WINNIPEG — The Columbus Blue Jackets lost 2-1 to Winnipeg on Saturday, their latest step in a late-season slide that has taken them from near the top of the NHL’s playoff picture to two points outside it. After an off day on Sunday, Rick Bowness and his staff spent hours looking for ways to reignite an offense that has gone cold at the wrong time.
The loss left Columbus 1-6-1 since March 21 and followed a 5-1 defeat in Carolina on Thursday. It also came after a players-only meeting on Saturday night, a sign of how quickly the mood has changed around a team that had been one of the league’s hottest since Bowness was hired on Jan. 12. Under Bowness, the Blue Jackets went 19-3-4, climbed from 28th in the standings to as high as seventh, and looked for a while like they had escaped the kind of late-season pressure that usually breaks young teams.
Zach Werenski did not hide how badly the skid has hit the room. “Stuff like this, it happens, and it sucks,” he said. “There’s no one who hates it more than the guys in that room.” He added that Columbus was “so close” and in “such a good position” before finding itself “on the outside looking in,” but said “there’s still time to change that, and it starts with Tuesday.”
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That is where the tension now lives: not in whether the Blue Jackets understand the stakes, but in whether they can turn that understanding into goals. Bowness said players have gotten “selfish” in the last few games, while Werenski said the team has become “disconnected.” He pushed back on the idea that the moment is too big for the group, saying, “I don’t think the lights are too bright or the pressure is too high (in here).”
The backdrop makes the slide harder to ignore. Columbus had risen from 28th to seventh in a two-month burst that made a playoff chase feel realistic, and that rise now sits beside a sudden run of losses as the standings tighten. Werenski said the burden now falls on the veterans in the room as much as anyone else. “We have a lot of guys who have played in the playoffs. I’ve been on big stages. It’s on us to help the younger guys who haven’t been in that position,” he said.
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Tuesday now looks like the next hinge point. The Blue Jackets have spent months proving they could climb into the race; the question is whether they can stop the slide before the race slips away.
