This summer is a critical step towards something bigger.
On Friday, we looked at the remarkable past year Zach Werenski just completed: a World Championship gold medal with Team USA, Olympic gold in February, the birth of his son with wife Odette last month, and his first Norris trophy last week.
Now with a Norris in hand and in the prime years of his career, Werenski is looking for sustained team success in the NHL. And that makes you think about where the Columbus Blue Jackets are today and going forward, and where Werenski is and what could be.
On July 29, 2021, the Blue Jackets signed Werenski to a six-year contract extension.
The deal locked up one of their best players as the franchise underwent a rebuild. It was the first real rebuild, as the team was stripped down to the studs in an attempt to load up on talent in the pipeline and have a team ready to compete right about now.
Through that point in Werenski's career, he had completed five NHL seasons, in which Columbus had been to the playoffs four times: his rookie season in 2016-17, 2017-2018, 2018-19, and 2019-20, the latter of which was inside the bubble because of the COVID pandemic.
The Jackets made it past the first round once — in 2019-20 after sweeping the Presidents' Trophy-winning Lightning — before bottoming out in 2020-21 in the reduced 56-game season and kicking off the rebuild soon after.
Head coach John Tortorella moved on. Cam Atkinson was traded for Jakub Voracek. Cole Sillinger was about to make his NHL debut. Kent Johnson debuted late in the 2021-22 season under longtime assistant and first-year head coach Brad Larsen.
The club actually finished with a decent 37-38-7 mark and 81 points. Well below a playoff spot, but the team was more exciting on a nightly basis than originally thought would be the case.
Optimism surged when things came together in the summer of 2022, and the Blue Jackets signed the best free agent on the market, Johnny Gaudreau. However, the product on the ice in 2022-23 showed just how far away they were from contention.
Ahead of the 2023-24 season, the Blue Jackets moved on from Larsen and agreed to terms with embattled former head coach Mike Babcock before having to settle for assistant coach Pascal Vincent because of the cellphone scandal under Babcock before he coached one game.
And since then, the Jackets are two head coaches removed from Vincent, having had a surprise year under Dean Evason in 2024-25 and now under Rick Bowness. Bowness preached culture change after the Jackets' 2025-26 season spiraled out of playoff contention, and a 2-1 loss to the Capitals to close out the season.
That's where we are today.
Fresh off winning the first Norris of his career and the first for the Blue Jackets franchise, Werenski is a preeminent player at his position in the NHL.
Just as Bowness preached culture change, it's now another thing to follow through and do that. President and general manager Don Waddell is in the middle of his second full offseason with Columbus, and Charlie Coyle, who garnered Selke votes, was locked up to a six-year deal.
It remains to be seen what the Jackets do to improve the roster enough to qualify for the playoffs again. One prevailing notion is apparent. The Jackets can't waste Werenski's best years.
Dylan Larkin, the Red Wings' captain since 2021, signed an eight-year extension with Detroit in 2023. The Red Wings have not made the playoffs since 2015-16, and the club's 10-year playoff drought is the longest in the league after yet another season in which the playoffs looked inevitable before a team meltdown down the stretch.
Now Larkin is reportedly seeking a trade. Just a few months ago, Larkin expressed his trust in Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman.
Werenski and Larkin, close friends dating back to their days together in Michigan, are sure to be the subject of rumors about how the two could be reunited in Columbus, regardless of what it might take to pull off a trade to appease the Wings.
The Blue Jackets have to figure out how to build around Werenski before he's an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2028. Or they're going to face a similar situation in 2019 when they opted to keep pending UFAs Sergei Bobrovsky and Artemi Panarin, and bought at the trade deadline, acquiring Matt Duchene and Ryan Dzingel.
With talks about a possible next captain in the event Boone Jenner moves on, it could help further entice Werenski to be a part of the future if he were given the 'C.'
As Bowness preached urgency for his club, there's now an urgency for Waddell to deliver on the rebuild. The goal was always to build a team capable of sustained success, and five years later, the time for patience is over. Columbus can't afford to waste any more of Werenski's prime.
