Blue Jackets face new challenge in building process

Now that the lottery is complete and the Blue Jackets
know they have picks six and 12 in July's NHL Draft
, the team can go full speed ahead when it comes to planning for the 2022-23 season
Of course, Columbus brass isn't just starting on that project, but at least the team now knows exactly what assets it has as it goes about plotting its future course.

The good news? The Blue Jackets exceeded just about all expectations this past season, going 37-38-7 and sticking on the fringes of the playoff race deep into the season.
The bad news? Teams' fortunes rarely follow predictable paths, so while there is a lot to build on based on how the recently completed season went, the hard work truly begins now.
"There was tremendous growth, even in a .500 season," head coach Brad Larsen said. "But, you bet, pressure is a real thing, and when there starts to be pressure, you don't know how they're going to act. It's going to be another situation we go through as a group.
"That trajectory of improvement is never a straight line. It's not 'rarely' -- it's never a straight line. There's always ups and downs."
That doesn't mean the Blue Jackets are shying away from thoughts of taking another major step next season, and goals going into the campaign will almost certainly include thoughts of a return to the postseason after two straight years of watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
And as acknowledged, Columbus thinks it learned a lot of the necessary lessons this past season, as several young players stepped into bigger roles and showed well, veterans took over leadership positions and gained experience there, and a new coaching staff showed it has the mettle to help the team handle the ups and downs of an 82-game season.
"We can be fairly satisfied that we took the right steps from a year ago to where we are now," general manager Jarmo Kekalainen said after the Jackets saw their points percentage go from .429 in the shortened 2021 season to .494 this past season. "And I think that we're going to take the next steps here fairly quickly, as well, because there's going to be a lot of internal growth with the guys that we have, the age structure that we have with our young, very talented players.
"They're going to get better or they're going to get pushed hard to get better, and we have the right people working with them to get better. So, I'm excited about where the team's at, because like we said, we want to build this the right way, so that we can compete to win the Stanley Cup."
Yet in many ways, the most difficult part is about to begin. Columbus entered the 2021-22 season with no expectations, with just about everyone in the hockey media predicting the Blue Jackets would be among the worst teams in the league. Preseason polls, at the very least, had the team projected to finish last in the Metropolitan Division.
The Blue Jackets flew under the radar early last season and got off to a strong start, then struggled through December and January before a red-hot February put the team back into the cusp of the playoff race. With one of the youngest rosters in the league, as Kekalainen said, it is fair to expect the team to stay on the rise as it gains more experience.
But again, these things often move more in fits and starts than one likes to admit, and the biggest thing the Blue Jackets might have to handle next year are heightened expectations. For those who have been in the league for a while, experience shows this step of the process can be perhaps the most difficult part.
"I think we won some big games, we played in a lot of good games, sometimes we ended up losing but like I say we were in those games pretty much all season," Jakub Voracek said of this past season. "That's what you want from a young group, and a lot of guys got better throughout the year. That's exactly what you want.
"I think the next year is going to be the biggest step, the hardest step to become a playoff team on a regular basis. Everybody's gotta be ready for that and even better next year."
As Sean Kuraly pointed out, the Blue Jackets have to make up around 10 wins to get back into playoff contention a season from now, as the team finished seven victories and 19 points behind a Washington squad that earned the final wild card spot.
While Kekalainen pointed out the Eastern Conference was historically top-heavy this year -- for the first time since the league adopted its current playoff format, all eight postseason teams in one conference cleared 100 points -- the conference's final wild card spot has averaged a total of 97 points since its inception in 2013-14.
That's a big gap to make up after an 81-point season, something players and coaches have acknowledged. The Blue Jackets like their progress and can start to see a young team blossoming into a playoff contender, but they also know in many ways the challenges will be new a year from now.
"We have some things we need to learn, we have to go through," Larsen said. "We've been through a lot of it. That trajectory … it's generally a bumpy road. It is, and you can't fast-track it. There's no substitute for experience. There isn't. And some guys handle it better than others. There are some surprises, and there are some guys who are going to take longer. I can't tell you who those guys are going to be.
"But as a staff, I know we're going to work to help those guys and grow them and get there as quick as we can, but it has to make sense for them, too. There's a road ahead. But it's exciting."