL shut down in March. That was no fluke, as the team was last in the league in both scoring and defense and was outscored by an average of 1.73 goals per game. The good news is that new general manager Steve Yzerman was able to bring in a number of veterans to try to stop the bleeding. Most projections still have Detroit bringing up the rear of the Central, but the team should be better than a year ago thanks to the additions both up front and on the back end. Anthony Mantha, Dylan Larkin, Tyler Bertuzzi and Filip Zadina are at least a decent core to build around up front, but it appears as though it will still be several years before the Wings are back in contention.

Florida

2019-20 result:35-26-8, fourth in Atlantic; lost in Eastern Conference qualifier vs. New York Islanders
New additions: Alexander Wennberg, Markus Nutivaara, Anthony Duclair, Patric Hornqvist, Owen Tippett, Ryan Lomberg, Carter Verhaeghe, Vinnie Hinostroza, Radko Gudas
Losses: Mike Hoffman, Evgenii Dadonov, Mike Matheson, Mark Pysyk, Colton Sceviour, Dominic Toninato, Josh Brown
Outlook: Welcome to Columbus south, as the Panthers hired former Blue Jackets associate general manager Bill Zito to take over as GM then brought in three former Jackets in Wennberg, Nutivaara and Duclair this summer. As you can see, those were far from the only players Zito brought in as he tried to shore up what was one of the NHL's worst defensive teams a year ago (3.25 goals allowed per game, fourth from last in the league). Florida did score 3.30 goals per game, so offense is there, though the losses of Hoffman and Dadonov will hurt in that regard as the two combined for 54 tallies a year ago. Jonathan Huberdeau and Aleksander Barkov anchor what is a pretty deep forward unit, but things will likely come down to whether head coach Joel Quenneville can coach up the squad enough defensively and if the new additions make life easier on Sergei Bobrovsky, who is coming off the worst season of his career in net.

Nashville

2019-20 result: 35-26-8, fifth in Central; lost in Western Conference qualifier vs. Arizona
New additions: Eeli Tolvanen, Erik Haula, Nick Cousins, Luke Kunin, Mark Borowiecki, Matt Benning
Losses:Nick Bonino, Craig Smith, Kyle Turris, Austin Watson, Colin Blackwell, Dan Hamhuis, Matt Irwin
Outlook:Can anyone figure out this team? The Predators aren't too far removed from the 2017 Stanley Cup Final and have made moves to bring in top-tier talent like former Jackets Ryan Johansen and Matt Duchene as well as Mikael Granlund over the past few seasons. But something was off in the mix last year, as the Preds met a disappointing end with the loss to the Coyotes in the qualifying round, and the squad placed middle of the pack in both offense and defense. Johansen and Duchene are supposed to be the spine up the middle but combined for 27 goals and 80 points a year ago, solid but unspectacular numbers. Offensive building blocks Filip Forsberg and Viktor Arvidsson are also searching for bounce-back years. Roman Josi continues to be one of the top defenders in the league on the blue line and is joined by solid players in Mattias Ekholm and Ryan Ellis, but the Preds' once-vaunted defensive depth has taken hits in recent years. Juuse Saros and 38-year-old Pekka Rinne split time in net last year and appear set to do it again, but Saros is likely now the starter.

Tampa Bay

2019-20 result: 43-21-6, first in Atlantic; won Stanley Cup Final vs. Dallas
New additions: Cal Foote
Losses:Nikita Kucherov (injury), Kevin Shattenkirk, Cedric Paquette, Carter Verhaeghe, Jan Rutta, Braydon Coburn
Outlook: Everyone knew that last year was a bit of a Cup-or-best season for Tampa Bay given looming salary cap issues, and the Lightning made it all worth it by capturing hockey's ultimate prize. The bill came due a bit this offseason but not as much as the Bolts had feared, but it did take a hip injury that requires surgery for Kucherov, the 2019 Hart winner and one of the league's best forwards. He'll be out for at least the regular season and hopes to return for the postseason, and the reality is the Lightning is good enough to make it back to the playoffs even without one of the sport's best players. And the Bolts have practice at that, as Tampa Bay won the Cup last year with star winger Steven Stamkos out for all but a few minutes of the playoffs; he'll be back this year on what should be one of hockey's best lines along with Brayden Point and Ondrej Palat. There's still plenty of star power here up front (Anthony Cirelli, Alex Killorn, the aforementioned players) as well as at the blue line (Victor Hedman, Mikhail Sergachev) and in net (Andrei Vasilevskiy). Tampa is still the favorite in the Central until proven otherwise.