MacKenzie has been up and down from Syracuse for most of the season. He has split time and has been a roster casualty a few times when they have added new players to the mix. His impact could be minimal, but without Nash and Huselius, he could see some ice time.

Mayorov has had a pretty solid year in Syracuse. He has 11 goals and 12 assists in 61 AHL games so far this year. the right-winger was picked in the 4th round of the 2007 draft and spent last year with Syracuse and was on pace for similar numbers.

I’m excited to see Mayorov in the NHL, he’s very young (only 20 years old) and unlike Nikita Filatov, he has kept his temper in check while he was working on his skills in Syracuse. Filatov could never fully embrace a minor-league assignment because his ego couldn’t handle it, so they shipped him off to Russia, we’ll see if he comes back.

Kristian Huselius looks to be out as well, so Columbus could duplicate the effort they had against Los Angeles, a game in which they lost 6-0 and only had 11 shots on goal.

Fredrik Modin was traded to the Kings for a conditional 7th round pick in this year’s draft. The condition is that if Los Angeles wins the Stanley Cup, the Blue Jackets get their 7th round pick. I don’t know the odds of that happening, but it could happen, I know Columbus is rooting for that to happen. To be completely honest, it’s a moot point since most 7th round picks don’t end up making the team anyways. I speak of this trade because Modin scored against Columbus late in the 2nd period. It didn’t matter too much, since the game was well out of reach very early in the contest. Steve Mason let four of the first 13 shots get passed him and was pulled in favor of Mathieu Garon.

R.J. Umberger spoke out after the game and said that the effort was embarassing. Umberger, who should have been on the U.S. National Hockey team at the Olympics, is one of the most active players on the ice, but didn’t see it from the rest of the team.

Wayne Simmonds, Drew Doughty, Michal Handzus, Alexander Frolov, Brad Richardson, and Modin scored in that order. All of these players have played very well over the course of the season and has the Kings winning nearly 75% of their games this season. Jonathan Quick looked sharp, but only stopped 11 shots the entire game, it was his 3rd shutout of the season and by far his easiest of his career.

Columbus travels up the road to Anaheim tonight, looks like they could be without Rick Nash (lower body injury) and I’m sure Garon will be in net.

Torres will be an undesignated free agent at the end of this season. He will demand a pretty nice contract, something the Blue Jackets can’t afford to do, in their current financial situation. Unfortunately, this means that Columbus needs to move him for a high to mid-level draft pick. Columbus is already a very young team and it will hurt them to lose Torres, but they must move him and get something in return.

Trading Torres shouldn’t be too difficult. He’s an electric player with goal-scoring capabilities. He has been linked to the Predators, Ducks, Rangers, and as many as 10 teams interested in Torres. The asking price is currently a first-round pick, just because the demand is so high on him. Will they get a first-round pick? I would guess that if a team did step up and offer that, the Blue Jackets would take it.

The Blue Jackets are undefeated under interim coach, Claude Noel, and has two more games before the Olympic break. With 21 games left on the season, Columbus would probably have to win at least 17 of those games to have a legitimate shot at a playoff berth. 92 to 94 points are usually needed and it seems like a longshot, but they aren’t eliminate as of today.

Can the Blue Jacket surge and make the playoffs or is the hole they dug too deep?

Noel is 54 years old and he joined the Blue Jackets as an assistant coach in 2007. He started out in coaching with the ECHL’s Toledo Storm, from there he went on the coach the Dayton Bombers, Roanoke Valley Rebels, and Michigan K-Wings of the IHL. He then served as an assistant coach for four years for the AHL’s Milwaukee Admirals. He took over as head coach for four seasons for the Admirals. His record as their coach was 183-94-12-31, he lead the team to two West Division titles and three 100-point seasons, the 2004 season, they won the Calder Cup.

Before he started into coaching, he was a player from 1975-1988. He played in 809 regular season games as a player for the Buffalo Norsmen (NAHL), Hershey Bears (AHL), Toledo Goaldiggers (IHL), Kalamazoo Wings (IHL), and Milwaukee Admirals (AHL). He also had a breif appearance in the NHL during the 1979-80 season for the Washington Capitals.

It’s difficult to know what changes Noel will make on the Blue Jackets. When he was the head coach of the Admirals, they averaged 250 goals a season and only gave up around 200 in 80 game seasons. Hopefully he can tweak the lines to get more offense and maybe get the players to start playing fundamental hockey.

Hitchcock was 125-123-36 during his tenure as the coach in Columbus. He was the team’s fourth head coach during their short history as a franchise. Hitchcock is known as a defensive coach, but the way the team has been giving up goals all season, it didn’t appear that his philosophy worked. The Blue Jackets lack depth at defenseman to worsen the cause, but a change at the top was needed to spark the team and try again next season. Claude Noel will take over as the interim head coach, who has experience coaching in the AHL.

Columbus is currently 22-27-9 this season, and is 14th out of 15 teams in the Western Conference with 53 points. Clearly a lot needs to change for the Blue Jackets, firing Hitchcock was only the first step. It could be a very busy rest of the season for upper management.

Lori Schmidt, of 97.1 The Fan, the local ESPN radio affiliate in Columbus, said that the Blue Jacket said that the songs were on random and it just happened to be the song that played. I think the Columbus sound operations person needs to delete the song so this doesn’t happen in the future. I know that we need to let the opposing teams fans feel at home in our building, anything to help the team get a sell-out, but this was just outrageous. You don’t want to turn Nationwide Arena into the United Center.

Columbus already had the deck stacked against them, because any team does when they face Cristobal Huet. He has the 4th best Goals Against Average in the NHL (2.19), and before these two games, he was already 20-8 on the season. In the first contest against the Blue Jackets in Chicago, the Blue Jackets had trouble just getting a shot off and Huet registered his fourth shutout of the season by only stopping 24 shots. Brian Campbell started out the game with a goal at 1:01 in the 1st period, so Columbus was trailing the entire game, a position where they don’t usually come back from. The two other stars of the game were Kris Versteeg (two assists) and Niklas Hjamarsson (one goal).

After losing the first game 3-0 in Chicago, Columbus must have learned a few things for the next contest. Since Huet had such success against them, he would once again face them. It wouldn’t have matter much because their backup, Antti Niemi, is leading the NHL in Goals Against Average at 1.90 and a 12-3-1 record. The Blachawks are stacked at the goaltender position and many other positions, they aren’t one of the best teams in the NHL because of a fluke, their roster is very talented.

In the second game of the home in home in Columbus was a much different contest. After early goals by Andrew Ladd and Troy Brouwer, it didn’t look like the BLue Jackets had any shot at winning the contest, then Kristian Huselius and Rick Nash scored goals late in the first. The Blackhawks got one more goal in the first by Marian Hossa, to end the 1st period with a 3-2 lead. Nash ended a very long goal-less streak, the longest of his career and he didn’t stop there. In the 2nd, Nash scored again and Kris Russell scored his fifth goal of the season, giving the BLue Jackets a 4-3 lead heading into the 3rd period. Columbus must have learned something by facing Huet in the previous game and playing at Nationwide Arena doesn’t hurt. The Blue Jackets didn’t start out of the 3rd period very well, Jonathan Toews and Ben Eager scored two early goals to take the lead and Toews registed a 2nd goal in the period just a few minutes later, the game looked lost until Raffi Torres put in a goal. The game was 6-5 in Chicago’s favor, but Columbus didn’t go down without a fight. The final 2:30 of the game was exciting since Columbus pulled goaltender Steve Mason, but didn’t allow an empty net goal because they were pressing Chicago and nearly tied up the game on a few occassions. It didn’t happen and Chicago won a closely-contested game, 6-5.

There are a few things that Chicago learned in the two games against Chicago. They can’t make mistakes in their own zone or they will pay the price. They may not always pay for those mistakes, but it just takes one or two mistakes to turn the game around in the other teams favor. Also, the Blue Jackets used Mathieu Garon in the first game and Mason in the second, so they don’t have a #1 goalie yet. Garon only gave up 3 goals against a highly talented offense, but Mason gave up six goals, but had the lead for a portion of the game, something Garon never had. Garon will probably get a good portion of starts over the next few weeks, but getting Mason fixed is definitely a goal high on their list. In closing, the Blue Jackets knew that they might have an uphill battle if they plan on making the postseason and a series against one of the best teams in the Western Conference can definitely tell what kind of team they have. I believe Columbus knows the potential of their current team and they might start working towards next season, which isn’t a bad thing. They are one of the youngest teams in the NHL, their best best years are ahead of them.

Vancouver Canucks forward, Alex Burrows, was named the NHL’s first star of the week with the Anaheim Ducks goaltender, Jonas Hiller, taking the second star. Burrows scored six goals with 1 assists and two hat-tricks in three games this week. Hiller went 4-0-0 with a 1.50 GAA and a .954 save percentage. The NHL was correct in recognizing Garon as the third star, since Burrows and Hiller were the only two players in the NHL who had a better week.

Garon will probably be in the net tonight in St. Louis against the Blues. No word on if that is definite or if he will get a breather and rest him for an upcoming home and home against the Chicago Blackhawks.