The injuries are beginning to pile up for Don Waddell and the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Star winger Kirill Marchenko picked up an apparent injury during the team’s morning skate ahead of Monday’s meeting against the Washington Capitals, before Zach Werenski and Mathieu Olivier both made early exits during the contest with a pair of upper-body injuries.
Marchenko and Werenski have played key roles for Columbus this season, and currently lead the team in scoring with 22 and 21 points apiece through the first 23 games of the year.
The Blue Jackets haven’t been the only team to struggle with staying healthy while navigating a condensed schedule in the early part of the season, and Waddell cites the lack of downtime for players as a reason for the uptick in injuries.
“I just think the rest for these players is a big factor,” Waddell said in an appearance on TSN 1050’s First Up Tuesday morning. “We all understand why there’s a compressed schedule, everybody’s just got to deal with it. Certainly, there’s no time for rest and I think that leads to more injuries than normal.”
Waddell also revealed that the injuries have also played a part in stalling the trade market while so many team remain in the hunt for the playoffs in the early going.
“There’s a lot of talk, but everybody’s looking for the same thing: players, because of all of the injuries. You’re not at a point where anybody’s throwing in the towel and saying, ‘Okay we’ll take prospects and draft picks’.
“Any discussions you have, it’s all about players for players and I think that makes it difficult right now at this time of the year because nobody feels like they can give up too much off their team to get something else unless it’s a real big trade.
“I think it’s going to be a little bit quiet for a while and when we get through the next few weeks, get into the middle of December, if you start to see some separation in either conference, you could potentially see some teams looking to move some players.”
Columbus took three out of a possible eight points from their most recent road trip, and remain on the outside of the playoff picture ahead of American Thanksgiving in what has shaped up to be a highly competitive Eastern Conference.
The Blue Jackets narrowly missed out on the playoffs last season, finishing two points back of the Montreal Canadiens for the final wild card spot in the East during Waddell’s first campaign with the team after making the jump from the Carolina Hurricanes in May 2024.
“When you go back the last year, the way we finished was positive and everybody felt that everything that went on with the franchise was successful, and our players didn’t feel that way,” Waddell said. “I can remember being down in the locker room a couple days after the season ended. These guys were truly disappointed and not happy about the end result knowing that it’s an 82-game season and we had a great run at the end of the year.
“To me, that was one of the reasons I didn’t think we needed to tear this thing apart. I think we’ve got some good veteran leadership, got some really good young players. We needed to add a few pieces, we needed a right-hand shot centre, we got Charlie Coyle. We needed some speed, Miles Wood. We added [Isac] Lundestrom, who’s a very defensive-minded, safe forward.
“We didn’t think we needed to make a lot of changes, but we needed to tweak it some. [I] believe in this group, believe that we can get to where our goal is, and that’s to get in the playoffs.”
Columbus is in the midst of a five-year playoff drought, last getting in with a win over the Toronto Maple Leafs in the qualifying round during the 2019-20 COVID-19 bubble playoffs.
On Wednesday, the Blue Jackets return home for a meeting against the slumping Leafs, just six days after earning their lone victory of the road trip in Toronto.
Third-year forward Adam Fantilli netted the overtime winner to cap off a three-point night against the Leafs in the 3-2 victory, continuing a string of strong performances against his hometown team.
Fantilli, a native of Nobleton, Ont., also recorded his first career hat trick in Toronto last January and has averaged a point per game in eight career appearances against the Leafs.
“When you’ve got players that are going into their home city, it can go either way because sometimes it’s the distractions of having your family there, having all of your friends that are trying to see him…and then it can go the way that it’s gone for Adam, where he’s so fired up about going into Toronto being a Toronto kid and following the Maple Leafs growing up.
“For him, and for us, it’s worked out very well and I know he’s always excited about playing the Maple Leafs.”
Waddell, Fantilli, and the Blue Jackets will hope for similar results against Toronto this time around as the Blue Jackets open a two-game homestand to close out the month of November.
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