Monday evening within the friendly confines of Nationwide Arena, the Blue Jackets reacquainted themselves with that winning feeling by grinding out a 2-1 victory over the Florida Panthers. Having won just two games sandwiched between a nine game losing streak and a six game losing streak, respectively, the relief at breaking that cycle was evident.
This was a gritty team win, with players contributing on more than just the score sheet. Forward Scott Hartnell, for example, led his teammates with five hits on the night. The most memorable of those was a crunching hit on the Panthers Jonathan Huberdeau along the boards.
The defense was not afraid to jump up in the flow of play with a timely hit or a shot towards the net. Collectively, they were creating chances by playing their game.
The question now becomes one of can they put this feeling in their memory banks and draw on it moving forward? Everyone will look at what they have to do down the stretch, while the guys in the room are doing their best to look at just the next game in front of them.
A cornerstone of the team last year was the term 'resiliency', but has not been uttered much in the first two months of this season. Can they focus on being that resilient team they were last year and start stringing wins together?
"We have to," said forward Nick Foligno. "We have to approach it one game at a time and not get ahead of ourselves. But, we know we need to get back into the rhythm of winning. It's about understanding that the way we played (last two games) is the way we have to play continuously, every game."
"We have to try and build off this and have the confidence to know that we can go out there and do it. That's the way we need to play to win. There really is no other thought in our head except winning and doing the right things to win. That's been everyone's emphasis the last few days."
One win over their last seven games is nothing to hang your hat on. But, it has to start somewhere. There are many players in the room that went through tough times with former teams. There are also many guys in there that were wearing the Blue Jackets sweaters last year and remember what it took to get into the playoffs.
"I think it's in the back of the minds of the guys that were here in the lockout year," said defenseman Dalton Prout, "and the ones' that were here last year. We were in this situation before and we know we can get out of it. We know we still have a shot at this."
"I think our biggest reason for success was that we went day-by-day. We didn't think of a record that we had to finish out with the rest of the year. We just thought 'let's win the next game'. Or, 'let's have a good first shift in the next game' and build from that. It's about small steps. If you look at the big picture, it can be overwhelming. But, we never did that. We focused on what was in front of us and had success with it."
After 24 games, they are 7-15-2. While this is not good and nowhere near where they expected to be at this point of the season, there is still a lot of hockey to be played. As of Tuesday morning, nine of the thirty teams in the NHL have single digits in the win column.
They were counted down and almost out last year at this time, and yet were able to turn their season around through sheer will of force and hard work. Yes, this is a daunting task to have to do this once again. But the more people that say they are finished, the more it seems to strengthen their resolve to prove those that say those things wrong.
"We know we can do it," Foligno said with conviction. "You never want to put yourself in the position of having to play playoff hockey for four months. That's the situation that we found ourselves in (last year) where we ran out of gas a little bit at the end of the season when the playoffs hit. The level gets taken up another notch. That's the part that we're disappointed in."
"We had expectations of coming out and having a real good start. But, that's not the reality. So now, it's making sure that we find our game and get back to the way we were playing. We know we can crawl back into this thing. We have to try and get as many points as we can to finish out the year. Like I said, our focus is one game at a time. When we do that, we can pick away at it, piece by piece."
And that has become their hallmark. The sheer number and severity of injuries have hit this club like the body blows that the great Muhammad Ali used to deliver on a regular basis. They may be down, but by no means are they counting themselves out.
With 58 games remaining, who knows what will happen? As the saying goes, that's why they play the games.
