Washington Capitals: How will the Columbus Blue Jackets replace their production

We continue our offseason look at the Metropolitan Division rivals and how they stack up against the Washington Capitals. Next up, the Columbus Blue Jackets.

In 2017-2018, the Washington Capitals made team history by capturing the Stanley Cup for the first time. In 2018-2019, it was the Columbus Blue Jackets turn to make team history by winning their first ever playoff series. While this monkey was not as drawn out and significant as the one the Capitals removed from their backs, the Blue Jackets needed to overcome this obstacle in order to consider the past season to be any form of success.

The cost of this success was acquiring Matt Duchene, Ryan Dzingel, and Andy McQuaid. All came at a decent cost in draft picks and young prospects, including a first, fourth, and seventh round picks in 2019, a second round pick in both 2020 and 2021. The greater risk was adding all these players, who along with a few key existing roster players, would be unrestricted free agents at the conclusion of this season. So the Blue Jackets were setting themselves up for a make or break season, especially while mortgaging their potential future replacements for the would be free agents whom could leave in the trades.

Now they have made it further than any other Columbus team, next comes an attempt to recapture the right chemistry to get that far and even further in contention. Unfortunately for Columbus they will need to do so without a number of key players: Matt Duchene, Sergei Bobrovsky, Artemi Panarin and to a smaller extent Ryan Dzingel.

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With the departures of Matt Duchene (12 points in 23 games) and Ryan Dzingel (12 points in 21 games), the Blue Jackets are losing some good secondary scoring options from the final leg of the regular season. And in the case of Duchene (5 goals and 5 assists for 10 points in 10 games played), a good playoff contributor. In Panarin, they will have to replace all the offensive production of their top scorer for the season. And finally with Bobrovsky they need to replace a two-time Vezina awarded goalie who stole many games for the team in the past, including a few from the Capitals in the regular season.

In an attempt to replace some of the offensive production lost from Panarin’s departure the Blue Jackets signed Gustav Nyquist to a free agent deal for 4 years at $22 million, or an average annual value of $5.5 million. When compared to the contract given out to Panarin, 7 years at $81.5 Million or AAV of $11.6 million, they got a potential filler on the score sheet for half the cost. Comparing their production for the season, Nyquist scored 22 goals and 38 assists for 60 points versus Panarin’s 28 goals and 59 assists for 87 points. There will be a need to replace some additional offensive output. This production will need to come from players already on the roster short of a significant trade, as they have taken care of their own by signing a lot of their own players and only adding Nyquist from the outside.

The new version of the Blue Jackets may have trouble replicating the results from last season with all the turnover. Their record against the Capitals last season was 1-3, with each game being relatively closely matched. Two of the key factors in the Blue Jackets favor in each contest was Panarin and Bobrovsky. Panarin was a scorer in these contests frequently, and Bobrovsky was a thief in these match ups by robbing the Capitals time and again to take two of the four contests.

There is hope on Columbus’s part as Joonas Korpisalo was able to handle the Capitals in one of the games on his own, as well as in mop up duty for Bobrovsky who struggled in the one Capitals victory. Although Korpisalo doesn’t have a great impression for overall results from last season as a whole, even though he showed up rather well against the Capitals. Another common theme in these games, other than Bobrovsky handling the Capitals attack pretty easily, was the stifling team defense that Columbus utilized in shutting down the Capitals.

Besides the addition of Nyquist, the Blue Jackets are going to have to rely on the roster from last year with a few young, unproven players to fill in. A few young names to keep an eye out for are Elvis Merzlikins, Alexandre Texier, Emil Bemstrom, Vladislav Gavrikov and Liam Foudy. Add in a couple of these options with the already pretty young roster which made large strides in production last year and they could pick up the slack left by the key departures. Current roster players to expect equal or better production from last year are Pierre-Luc Dubois, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Sonny Milano and Josh Anderson.

Related Story. How will the Capitals stack up against the Flyers in 2019-20?. light

The wild card could be Elvis Merzilkins, who could be splitting time with Korpisalo. Considering the overall numbers for Korpisalo, 0.897 SV% and 2.95 GAA, the job for new starting netminder could be open for all. The last question mark for the Blue Jackets moving forward will be the center depth as they lost their best two additions from the trade deadline which addressed the issue during last season. Below is when we will see whether the Blue Jackets trust in their prospects and their holdovers from the major exodus will work out versus the Capitals.

2019-2020 Season Matchups:

Monday, Dec. 9th @ Home

Monday, Dec. 16th @ Columbus

Friday, Dec. 27th @ Home

Thursday, Mar. 19th @ Columbus

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