Wiz...was coached?

Follow the bouncing Twitter ball...

Yesterday: @treeddispatch #CBJ defenseman James Wisniewski will throw out the first pitch at Tuesday night's Reds game. He also will shag some fly balls.

Today, roughly 2PM: @aportzline Fox Sports Ohio's Jim Day, who used to work on #CBJ TV broadcast team, will have #CBJ D James Wisniewski in booth tonight, top of the 3rd.

Eh?  Jim Day?  Conducting a hockey interview once again?  Hmmmmm.....

Time to get to work.

The Stanley Cup, The Week of Champions, and I

Nationwide Arena prepares for its first NHL playoff game

“It might be a little hard to say after years of losing that we’re in the business of trying to win the Stanley Cup, but that’s how I feel. We needed to verbalize that and keep that in front of us — always — as the goal.”

John P. McConnell to Aaron Portzline

Pretty interesting comment by PMac.   I found it a thoughtful comment, and have been thinking about it a lot.  Producing a winning team is something that is on the organization.  Producing a winning environment is on....gulp...me???

Rewind history to Game 4 of our only playoff appearance.  Prior to the game, I vowed not to get cheated as a fan.  I went to that game with my swag strapped on, ready to cheer long and hard and loud no matter what happened.  That was a funny game, because when the team got behind, the crowd refused to give in, and got more pumped.  You could almost see the players kind of look at each other, say 'what the h___?', and then relax and get after it.  To pretty good results actually.

Which brings me to the Week of Champions, December 8 to December 17.

Mission accomplished...?

Columbus Blue Jackets fans want their TV hockey in high-definition.
This season, they'll get 98.7% of it that way.  (And one game will be blacked out.)

Fox Sports Ohio press release first, commentary to follow...

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FOX SPORTS OHIO & COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS ANNOUNCE 2011-12 TELECAST SCHEDULE

Ohio’s leading regional sports network to televise 79 Blue Jackets games in HD 

COLUMBUS, OHIO – FOX Sports Ohio and the Columbus Blue Jackets announced today the 2011-12 telecast schedule as the network has increased its coverage to carry 79 regular season games, all in high definition.

THIS. Revisited.

An organization without a coherent strategy is an organization
that is less likely to succeed.  Finally, the Columbus Blue Jackets
appear to be getting their strategic house in order.

Back in March, I had a hard time expressing my joy at the fact that Columbus Blue Jackets owner John McConnell was going to force a bottom-up scrubbing of his franchise.  From a ticket office that has had their share of operational challenges to a personnel staff that appeared to have no consistent vision for their roster moves and - even more troubling - talent development, the Blue Jackets appeared well past ready to take a necessary step back from the day-to-day grind and ask the hard questions like, "What the heck are we doing here?"

Get your ticket pre-sale codes HERE

Just follow this link.

Yes, it's the link to the Columbus Blue Jackets ticket office page.  Sign up for a ticket package, and I'm sure they can get you a pre-sale code.

Let's be fair to the Blue Jackets and the people who shelled it out in a prior demonstration of financial support for the team.  Don't cut in line.

And for God's sake, don't give your codes to fans of other teams.  It only makes the arena experience that much less enjoyable for the rest of us.

Also, as Matt Wagner so appropriately wrote, "Folks, if you don't know the person asking you to share your code? DON'T. I'm not even worrying about visiting fans so much as I'm worried about scalpers and those who simply want to take advantage of your goodwill. Why risk it?"

Circulating pre-sale codes is not cool on many levels.  I hope the CBJ have learned their lessons from prior incidents and have appropriate protections to guard against abuse of these codes.

The Johansen quandary (Part I)

Where will Columbus' wunderkind center
fit into the roster?  And is a roster spot
right now in his best interest - and the
club's - over the long haul?

Interesting Tweet from The Dispatch's Tom Reed the other day:

[Columbus Blue Jackets] coach Scott Arniel said if Ryan Johansen makes team he will play center. He won't be shifted to wing.

Because the obvious place for Johansen to continue his development - the American Hockey League - is off-limits, this is worth considering on a couple of levels: What it means to the roster, and what it means to Johansen.

As for the roster, the open speculation of Johansen on the 2011-2012 CBJ roster by Arniel officially marks the opening of the "Depth Chart Engineering" season.  Do you have your permits in order?

Seriously, Let's think about the roster as it stands: At center, you've got Jeff Carter, Derick Brassard, Sammy Pahlsson and Derek MacKenzie.  (There's also Antoine Vermette, not too recently a decent center in his own right, but he appears pencilled onto the wing for now.)  Now it's entirely possible that a Johansen roster spot could be spent up in the press box (more on that later), waiting for an injury to juggle the lineup.  Another possibility is that Johansen replaces one of the four CBJ centers in the lineup.  While there are four lines, each with a center, I honestly don't see four realistic openings for Johansen.

Wherein I rant about the NHL-CHL "No AHL for you!" agreement

The player development potential of the
AHL is retarded by a private
agreement between the NHL and the CHL

I'm working on a piece (two now, actually) regarding the ascendancy of Ryan Johansen to the big leagues, and this little tidbit clearly will influence what and how I write my material.

At the same time, I want the Johansen posts to be about him and his place in the Blue Jackets, so I'll segregate this information in a separate post and link to it later.  (Apologies for the bad form of re-posting four entire paragraphs worth of information, but this is meaty stuff that takes a little while to sort out.)

There's a good bit of confusion about the rules surrounding junior players because they're not in the NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement, something everyone can access. The rules are in a private agreement between the NHL and CHL (Canadian Hockey League, made up of the QMJHL, OHL and WHL). A lot of people think the AHL has a rule that someone has to be 20 to play there. Common misconception. It's not a rule made by the AHL. If it were up to them, they would take everyone over 18. Officially that's the AHL's policy in fact. 

Blue Jackets Fan Fest, from the perspective of a CannonFest organizer

The Columbus Blue Jackets today announced "Fan Fest," which is free to the public and will take place on September 9 from 4-9PM at Nationwide Arena.  More info from the announcement:

FanFest will feature over 20 players in attendance signing autographs and interacting with fans, open skating and other on-ice activities, question & answer panels, street hockey, kids' activities, food and drink specials, music and more. Players scheduled to appear include Rick Nash and newly acquired players Jeff Carter and James Wisniewski. 

The event will also offer fans the first chance to buy 2011-12 single game tickets available exclusively at the event...

A few thoughts on what I've seen/read:

1) The idea of giving fans all these incentives to come down and get excited about the upcoming season right on the cusp of training camp is a fantastic marketing move.  It's philosophically right in line with what we've been doing at CannonFest for the past two years.

Figures Don't Lie, but Liars Figure - The Defense

Fedor Tyutin at practice last year

Owwwooooooooooo!  Good Golly Miss Molly!  What was that!!??  Oh yeah.  The dog days of summer.  When hockey news is slow, slower, and slowest.

Contrary to popular belief, that was not me in the dentist chair this morning.  The girl knows how to ply her numbing agents.  Nonetheless, I decided to stay home with my numb face, and later aching jaw.  So since I wasn't at work, and needed something to do, I figured I should start crunching some numbers.  

Since the addition of Jeff Carter seems a sure fire boost to the offense, I decided to take a hard look at the defense.  With only four players returning from last year, this unit is getting a big overhaul.  The burning question is, did it get any better??  With that degree of change, how would one tell?

Fighting, Tragedy, and Passion

With the recent death of another hockey player, those who love the game of hockey are thinking deep thoughts.  We love the passion of the game.  We root for the underdog who has scrapped and clawed his way into the game with pure toughness.  We are appalled that this may end up in mutilation of the player.  This is not what we want.

As Columbus Blue Jackets fans, we are all too familiar with the underdog role.  As an organization, we struggle to try to rise above that, and often don't do well when other teams refuse to treat us as an underdog (something we have earned at times over the years, see Hitchcock, Ken).  I love Jody Shelly.  The thought that the niche he has carved out in hockey means he may end up like Derek Boogaard frightens me.

But I am not against fighting.  So I think it is time to change some rules to increase protection of the players.  The trick is to do it so that you preserve what is good in the game.