Washington Capitals
Toronto Maple LeafsThe Blue Jackets lost 3-2 in Carolina on Thursday, which is not a bad result against the best team in the East. The problem is the pattern around it. Columbus is 5-6-0, four of its five wins have come after regulation, and when Adam Fantilli scored on a power play in overtime against Vegas last Saturday, it was the team's first power-play goal in 23 chances since the season opener. Rick Bowness said afterwards, "We needed to score there, for sure."
The summer was supposed to give Columbus more scoring. It traded its captain, Boone Jenner, for Valeri Nichushkin, and added Matthew Knies from Toronto. Eleven games in, the Blue Jackets have two forward lines winning their minutes, little behind them, a power play that has scored three times, and one player finishing far above his chances.
How bad is the power play?
Bad on every measure. Columbus has scored three goals in 50.9 minutes at five-on-four, 3.54 per 60, 30th in the league. The chances are not much better: 6.33 expected goals per 60, 26th, against a league rate a little over 7.5. The Blue Jackets have also drawn fewer penalties than any team in the league, tied with St. Louis, so they get fewer chances than most teams and waste more of them.
Zach Werenski is the most obvious case. He leads the NHL at 28.9 minutes a night, has 30 shots and 1.7 individual expected goals, and has not scored. He scored 22 goals in 75 games last season, and a power play built around his shot should not be sitting at three goals.
Is the five-on-five team any better?
A little, and only at the top of the lineup. Columbus has 46 per cent of the five-on-five expected goals, 24th, and creates 2.28 expected goals per 60, 23rd. It has been outscored 21-17 at five-on-five, and that is with goaltending that has been above average. Cam Talbot has a .921 save percentage at five-on-five and is 3.6 goals above expected there.
| Columbus forward lines, five-on-five, 2026-27 | Minutes | Expected goals share | Goals for-against |
|---|---|---|---|
| Knies, Fantilli, Johnson | 89 | 53% | 5-4 |
| Sillinger, Coyle, Olivier | 78 | 57% | 4-4 |
| Nichushkin, Monahan, Garland | 38 | 38% | 0-2 |
| Voronkov, Monahan, Nichushkin | 36 | 58% | 2-1 |
The line of Knies, Fantilli and Kent Johnson is the one Columbus leans on, at 53 per cent. Charlie Coyle's line with Cole Sillinger and Mathieu Olivier has been the best at creating chances. The rest of the lineup has not held up. Nichushkin's line with Sean Monahan and Conor Garland has 38 per cent of the expected goals and has not scored. Garland has no points in 11 games. When Dmitri Voronkov replaced him, the line went to 58 per cent.
Is Kent Johnson for real?
He is a large part of the reason Columbus is scoring at all, and he is running hot. Johnson leads the team with seven goals on chances worth 3.1 expected goals. He is a good player, and the line he plays on is winning its minutes, but a player scoring at more than double his chance rate will not keep doing it. When he slows down, Columbus's scoring problem will get worse unless someone else picks it up.
| Columbus scoring, 2026-27 | Games | Goals | Points | Individual expected goals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kent Johnson | 11 | 7 | 11 | 3.1 |
| Adam Fantilli | 11 | 4 | 6 | 3.4 |
| Denton Mateychuk | 11 | 4 | 5 | 2.0 |
| Charlie Coyle | 11 | 1 | 9 | 3.3 |
| Matthew Knies | 11 | 2 | 5 | 2.4 |
| Valeri Nichushkin | 11 | 1 | 6 | 1.6 |
| Zach Werenski | 11 | 0 | 9 | 1.7 |
Did the summer trades work?
Not yet, and we were too optimistic about one of them. In September we wrote that Columbus swapped its captain for Nichushkin and the numbers approved. Nichushkin has one goal and is at 48 per cent of the five-on-five expected goals. Boone Jenner has five goals in Washington. Eleven games is not enough to call a trade, but the early returns favour the other side.
The Knies trade looks more like what we expected in October, when we wrote that Toronto bought the shots and Columbus bought the points. Knies is on Columbus's best line and is at 46 per cent individually, with two goals and five points. He has been fine. He has not been the scorer the trade was sold as.
The case for patience, stated fairly
The case for staying calm is that it is early, Columbus has played two fewer games than most of the teams above it, Werenski will start scoring, and the power play has a skilled enough group to recover. Talbot has been good, and a team that keeps games close enough to win four of them after regulation has a structure that holds up defensively more often than not.
The other side is that wins after regulation are the least repeatable kind, and that a team creating chances at the 23rd-best rate with the 30th-ranked power play is a team that will lose more close games than it wins over a season. Johnson's finishing is covering for that right now.
Our view is that Bowness should split Nichushkin and Monahan from Garland for good, keep Voronkov on that line, and rebuild the power play around Werenski shooting from the top rather than distributing. If the power play reaches even league average, Columbus gains about a goal every three games, which is the difference between a playoff race and a lottery pick.
What to watch
Columbus is in Dallas on Saturday, against a team that allows fewer chances than almost anyone, and hosts Colorado on Tuesday. Watch whether the power play gets more than one or two chances a night, and what it does with them. Every Blue Jackets number is on the team stats page, and the Metropolitan race is on the standings.