Gaudreau signing has Blue Jackets thinking big

You don't get the name Johnny Hockey without being good at hockey.
And make no mistake, Johnny Gaudreau fits the bill. With six All-Star bids in eight seasons, not to mention the sixth most points in the NHL in that span, his list of accomplishments in the NHL spells out a player who is without question one of the elite players in the game.

Add in last season's ridiculous 40-goal, 115-point season and it's clear the Blue Jackets are getting one of the true stars of the game after Gaudreau signed a seven-year contract to join Columbus last week.
"He's an elite player," said Blue Jackets head coach Brad Larsen, who has to be salivating at the thought of putting No. 13 into his lineup. "He's been a producer his whole career. … I think his skill set is rare, what he does at pace and the way the NHL is played now. Everybody talks about his lack of size, but I think he's been doing a pretty good job of managing that situation and doing it at a very high level.
"His speed, his ability to make plays at a high speed, he instantly makes your power play better. There's all these things that run through your head."
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One thing is for sure, he should be an instant boost the Blue Jackets with his ability to not just score but also drive play. Columbus already set a team record a season ago in goals, and the thought is Gaudreau's sterling puck possession metrics can help the team on both ends of the ice. The production could be historic, too, as Gaudreau not only placed second in the NHL in points a season ago, his output a year ago is 28 points clear of the current CBJ record of 87 in a season set by Artemi Panarin in 2018-19.
The Blue Jackets are getting a player who

, so one major question remains. Will the addition of Gaudreau make the Blue Jackets a playoff team after two seasons on the outside looking in?
The man himself has participated in the Stanley Cup Playoffs five times and thinks the Jackets will have a chance to get back to the postseason after his addition.
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"Yeah, absolutely," Gaudreau said. "Obviously I have to get used to new things, how all the systems and stuff like that. It's hard to make the playoffs in this league. I've been there before where you're sitting at the bottom of the standings and it's hard to come to the rink and go to practice when you know you're out of the playoffs. It stings and it hurts, and you sit with it all summer and it eats away at you. That just gets you ready for next season.
"I'm so excited. I think we have a good group here. I didn't come to Columbus to check out the views. I came here to win hockey games. That's important to me."
There are plenty of reasons to come down on the positive side of the postseason debate. Adding Gaudreau gives the Blue Jackets another elite player to put alongside such notable names as point-per-game producer Patrik Laine and All-Star defenseman Zach Werenski.
The team also has a number of young players who took steps forward a year ago and should keep getting better as they gain experience, including first-round picks Cole Sillinger, Kent Johnson and Yegor Chinakhov, who all made their NHL debuts last year.
Add in a veteran core that includes leaders Boone Jenner, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Gustav Nyquist and Jakub Voracek, and the Jackets have a lot of pieces in place. The addition of Gaudreau's former Calgary teammate Erik Gudbranson to help a defense that gave up the most goals in franchise history also has the Blue Jackets feeling like tangible progress is being made in the team's "reset," to use the term of general manager Jarmo Kekalainen.
"We believe in the pieces that we had here, and we're young in some spots, but we believe in what we had," veteran center Sean Kuraly said. "To get a player like Johnny seems to push the whole plan along a little bit quicker than maybe was previously thought. As a player, you're excited about that. We want to get back to work."
In the eyes of Werenski, adding Gaudreau will also be a boon to the Blue Jackets locker room. The team's leader on the back end played with Gaudreau at the 2019 World Championships and got to see the work the star winger puts into his craft, and Werenski believes that will add another veteran role model to the equation for the Jackets.
"It's really impressive to watch him up close," Werenski said of the soon-to-be 29-year-old. "When you're in the room with him, his presence is definitely felt when he's out there doing what he does. He leads that way. I think it's going to be great for our locker room. The media, the fans, they are going to see a whole new side of Johnny Gaudreau that they've only heard about."
Still, the road to the postseason will be arduous one. Despite being on the edge of the playoff race into March of last year and still finishing 10th in the Eastern Conference, Columbus (37-38-7) was 19 points out of a postseason spot in a conference where all eight playoff teams topped the 100-point mark. Many of those teams were also active the past week, bolstering their rosters to try to chase down three-time defending conference champion Tampa Bay.
Since the adoption of the current playoff format, the second wild card in the conference has averaged 97 points, meaning Columbus likely has to pick up around 16 more points from 2021-22 to be in contention for a postseason berth.
Time will tell just how Gaudreau and Gudbranson mesh into the team and a young squad keeps maturing to make that happen, but one thing is for sure - there's a new level of excitement among CBJ players about what is to come.
"It changes the dynamic of your team," Eric Robinson said. "You're in a playoff push mode now, and I'm sure that's going to be a theme for this season."