Your Assessment of the 2023-2024 CBJ season

[ViD]

Honestly, I thought it was going to be a decent season with us bolstering the defensive lineup, Fantilli and Voronkov arrival, Elvis supposedly rejuvenated under the new goalie coach, hopes for Laine at center and Gaudreau big seasons.

I thought we might challenge for a wild card spot.

But the reality hit us hard almost immediately, very few bright spots this year, I personally don’t remember if we had a win series longer than 2 all year long.

Some positives:

- Fantilli showed flashes of greatness
- Voronkov is much better than expected
- Werenski with a good offensive year
- Tarasov with a very strong second part of the year
- Jarmo gone
- Chinakhov record breaking speed and shot power
- Nylander came in strong

Big negatives

- Laine situation
- Very lopsided offensive season from most forwards
- Provorov and Severson disappointed in the second part of the season, same goes to Elvis
- A lot of injuries again
- Another average year from JG

Click to read more...

 

[VT]

Honestly, I thought it was going to be a decent season with us bolstering the defensive lineup, Fantilli and Voronkov arrival, Elvis supposedly rejuvenated under the new goalie coach, hopes for Laine at center and Gaudreau big seasons.

I thought we might challenge for a wild card spot.

But the reality hit us hard almost immediately, very few bright spots this year, I personally don’t remember if we had a win series longer than 2 all year long.

Some positives:

- Fantilli showed flashes of greatness
- Voronkov is much better than expected
- Werenski with a good offensive year
- Tarasov with a very strong second part of the year
- Jarmo gone
- Chinakhov record breaking speed and shot power
- Nylander came in strong

Big negatives

- Laine situation
- Very lopsided offensive season from most forwards
- Provorov and Severson disappointed in the second part of the season, same goes to Elvis
- A lot of injuries again
- Another average year from JG

The worst is that we don't know at all what will happen with Laine, if he will even miss next season.

My positives:
- except Jarmo all what you wrote
- Sillinger play
- Marchenko play
- Malatesta play

My negatives
- all what you wrote
- TRAGEDY IN THE JENNER FAMILY

 

[squashmaple]

My answer isn't one of the four options. I'd say "significantly worse than expected, but there is hope" but I wouldn't say my hope stems from there being a new GM coming in. The current regime (and I do say current still because everyone but Jarmo is still in place) has built an extremely good pipeline and is leaving the org in an enviable position even among rebuilders. But I still expected this team to finish around 80 points for the reasons you said, not "good" exactly, not playoff caliber, but better because of internal growth and health to key players. Instead we got more ruinous injuries and chaos.

 

[majormajor]

My answer isn't one of the four options. I'd say "significantly worse than expected, but there is hope" but I wouldn't say my hope stems from there being a new GM coming in. The current regime (and I do say current still because everyone but Jarmo is still in place) has built an extremely good pipeline and is leaving the org in an enviable position even among rebuilders. But I still expected this team to finish around 80 points for the reasons you said, not "good" exactly, not playoff caliber, but better because of internal growth and health to key players. Instead we got more ruinous injuries and chaos.

That's true, the hope for me comes from Fantilli and the rest of our enviable pipeline, which Jarmo and company deserve some credit for. But I'm also more hopeful with a new GM in town because I lost hope with so many bad decisions from Jarmo. He made so many moves that I hated from the beginning - giving away Bjorkstrand, calling up kids way too early - and several more moves that I came to hate over time.

A bit of both!

 

[NotWendell]

My vote is this franchise is a clown show and “nothing changes until something changes” at the top. But I’m glad Jarmo is gone.

 

[Xoggz22]

Here we go... this should be an informative, fun thread...

 

[CBJx614]

I think most of us knew this would be a development year with an outside chance of being in the wildcard conversation. But this was worse than I expected. I said at the beginning of the year if this team was in the lottery talks Jarmo would be on the hottest of hot seats if not on his way out. Well he's gone, if not sooner than expected. But there's still hope for the future, there's so much potential in the kids coming through the system that are just starting to trickle into the big league that I think there's still plenty of time to straighten the ship. I might even argue that this next season is even more important that last year with so many new key pieces entering in the pro side of things. New faces like Brindley, Mateychuk, Dumais, Celebrinni on top of the kids already here; Fantilli, Johnson, Chinny, Marchy, Voro, Jiricek, Tarasov.

We really need proper leadership in place to guide these kids on what it truly takes to be successful in the NHL.

 

[squashmaple]

I think most of us knew this would be a development year with an outside chance of being in the wildcard conversation. But this was worse than I expected. I said at the beginning of the year if this team was in the lottery talks Jarmo would be on the hottest of hot seats if not on his way out. Well he's gone, if not sooner than expected. But there's still hope for the future, there's so much potential in the kids coming through the system that are just starting to trickle into the big league that I think there's still plenty of time to straighten the ship. I might even argue that this next season is even more important that last year with so many new key pieces entering in the pro side of things. New faces like Brindley, Mateychuk, Dumais, Celebrinni on top of the kids already here; Fantilli, Johnson, Chinny, Marchy, Voro, Jiricek, Tarasov.

We really need proper leadership in place to guide these kids on what it truly takes to be successful in the NHL.

Lottery win confirmed, eh?

 

[Double-Shift Lasse]

It sucked but at least we got Johnson.

It sucked but at least we got Jiricek.

It sucked but at least we got Fantilli.

It sucked but at least we got…


I will have a more nuanced take at some point I’m sure but right now I just don’t have the energy.

 

[squashmaple]

It sucked but at least we got Johnson.

It sucked but at least we got Jiricek.

It sucked but at least we got Fantilli.

It sucked but at least we got…


I will have a more nuanced take at some point I’m sure but right now I just don’t have the energy.

I’ll pick a nit. Jiricek wasn’t our pick. Mateychuk was at twelve. And who knows, maybe he ends up the better of the two.

 

[CBJx614]

Lottery win confirmed, eh?

Gotta force the universe to give us what we want. No more asking and praying to the hockey gods.

 

[Iron Balls McGinty]

I'll go slightly worse than expected but that's not accurate in my opinion.

I expected a dumpster fire with the Babcock situation but we got a full on flaming dumpster fire. I would have went absolutely terrible but changing the goaltending isn't going to fix the issue. I think our coaching staff solidified themselves as subpar. the front office is a f*cking trainwreck that needs a functioning GM to hopefully turn the organization around and right the ship.

I think this entire organization has too many floaters who just collect a pay check and not enough people who care about winning. Anyone who shows any emotion and calls out others gets chastized for not being a team player. There is a whole lot of acceptance of mediocrity in this locker room that need to be removed. Empower all the young players to be winners and stop sheltering them. Stop being afraid they might fail and let them learn to be successful. You don't get better at something without sucking at it first.

 

[majormajor]

I think this entire organization has too many floaters who just collect a pay check and not enough people who care about winning. Anyone who shows any emotion and calls out others gets chastized for not being a team player. There is a whole lot of acceptance of mediocrity in this locker room that need to be removed.

Which players did you have in mind? And which players were doing the calling out?

Empower all the young players to be winners and stop sheltering them. Stop being afraid they might fail and let them learn to be successful. You don't get better at something without sucking at it first.

You'll be happy to hear that they suck plenty enough at it right now. Certainly Jiricek does. Fantilli was outscored by a country mile.

I think empowering them to be winners means getting them to not suck at an ability-appropriate-task first before moving them up.

 

[CBJWerenski8]

I think the year was a disaster personally. On and off the ice. It was much worse than I expected (I thought it was going to be a 80ish point team) and the other stuff just made it worse.

You had the best GM in franchise history, and one of the most respected men in the sport completely flub a coaching search that destroyed any trust the fanbase had in said men leading the way for the organization, which resulted in them needing to panic fire Babcock and desperately hire Vincent. Jarmo and/or JD should have gotten axed right there. The year was sunk almost immediately. Jarmo was a good GM here, but he was rightfully dismissed.

I'm not as annoyed/done with Vincent as others, but he was put in a no win situation from the start. He wasn't the first (or maybe even second or third choice) to be head coach. He got it by default. Hard to be the leader or the coach when everyone knows what happened. I think he did the best he could given the circumstances.

I'm not going to rehash everything because we all went through it. But too many players regressed, both veterans and prospects. Too many blown leads and chokejobs. There are still no answers long or short term in net. Despite the assets and time allocated to fixing the defensive problems, it wasn't any better. Too much off ice drama, and once again an injury infestation. They also still, 3 years into a hard rebuild, have no team identity.

There was a few bright spots, namely Sillinger somewhat rebounding, Voronkov, Fantilli, Nylander's hot streak, Tarasov flashing sometimes, and Chinakhov, but these alone weren't enough to salvage this season. It's some things to take into the offseason, but its still not much.

That being said, despite this enormous step back, this roster still has some high end young potential that hopefully the next GM (and maybe next coach?) can start molding something positive from it. I voted the second option but its kind of a hybrid from that and the third.

 

[majormajor]

I think the late season injury disaster / swoon / whatever you want to call it is very fresh for all of us. It's been hard to watch the final quarter of the season.

The quarter before that, the team was well above 50% in possession terms, they had a forecheck going and good team structure in the defensive end as well. I don't think that had happened since Torts was coaching here. The team wasn't very good but they didn't look bad to me for the first time in a very long time.

So I'm just making note of that, it's no less relevant than the last twenty game abomination.

You could also write about the first two quarters - the first one where we regularly took the lead only to turtle it away in the third period.

The second one, where we stopped turtling but still gave up a lot of leads, and we had a fun stretch there where all of our young scorers were point per game at the same time.

 

[EspenK]

I somewhat facetiously voted the Jackets would pick 1-5 as a nod to them winning the lottery. I expected a 70-80 point season with the actual results being towards the lower end of that range.

The season was a complete sh*tshow from the hiring of Babcock to all of the injuries to wasted development time of the young guys to Johnny NoGaudreau's lackadaisical performance to the continuing injury trend to Elvis to Vincent's player utilization to firing Jarmo without having an apparent plan to replace him to having Jarmo's saddling the team with another long term deal that doesn't as of yet appear to be working out...

At least there were some positives such as Jarmo being fired (relieved of duties), flashes of hope from the young guys and a 9.5% chance to draft Celebrini.

 

[Napoli]

I wouldn't say my answer is up there. I also wouldnt say there's no hope. As long as there's a team, there's a future and thus hope.

The team has a lot in the pipeline but I have no faith this franchise will ever escape mediocrity. There will be some playoff years but I'm not sure we'll see a consistent playoff contender. Ten years from now I'm not sure much will be different in terms of being a force in the league. This franchise hasn't given me any reason to think otherwise.

 

[koteka]

I expected bad defense. To me the acquisitions of Severson and Provorov did not not solve our problem on defense - we didn’t have any defense-oriented defensemen. This quickly became a problem once the season started.

I expected bad goalie play. I still don’t know that we have our future goalie on the roster. Greaves and Tarasov might both be guys who are backups or 1b guys. Tarasov had a good stretch. I am not sold on him yet.

I expected more offense. This was disappointing. I was hoping for high scoring games. Jackets lose 7-5. Jackets win 5-3. Jackets lose 4-3. Jackets win 5-4. That might have been fun to watch. But our offense was inconsistent. We would have a good period followed by 2 scoreless period. Or we would do nothing for 2 periods and then wake up in the third. I still don’t know that we have our centers of the future. People assume a 19 year old with a bizarre leg injury is the future 1c. I’d like to see more progression before pronouncing him as a 1c.

The highlight of the season was Dec 14 - absolutely destroying the Leafs in the first 2 periods and hearing their fans boo. We were up 5-0, and the Leafs came roaring back, scoring 5 goals in the third. KJ scored a goal in OT to crush the Toronto fans’ hopes of a miraculous comeback.

I could really go off on the front office. I have numerous times. I’ll just say one thing. Someone really needs to look into injury prevention and what other sports teams do. Some injuries are bad luck like Fantilli. But we seem to have more than most teams. This merits investigation. But I have little faith in JD even realizing it is an issue and trying to figure out if training methods or something might reduce injuries. I think JD is just cashing checks.

 

[Double-Shift Lasse]

Gotta force the universe to give us what we want. No more asking and praying to the hockey gods.

Manifest it into being.

 

[CBJx614]

Manifest it into being.

Exactly, haven't you ever seen The Secret?

 

[Crede777]

GM - I'm surprised they fired Jarmo mid-season, but I do think it was warranted given the team's performance this year. It was a make or break year for him where the team needed to show significant improvement over their 31st place finish last year. I had 80 points as the cut off. Above and he is safe, below and he's at risk. That said, I am getting similar vibes looking at available GM's as I was last summer when looking at available coaches. All I am seeing are landmines with very few (if any) clear winners. I guess my preferred candidate would be Chris McFarland but we will see. Please no to Holland, Gorton, or Tallon.

Coach - From my vantage point it is not possible for me to discern if the problems in coaching stem from Vincent himself or the players struggling to adopt Vincent's scheme. I do think he is clearly better than Larsen was in that I can, at times, discern that a scheme exists. What I can say is that I really hope both McCarthy and Recchi are gone. The defense and powerplay were both totally inept for long stretches of the season. If a new GM comes in and wants to overhaul the coaching staff immediately, that's within his right but I think Vincent may deserve a second year.

 

[Iron Balls McGinty]

Which players did you have in mind? And which players were doing the calling out?



You'll be happy to hear that they suck plenty enough at it right now. Certainly Jiricek does. Fantilli was outscored by a country mile.

I think empowering them to be winners means getting them to not suck at an ability-appropriate-task first before moving them up.

It falls back to las season but case in pint number 1 was Gudbranson being raked over the coals for questioning practice habits. This organization as a whole is more concerned about "looking" good but not always being good. It's like NASA and how they handled the Columbia disaster if you watched that documentary. NASA knew there was an issue but was so full of themselves they didn't take the issues seriously and it cost lives.

We can go back and forth on the development piece but the first time Miles Davis picked up a trumpet he sucked quite a bit. After he'd been playing 10+ years he was not doing this for the very first time.

These guys are not beginners. They've all been holding sticks and skating since they were small children for over 10 years. They just need better instruction and to go do it. They know how to play hockey. I'm just so over the punishment of developing players by limiting their ice time and not placing them in situations that allow them to improve. If they are on an NHL roster, they should be allowed to do the same things they were doing on an AHL roster, an NCAA roster or or OHL roster. That is what got them to this point.

I'll bring this up again but Rick Nash was not a good defensive player until Hitchcock put him on the PK. He sucked a it at first but he figured it out. He wasn't going to learn that in the AHL against lesser talent or just a few reps in practice drills.

I think people over complicate things at times. Since I teach drums I'll use a real life example. I can talk all day about you can use the science of the fulcrum, the grip and rotation of the wrist and fingers to produce a certain sound but sometimes I also just need to tell a kid to hit the drum harder to make a certain sound.

 

[MoeBartoli]

The last four seasons have produced poor results but this one may have been the worst season to watch.

The final Torts year was simply uninspired hockey. Torts did not want to be there nor did many of the players it seemed as many looked disengaged.

The first Larsen year was actually fun despite the results. The structure was bad; it often seemed like pond hockey but the team scored, seemed energized and was always a threat to come back from a deficit. The play would have one shaking their head but it was entertaining.

The second Lars season revealed the emperor with no clothes - the issues with the roster and structure….not much to add beyond the fun balloon had burst.

This season was a disaster beginning with the Babcock debacle, competitive expectations being pushed and then watching much of what @ViD described. Reasons to watch disappeared injury by injury. Add to that the regularly scheduled collapses making for the most disappointing season of the last four.

With that, “hope springs eternal”.

 

[cbjthrowaway]

The final Torts year was simply uninspired hockey. Torts did not want to be there nor did many of the players it seemed as many looked disengaged.

i'd wager a lot of that had to do with the PLD saga.

that group withstood the panarin/bob stuff because there was a light at the end of the tunnel (cup run) and those guys were professional. the PLD saga immediately doomed that team, which caused torts to check out + foligno/savard/jones trades to become inevitable.

The first Larsen year was actually fun despite the results. The structure was bad; it often seemed like pond hockey but the team scored, seemed energized and was always a threat to come back from a deficit. The play would have one shaking their head but it was entertaining.

The second Lars season revealed the emperor with no clothes - the issues with the roster and structure….not much to add beyond the fun balloon had burst.

This season was a disaster beginning with the Babcock debacle, competitive expectations being pushed and then watching much of what @ViD described. Reasons to watch disappeared injury by injury. Add to that the regularly scheduled collapses making for the most disappointing season of the last four.

With that, “hope springs eternal”.

vincent and larsen are, in my eyes, similarly capable (read: bad) coaches with conflicting approaches and opposite sets of strengths/weaknesses.

larsen's teams were built to win (and lose) a lot of 6-5 games. which, given the state of the roster, that approach was fine! hockey is an entertainment product. then came vincent, who said in his intro presser that he wants this team to play a lot of 2-1 games. and the way he coached certainly backed that up.

it's an oversimplification, but it's the adage of "coaching to win" vs "coaching to not lose"

larsen had the right mentality (coaching to win) and understood that maximizing skilled players means living with some mistakes, but he was incapable of preparing his team or implementing a system.

vincent's good at preparation/implementation (larsen's weakness), but is hyperfocused on eliminating mistakes (coaching to not lose) to point where he doesn't know how to effectively use the young/skilled guys that make up most of his roster – which is what larsen was actually good at doing.

the point is that both guys have equally fatal flaws. a team with brad larsen's lack of preparation and pascal vincent's aversion to chaos would be downright unwatchable, but the results wouldn't be appreciably worse than what we've watched the last two years. because being a fan of this team is sisyphean.

it doesn't have to be a binary, either. there are coaches who nail the preparation + implementation, but still coach to win and know how to use skilled players. andrew brunette comes to mind.

 

[majormajor]

I expected more offense. This was disappointing. I was hoping for high scoring games. Jackets lose 7-5. Jackets win 5-3. Jackets lose 4-3. Jackets win 5-4. That might have been fun to watch. But our offense was inconsistent. We would have a good period followed by 2 scoreless period. Or we would do nothing for 2 periods and then wake up in the third.

Up until the final quarter the Jackets had one of the best 5v5 offenses.

It's the powerplay.

I still don’t know that we have our centers of the future. People assume a 19 year old with a bizarre leg injury is the future 1c. I’d like to see more progression before pronouncing him as a 1c.

Lol you say this like it is some brave truth telling. He's 19 and hasn't started learning how to defend yet. Of course he's not a 1C now.

Most clubs do not have a better answer about their centers of the future.