Blue Jackets Preview: Columbus Again Expects Big Things out of a Talented Group of Forwards

One year ago, the Columbus Blue Jackets finished sixth in the NHL with 249 goals on the year, an average of 3.04 per game.

Of those, 206 were scored by forwards, and 96 of those goals won’t be available to the Jackets when they begin the 2017-18 season Friday against the New York Islanders.

But while those are substantial numbers, Columbus has banked on a new infusion of youth, depth and stardom (read: Artemi Panarin) to solve any potential goal-scoring problem, and there’s a good chance the front office has a point.

Yeah, Brandon Saad, Sam Gagner, Scott Hartnell and William Karlsson all left this past offseason, while Josh Anderson remains unsigned and Boone Jenner seems to have no timetable to return while rehabbing a back injury.

But while the Jackets have said goodbye to those players, Panarin highlights a talent infusion that also includes highly skilled youngsters Oliver Bjorkstrand and Sonny Milano, 2016 first-round pick Pierre-Luc Dubois, the promotion of Markus Hännikäinen and the acquisitions of Tyler Motte and Jordan Schroeder.

So how will the Blue Jackets line up when the first puck is dropped during Friday’s home opener?

There’s little question what the top line will be. Artemi Panarin will join blossoming center Alexander Wennberg and 35-goal scorer Cam Atkinson on the No. 1 unit, one that is expected to be the goal-scoring engine of the team and perhaps one of the top-scoring trios in the NHL.

Panarin’s qualifications come as unquestioned, and his elite skill is what the organization targeted in the offseason. He has two NHL seasons and has put up similar statistics in each, topping 30 goals and 70 points in each of his campaigns. On the whole, he had 61 goals and 90 assists for 151 points in 162 regular-season games with the Blackhawks.

With 17 man-advantage goals the last two seasons, he also should provide a spark to a power play that, like Icarus and Daedalus, started out hot last year but flew too close to the sun and crashed to earth as last season went on.

When it comes to Wennberg and Atkinson, fans know what to expect out of the team’s top two scorers a season ago. Now just 23, Wennberg set career highs last year with 13 goals, 46 assists and 59 points and looks like one of the league’s top distributors for years to come. Atkinson increased his goal-scoring total for the fifth consecutive season a year ago, finishing with a 35-27-62 line that was the best on the team.

For head coach John Tortorella, his major concern about that trio is whether it tries to be too generous.

“I like the line. It's a dangerous line,” Tortorella said. “I hope they don't over-pass because Cam scored 35 goals last year. I told him on the bench tonight, when he's walking almost down the slot and trying to find No. 9 over there. No. 9 is going to try to find No. 13. No. 10 tries to find everybody. They need to shoot the puck, too. That's the only thing that concerns me about that line, but I think they'll work it out."

One of the biggest questions of intrigue this camp was whether Pierre-Luc Dubois would be ready, and he answered that emphatically during six preseason games, scoring three goals and adding two assists.

But in a twist, Dubois will begin the season not at center – which is where Columbus projected him when taking him out of the QMJHL last summer, and where he played at the Traverse City Prospects Tournament – but at wing. Tortorella made the choice to put the big 19-year-old, who had 55 points in 48 games in juniors last year, at that spot in order to ease his transition to the NHL game.

"Luc just felt comfortable at wing," Tortorella said. "After last year's camp, he was really tentative. He looked a little overwhelmed. I just wanted to give him as much confident as possible this camp, and he's improving every day."

That will force a bit of a reshuffling of the lineup, but it will also give the Blue Jackets a pair of veterans down the middle of the ice. One of them is captain Nick Foligno, who has played mostly wing during his NHL career but has dabbled at the center spot at times in his five-year Blue Jackets career.

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Foligno had a bounce-back year a season ago, posting a 26-25-51 line after just 12-25-37 in 2015-16. While it seems unlikely Foligno will again match the 31 goals and 73 points, each career highs, he posted in 2014-15, he remains a complete player for the Jackets who can do a little bit of everything.

“He’ll open the season playing center,” Tortorella said. “With Nick, it doesn’t matter – he can play all the positions. He’s really trying to concentrate on his coverages, asking a lot of questions. It’s a little bit different for him. He knows the coverages, he just hasn’t had much work at it because he was playing wing.”

Also in the middle is veteran Brandon Dubinsky, who enters his sixth season in Columbus ready to go after rehabbing a wrist injury in camp. The 12th-year centerman has been dependable in his time with the Blue Jackets, scoring 60 goals and adding 135 assists in 307 games including 12 tallies and 29 helpers a season ago.

Another gritty customer is Boone Jenner, who it appears will not begin the season in the lineup as he works his way back from the injury. Jenner had 30 goals as a 22-year-old two years ago and had an 18-16-34 mark last year, and he provides a nice mix of toughness and scoring touch when healthy.

The Blue Jackets will also look to some youngsters for scoring thrust. Just 22, Oliver Bjorkstrand got off to a slow start last year but showed high-level goal-scoring ability when he returned to the team in February, posting a 6-6-12 line over 21 games to close the season. He added three goals and two assists in six preseason games.

There’s also the wild card of 21-year-old Sonny Milano, the team’s first-round pick in 2016. Milano has played just seven NHL games with no goals and a single assist over the past two years, but his confidence and skill with the puck on his stick are unquestioned. His work on defense has been, but the head coach sees improvement in that regard.

"He looks very comfortable to me," Tortorella said. "Probably in the first period (vs. Pittsburgh on Saturday), he was probably our best player. Let's just get out of his way offensively because he's so skilled. The most encouraging part to me is he's beginning to understand, he's beginning to listen and understand some of the things he has to do away from the puck. And he does not always have to make an offensive play every time he has the puck.

“He's progressed in the last two years. He's progressed nicely. If he can stay on top of himself, that is a jolt to this lineup offensively."

In the bottom six, there is a mix of young talent and dependable veterans. Penalty killer and hard worker extraordinaire Matt Calvert is back after a typical Matt Calvert campaign – 10 goals, three of which came shorthanded, and five assists to go with 48 penalty minutes, 61 hits, 34 blocked shots and 23 takeaways.

Lukas Sedlak also slots in as the fourth-line center, but Tortorella has maintained he can do more than that. A year ago, Sedlak made his NHL debut and was a steady presence, totaling seven goals, six assists and a plus-10 mark along with strong possession and faceoff stats in 62 games.

Winger Markus Hännikäinen signed a one-way contract late last season, and the 24-year-old Finn could be ready for a full-time NHL role. He has played in 14 NHL contests the past two seasons with a goal and an assist, but he had 19 goals and 18 helpers in 57 games with Cleveland a season ago.

Tyler Motte provides an intriguing option after being acquired in the deal that brought Panarin to Columbus. The former University of Michigan star – he had 32 goals and 56 points in 38 games with the Maize and Blue two seasons ago – made the Blackhawks out of camp a year ago and had four goals and three helpers in 33 games while adding 16 points in 43 games with Rockford of the AHL.

Former first-round pick Jordan Schroeder has been sidelined with injury in camp, but he was added via trade to bring depth to the center and wing spots after tallying six goals with seven helpers in 37 games last year with Minnesota. Veteran Zac Dalpe potted two goals in five preseason games, and the former Ohio State Buckeye with 12 goals and 12 assists in 128 NHL games can play both center and wing.

Tortorella has said 13 forwards will be on the squad to start the season, and those forwards will be looked upon up and down the lineup for both scoring and some grit. While the offseason was about adding talent, largely in the form of Panarin, the head coach knows the team can’t lose sight of the consistent, pressure-filled game that made Columbus one of the toughest teams to play against in the NHL a season ago.

"I don't want us to lose the other part of that, the grind of the game," Tortorella said. "To me, it's not any one particular person that needs to puck it up. It's the group. It needs to be a mind-set. It's one of the points we brought up before tonight's game. We're zipping the puck around and this and that, and our skill has been at it, but we have to grind too. It's not any one particular player but I think everybody has to chip in in that area."