Better luck next year: What is the problem with the Columbus Blue Jackets?

They have been called losers by a former player and their current head coach. How do they fix this?

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Columbus Blue Jackets.

There was not a wilder roller coaster ride during the 2025-26 NHL season than whatever it was the Columbus Blue Jackets put their fans through. Honestly, these people are entitled to something for all of the bullshit their team has put them through over the years, and especially this season. It’s actually kind of remarkable, and a testament to the fan base as a whole, that they still show up and still care (and they very much do).

The season began with some reason for optimism. The 2024-25 season saw the team take a step forward and get back into playoff contention, there was a solid young core in place, and the playoffs seemed to be within reach. What followed was an underwhelming first half of the season that saw them hover around .500, sit near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, and then fire head coach Dean Evason in favor of Rick Bowness.

It was at that point that Lucy put the football up on the tee for Charlie Brown to take a run at it.

For the first two months under Bowness the Blue Jackets were the hottest team in the NHL. They could not lose no matter who they were playing, what the situation was, or how many goals they fell behind by early in a game. From Bowness’ hiring on Jan. 12 until March 24, Columbus went on a 19-3-4 run that was the NHL’s best record over that stretch, and at one point saw them climb to the No. 2 spot in the Metropolitan Division.

With two-and-a-half weeks to play in the regular season the playoffs seemed to be a lock.

And then Lucy pulled the football away.

The Blue Jackets won just two of their final 11 games down the stretch (with only one coming in regulation) and ended up missing the playoffs by a whopping seven points.

When the Blue Jackets were officially eliminated and the season came to an end with a meaningless Game 82 loss, Bowness absolutely eviscerated his team and the culture around the locker room, citing a belief that they had a careless attitude toward losing. At the time, he was still working under the interim coach label, and in a very public push for the full-time job said he was going to “change the culture” if he were to come back.

(He is, in fact, coming back.)

It was an incredible rant for two reasons:

1. It is not the first time Bowness has publicly shredded one of his team’s at the conclusion of a disappointing season. He had a similar rant following a Winnipeg Jets playoff loss and left nobody unscathed.

2. It is not the first time somebody associated with this Blue Jackets team and core ripped the culture and mindset of the locker room for being, for lack of a better word, losers.

Shortly after Patrik Laine was traded from Columbus to Montreal, he ruffled some feathers in Columbus and around the NHL for saying too many people in the room were a little too comfortable with losing, and that with a losing culture people would be giving up on the season by December.

That’s two different people, from two different levels of the organization (a coach and a player) echoing a similar sentiment about people not caring.

That is probably a bad sign.

If you look at the last roster Laine played with in Columbus, and the roster that played this season, there are a LOT of players that carried over.

There is also a subplot to this as it relates to forward Egor Chinakhov.

After Evason buried him on the bench as the two very obviously butted heads, the Blue Jackets traded him to the Pittsburgh Penguins in late December for a couple of mid-round draft picks and veteran forward Danton Heinen. At the time, long-time Blue Jackets beat writer Aaron Portzline said it was a risky move because there was always a chance Chinakhov could put it together, but that he was a “lost soul” in Columbus.

Chinakhov quickly started to put things together almost immediately upon his arrival in Pittsburgh and started to look and play like the top-line star his talent always said he could be.

All of these things added up into one big mess are a pretty brutal look for the organization, and you can’t really hide from the results on a team or individual level.

Why aren’t players developing here (and it’s not just Chinakhov)? Why did one go somewhere else and immediately shine? Why did multiple people with ties to the current roster so easily call them out for not caring?

Is there really a culture problem? Is it a talent problem? Is it mix of both?

Let’s talk a little more about it.

What went right this season