(Note: I"m posting this as a FanPost, rather than a front page article, because I consider it more of an editorial / opinion piece. Everything you're about to read is just from me, not Mike, Andrew, or Andy.)

I had an interesting encounter with another CBJ fan yesterday, while watching the US / England World Cup match. He opened with one hell of a hook:

"What does it take to piss you off, man?"

He feels I'm too lenient, or too positive, about the Blue Jackets. That the squad is the laughing stock of the NHL, and that we shouldn't be giving out any free passes.

At the time, I told him that last year was a huge screwup, but that I thought the team was improving, and wondered why I was supposed to be getting angry when I thought that the team was doing the right things. 

I still think that, but the more I chewed over the conversation, I felt like there was more that I could say about this, so here we are.

First off, let's get the elephant out of the room: We root for a team that's been to the playoffs once in ten years. There's no ifs ands or buts about it - that sucks.

But whose fault was that, really? From where I sit, a lot of that blame rests on the shoulders of Doug MacLean. Doug was a fantastic salesman, and he did a wonderful job of selling NHL hockey to Columbus. But he was a poor manager, and an inconsistent coach. He let his ego drive too many decisions, and became fixated on quick solutions rather than trying to build the program the right way. He didn't trust his scouting staff, and he pushed young players in too quickly in an attempt to sell tickets rather than develop their talents. 

But here's the thing: Doug is gone.

Scott Howson came in with a terrible situation to try to fix, and a team that dearly needed to get back on its' feet. 

How's he doing?

2007-2008: Missed the playoffs, but set a franchise record for wins and points. Dealt with the Adam Foote situation about as well as could be hoped for. Got Sergei Federov's contract off the books. 

2008-2009: Grabbed Umberger. Made free agent moves to bring in Commodore. Brought in Raffi Torres. Added Tyutin. Made moves mid-season to grab Jason Williams and Antoine Vermette. Made the playoffs. 

2009-2010: Fell back to Earth. Tried to kick-start the team by trading Chimmer for Clark and Jurcina, had that move backfire as much due to Hitchcock as the players themselves. Made the best of a bad situation with Filatov. Brought in Garon during free agency, who was a big piece of keeping our heads above water when Mason struggled. May have waited too long to part ways with Hitch when the team went into the crapper, but can't be blamed for giving him a chance to fix his mistakes. Hired Scott Arniel after a long coaching search. Team missed the playoffs but still delivered the third highest point total in team history.

So that's two seasons of clear improvement, and one season of struggles in which Howson did everything reasonable to try to get the team going again, and made the best decisions he could when that didn't work. 

I don't see reasons to be angry there. And I look at our drafting and our cap situation, and I actually see quite a few reasons to be pleased. No matter what happens with Filatov, I see a lot of promising talent in our system, the cap room to add players if we need to, and the freedom to keep that talent in-house with good contracts when they're ready to play in the NHL.  (In fact, I only see one real obvious draft strikeout under Howson - Stefan Legein - and that situation was out of his control, too.)

Alright, so with that covered, where else do we look? I suppose the Head Coach is the next step.

Once again, if we divorce ourselves from the MacLean Era, we get...Ken Hitchcock. 

Hitch was exactly what this franchise needed when he came in. He gave it a lifeline after free-falling for so long, and helped the team pull its' collective head above water. He pushed them harder than anyone had ever pushed them before, and for awhile the results were brilliant. The problem is that when he'd pushed them too far, he didn't understand that you need to back off before you push them straight off a cliff. If there's anything that concerned me about Hitch as a coach, it was that he kept Gord Murphy and Gary Agnew as his assistants - I do wonder if a total refresh of the coaching staff when he came in might have helped, but on the other hand, there's probably things that went on behind the scenes there that we'll never know about.

Hitch was asked to coach a team that would be young, dynamic, and tends to work better with a more open game plan than strict defensive assignments and trapping, and he couldn't manage it past a certain point. Once it became clear that both he and the team were at the ends of their rope, the front office did the right thing by removing him, but leaving the door open for Hitch to potentially return to the front office down the road. 

Claude Noel helped the team pull themselves back across the finish line. I think he's a good man who made the best of a bad situation, and I do wish him luck wherever his next step might be.

Now we have Scott Arniel. Aside from his (excellent) reputation, all we have to judge him on in Columbus so far is a few press conferences and some interviews. We'll have to see what this first year holds, and how long the honeymoon lasts, but so far, I think the signs are positive.

Perhaps I'm supposed to be angry about the fact that we are talking about Scott Arniel, and not about Guy Boucher. I don't see that as a reason to be angry with the Blue Jackets. I don't even see it as a reason to be angry with Scott Howson, Mike Priest, or J.P. McConnell. 

The news that Boucher was offered the job was leaked. The Dispatch has said repeatedly that the leak didn't come from the Blue Jackets. That tells me it came from Boucher himself. So he created a firestorm to put pressure on Montreal and Tampa, and probably never had any intention of taking the job in Columbus, despite asking for time to consider the deal.

There's exactly one person that reflects badly on: Guy Boucher. Him, I am not terribly fond of at this time. But I still don't see that as a reason to be angry at the Blue Jackets. As soon as they knew Boucher wasn't going to take the offer, they got the man they felt was the best fit, and honestly, I'd rather have the guy that leaps at the chance to be here over the guy who felt our best use was as leverage against other suitors any day of the week.

So that leaves us with the players. 

First off, let's talk about the 'culture of losing'. That's horseshit. The team's certainly come out and played poorly at times, but I doubt that they've ever gone into a game saying "Guys, there's no point tonight." These guys made it to the NHL by being driven to win. If they really didn't have any desire to compete, they wouldn't go through the abuses and demands of an NHL season. We tend to say "Oh, he's getting paid millions to play hockey" and forget that means thousands of miles of travel, 16 hour days, tremendous amounts of physical conditioning, even greater amounts of physical punishment, 9-10 months out of the year of an incredibly monitored diet, and automatically forfeiting a good chunk of your personal and professional privacy. 

Oh, and did we mention that this "dream job" will put so much stress on your body that most hockey players retire around age 35, because they can't make their bodies put up with the abuse any longer? Not to mention shrugging off injuries that would sideline us for a lot longer. I sprained my wrist this past winter working out. I could barely use my injured hand for the better part of a month. A hockey player sprains his wrist and he's usually expected to be back on the ice within a week - sometimes less if the team is in the middle of a playoff push. 

If these guys didn't think they had any chance to win, there are a lot easier ways to make a living.

Even if you don't agree with me on that, and say that the team as it stands should be blamed for the losses of the past...who do I blame, exactly?

Look at the current roster. I can count the players who have been in Columbus for more than three years on one hand. Of those, only two - RIck Nash and Rusty Klesla - have been with the team at the NHL level for longer than four.

People have accused Rick Nash of taking games off, or playing with less heart for the Blue Jackets than he did for Team Canada in the Olympics. I don't agree. I certainly think there are times when he's looked dead tired on the ice - exhausted, even. But that's what happens when you get double or triple-shifted more often than not. 

Is he a relatively quiet guy for being a Captain? Yeah, I'd agree with that. Does he seem to want to lead by example? Yes, he does. Are there times I wish we saw a little more fire out of him? Yeah. But on the other hand, we've also seen that Nash seems to have a very calm nature and a pretty long fuse. We can't make him something he's not. Do I think that perhaps Rick might have been better remaining an assistant captain on the team, and perhaps giving the "C" to R. J. Umberger instead? Sometimes. But on the other hand, there's also a lot to be said for a captain who can keep himself and the team on an even keel while he lets some of the other leaders give the room an ass-kicking when it's warranted. Not the least that it makes it that much more effective when the captain does it himself.

Did he play his heart out for Team Canada? Yeah, he sure did. But on the other hand, he was also only being asked to play 15 minutes a game, put mostly into a defensive role, and only had to play 7 games over the course of two weeks - a much lighter load than his NHL schedule. Maybe part of the way we get Nasher to put some of that jump back into his NHL game is to make him feel like the game isn't constantly on his shoulders.

Nash has an ATOI of 24 minutes a night. His normal linemates (Huselius, Vermette) average 19. That's an extra five minutes a game, on AVERAGE, that he's out there pushing. He's also got over 100 more shots on goal than either linemate.  Maybe part of the reason he seems tired is he's putting a lot more of himself out on the ice than he usually gets credit for.

Klesla? No matter what you think about Rusty, he's probably swallowed more abuse than anyone else on the team - questioned when he didn't show the offensive flair he was drafted for, pushed into the lineup from day one, held up as an example of the team ruining players under MacLean, asked to reinvent his game...yet he comes back.

Klesla has had ample chances to get out of Columbus. We know he's been the subject of trade interest before, and he's been through the free agency cycle twice now. (Not to mention that he certainly could have chosen to stay in the Czech Republic or the FNL after the lockout.)

Yet he comes back.

I don't know if Klesla will continue to be a part of the team's blue line after this off season - he may not be able to reinvent his game yet again for Scott Arniel. But when I look at Rusty, I see someone who clearly loves this city, and this team. I see a guy who has tried to provide his best effort to the franchise that drafted him, and clearly feels a sense of loyalty to them as a result. 

I don't see a reason why I should be angry at either player.

When I look at the rest of the roster, I certainly have questions. I wonder how the team will adjust to Arniel (and vice versa). I wonder if Steve Mason can keep improving the way he did at the end of last season, and be more like the franchise goaltender we all thought he would be after his rookie year. I wonder how we're going to handle our blue line, and if this is the year that we see John Moore start his NHL career, or if Nikita Filatov will come back to Columbus and become a true part of this team.

But those are questions. They aren't reasons to be angry.

If anything, I see a lot of reasons to be excited about this team. We're in a tough division, and we're gearing up to really challenge for it. We're in a position where the growth of our younger players is starting to pay off, and between guys like Matt Calvert, John Moore, and Cam Atkinson, I think we're going to see some really exceptional talent putting on the Union Blue sooner than later. I started last year believing we would compete for a playoff spot. I'm coming into 2010-2011 believing the same thing.

Should I be angry about the questions of the arena lease?

Let's be honest - if the news hadn't been leaked to the media last summer that the Jackets were investigating options with Franklin County by the liquor distribution lobbyists, how many of you would know that the arena lease was a problem? I certainly didn't, until that time. I'd be willing to bet a lot of you wouldn't have either.

On the other hand, we also wouldn't have known that the team had been working with the NHL for two years to find good solutions, or that they'd been working with the City of Columbus, Nationwide, and Franklin County to get the lease under control. 

Do I wish that they'd handled it better? Sure. Do I wish J.P. Mac had come out and said something then, rather than wait? Yeah, I do. But on the other hand, the fact that the team is still working on it, and have demonstrated to the city and the state of Ohio that they are committed to finding a long term solution is a very good sign. 

Not counting the fact that the city would take a horrific PR hit if they lost the Jackets, let's also keep in mind that they've proven that this team brings in BILLIONS of dollars to Columbus and Franklin County every year. Do you -really- think that they're going to let that money walk away if there's any way to avoid it?

I have no doubt that it will probably get debated, and I wouldn't be shocked if it ends up coming down to a clandestine meeting or five between public and private interests, but I do believe that a deal would get done. As long as the team is clearly working to solidify the long term future, I don't see any reason why I need to get angry about that, either.

There are always reasons to be worried. There are always reasons to be scared. There are always things that you can point to and decide that they're signs of the worst possible outcome. But there are also things you can point to and decide they're reasons to hope.

So. That's why I'm not angry.

How about you?