Welcome to our offseason initiative — 30 teams in 30 days.
From July 16 until Aug. 14, we’ll be dedicating each day to a new team by recapping the offseason and looking ahead to 2012-13.
There will also be a series of posts looking at key stories, player profiles and burning questions regarding each squad.
Our penultimate team is the Columbus Blue Jackets.
After dragging their feet during the trade deadline, the Blue Jackets finally parted with their greatest player, shipping Rick Nash to the Big Apple.
Thanks to that trade and various other moves, Columbus has collected “a lot of second-liners” as R.J. Umberger said.
The Blue Jackets expect to score “by committee” with that approach, but they’ll look different on defense and in net as well.
James Wisniewski and Jack Johnson should be more firmly entrenched while youngsters Ryan Murray and Tim Erixon could get a decent shot at cracking the top-six. (At least intermittently.)
Columbus traded for Sergei Bobrovsky, who’s likely to grab the No. 1 job over Steve Mason - who merely hopes to resurrect his career.
If nothing else, the Blue Jackets present an intriguing mix of changes going into next season. We’ll examine the biggest pieces to that puzzle today.