FanHouse Mike Commodore

It's officially the offseason, meaning the time is right to look into the future. We continue our division-by-division preview of the potential wheeling and dealing with the Central Division.

The Chicago Blackhawks are trying to build off a magical season. Columbus got its first taste of playoff hockey, while St. Louis returned to the playoffs after a far-too-long absence. Meanwhile, Nashville is trying to rebound after just missing the cut for the Western Conference playoffs.

Thursday night, the Columbus Blue Jackets will begin their quest into the strange new world that is the NHL playoffs. To get an idea of the atmosphere around town, and to continue to learn more about this once anonymous franchise, we discussed its upcoming series against the Detroit Red Wings with Aaron Portzline, beat writer for the Columbus Dispatch. Portzline, one of the most net-savvy of hockey's beat writers, also helps run a blog for the paper called Puck-rakers and has an excellent Twitter page.

Portzline has covered the Blue Jackets since their inaugural season in 2000-01, and has seen all of the ups and downs the franchise has offered over the years.

With the NHL playoffs just around the corner, FanHouse takes a look at some of the lesser-known teams that qualified. Thursday's installment: the Columbus Blue Jackets

On Saturday, October 7, 2000, the Columbus Blue Jackets played their first ever regular season game. It was a 5-3 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks, and the team would know nothing but losing for the next eight seasons. No playoffs. No winning seasons. Nothing. They have been, simply, the most anonymous, unknown team in the NHL.

On Wednesday, all of that changed as the Blue Jackets, for the first time in franchise history, qualified for the postseason thanks to a 4-3 shootout win over, coincidentally, the Chicago Blackhawks, their very first regular season opponent. So, who are these guys, and what can we expect from them in the playoffs and beyond? Here are five key players, the head coach, and everything else there is to love about this once unknown franchise.

Columbus Blue Jackets' defenseman Mike Commodore, who may be best remembered on the internet for making it rain in his underwear, is really becoming a great guy for reporters to question. Whether it's a blogger or a MSM journalist, he doesn't really shy away from many questions, specifically ones about folks he isn't too fond of.

You may remember that last week he called Detroit Red Wings' coach Mike Babcock "an obstacle in [his] career." This week, Commodore has a new target and it's another former employer. This time, he goes after Ottawa Senators' coach Bryan Murray. Let's watch the fireworks!

Columbus goalie Steve Mason entered Friday's game in Colorado having registered three consecutive shutouts. He managed to keep the Avalanche off the board for 17 minutes, until Darcy Tucker snapped Mason's streak with his fifth goal of the season at the 17:20 mark of the opening frame. The 20-year old rookie posted 199 consecutive minutes of shutout hockey for Columbus, and Tucker's tally in the first period was the only goal he surrendered on the night, as he turned aside 23-of-24 shots in a 6-1 Blue Jackets win.

Mason has been a great story for the Blue Jackets, as he's pretty much carried them this season when you consider they've scored only nine goals in the eight games he's lost, including being shutout three times. He's allowed more than three goals only two times this season, and has yet to surrender more than four in a single game. Should be interesting to see how long he can continue to ride this hot streak.

As for the rest of the Blue Jackets, following Tucker's goal they pretty much took this game over and erupted for six goals over the final two periods. Rick Nash finished with a four-point night (penalty shot goal, three assists) while Kristian Huselius (two goals), Mike Commodore, Jakub Voracek and R.J. Umberger also scored for Columbus.

The win actually puts Columbus one-point ahead of Colorado for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference, while the Blue Jackets are 3-0 to open their current six-game road trip, extending their winning streak to four games overall.

Entering Thursday's game against the Islanders, Pittsburgh found itself with a three-game losing streak. Consider the streak over, as the Penguins systematically dismantled New York with a 9-2 thumping at Mellon Arena. The Penguins received hat tricks from both Petr Sykora and Pascal Dupuis (each player's first ever hat trick) as they never let up, while fans chanted "we want 10" during the final minute of regulation.

The Penguins scored four goals in both the first and second periods, before Dupuis completed his hat trick late in the third period. Defensemen Mark Streit and Andy Sutton scored the only goals for New York, as Penguins goalie John Curry picked up his second NHL win (both against the Islanders) making 24 saves.

The biggest problem for the Islanders was the fact they couldn't stay out of the penalty box, picking up 34 penalty minutes throughout the game, including three separate occasions where they handed Pittsburgh five-on-three advantages.

Pittsburgh had eight different players finish with multiple points, including Evgeni Malkin (goal, assist) and Sidney Crosby (three assists) who continue to distance themselves from the rest of the pack in the NHL scoring race. Amazingly, Jeff Taffe, recently called up from the minors, found a way to finish the game as a -1.

Should you feel sorry for the Islanders after a loss like this? Of course not. This is the big leagues, and as long as they're going to keep playing hard and physical (as they did), you should expect the other team to keep clicking on all cylinders in an effort to score as many goals as possible. You never know when the other team could mount an unexpected, late-game comeback.

As Eric McErlain reported last month, Carolina GM Jim Rutherford expressed regret in a radio interview that he had kept so many players from the Hurricanes' Cup team together, and threatened to shake the Canes out of their season-long "underachieving" by dealing away "popular players." Well, today Carolina has traded defenseman Mike Commodore -- arguably the fans' most cherished player, maybe even more than Eric Staal -- and forward Cory Stillman to Ottawa in exchange for defenseman Joe Corvo and forward Patrick Eaves.

It's a stunner of a deal for those of us that read too much into these things. Ottawa has obviously faced some character tests in this post-Cup Finals season, and adds two veterans that can be considered positive influences on the ice and in the room. At face, the Hurricanes appear to be raising a white flag next to their red one with the black rectangle. But Mirtle, in his very thorough breakdown of the deal, isn't sold on Carolina conceding the division and the postseason: "Either GM Jim Rutherford thinks his team doesn't have what it takes to a win the Cup, even if they do sneak into that third spot, or he thinks his team isn't significantly weakened by adding two younger, less experienced players into his lineup."

The two veterans from Carolina are set to become UFAs at the end of the season; note that Stillman had to waive a no-movement clause to make this happen. Eaves is an RFA while Corvo is on the hook until 2009-10. In the end, I think this is going to really sting the Carolina faithful. As Dr. Frank Lives writes in his blog reaction: "Dang, this sucks. 2006 is well and truly over. Now a guy I have lustily jeered is going to replace a guy all Hurricanes fans loved. Seriously, you might as well trade Stormy." More Ottawa perspective from Jeremy at Black Aces here. And while there's nothing yet, I think we're all dying to read what The Acid Queen thinks about this deal.

Perhaps the greatest measure of the utter lack of confidence hockey fans have in the NHL disciplinary system occurred after Colton Orr's open-ice hit on Matt Cullen of Carolina, as reviewed by EMac on an earlier FanHouse entry. The majority of fan reactions I came across just assumed the injurious play, which left Cullen with a broken nose, would result in a procedural short suspension from the League. Orr was a repeat offender, after all; and as clean as the hit was, it resulted in an injury -- always a clincher for suspensions.

But NHL goon czar Colin Campbell remains as unpredictable as ever, deeming the Orr check to be free and clear of any additional jail time from the League offices. (I'd give him a pat on the back, but I've seen how he reacts to hits from behind.) Orr, or any player who unleashes a similar hit, didn't deserve a suspension or even that game misconduct he received for the check. It was a hockey play, as Orr told the media in review: "I just cut through the middle of the ice and was just playing the man. We were both just cutting to the middle and I was just defending myself."

And yet we have Mark Pargas of the New York Times asking if, in the future, Orr could take a moment before delivering a high-speed hit to ask himself, "W.W.M.P.O.T.N.Y.T.D.?" ("What Would Mark Pargas of the New York Times Do?") Pargas argues for "a more responsible way to play a physical brand of hockey," that targets the lower body with body checks. He uses the infamous Scott Stevens/Eric Lindros collision as evidence, which would have been a fine example had his blog focused less on the checkers delivering hard hits and more on the checkees skating with their heads down in the middle of the ice.

For Carolina, watching Mike Commodore skate over to "enforce" Orr led Hockey in the South to issue a post-Christmas wish for a heavyweight goon. Bubba over on Canes Country doesn't see the need for an enforcer because he doesn't believe that players policing themselves is a better deterrent than the League suspending reckless offenders. And this is coming from someone who watched Brooks Orpik get just three games for a brutal act of chiropractory on Erik Cole.

... and let loose the Follicles of War. The NHL playoffs are here and it's time for all good men (and hockey players) to engage in the time-honored tradition of "getting woolly with it." Our old friend and member of the founding fathers of hockey bloggers, Ben Wright, has a great post at his digs, Blueland Blog, about how the Atlanta Thrashers are handling their first chance to be a part of this annual hockey ritual.

One of the questions that plagues the hockey world come playoff time is the timing of that fateful 'last shave.' Ben got a variety of replies from the Thrash, with some starting as early as the day the playoff spot was clinched (in which case the Sabres should all look like like P.O.W.'s by now) to the terse response of Keith Tkachuk who said, "It's a playoff beard. you grow it in the playoffs."

In recent years the legend of the Playoff Beard has been given extra emphasis with the arrival of Mike Commodore to the scene with both Calgary in 2004 and last year with Carolina. He went so far as to not cut his hair (during the regular season) or his beard (in the playoffs) until the Canes were eliminated and then held a charity shaving which raised money for the V Foundation. My personal favorite playoff beard of current players is J.P. Dumont of the Nashville Predators, pure Canadian lumberjack.

For more on the etiqutte, history and protocol for growing a playoff beard check out www.playoffbeard.com.

I've been bearded since 1991, and I've been tasked by my mates at HFBoards not to trim it until they are eliminated... by the way, I live in Florida. *sigh*

Ta,

"Attention Eastern Conference contenders and pretenders... we've got a floater in the pool."

Okay, so the Carolina Hurricanes aren't quite dead and/or gone yet, but when you're a bubble club, three consecutive losses at this time of year is tantamount to closing shop for the season.

The defending champs now have four games left, sit in 11th in the conference, and even if they run the table, will finish with 92 points. And unless the rest of their bubble-club friends are going to take to laying eggs against the likes of the Flyers, that's not going to do it.

The Hurricanes' latest bungle came Friday night at home against the Tampa Bay Lightning, a club they could have actually caught in the standings with a win. Instead, the Lightning - who have had their own egg-laying fiascoes lately, most of which have begun and ended in the crease - took the game 4-2 and are comfortably looking like they'll make good on coach John Tortellini's playoff guarantee.

So for the first time since, well, ever it's looking more and more plausible that we won't have either of the previous finalists in the postseason this year - not that having the Hurricanes squeak in would have aided in our dart-aided brackets any. The fact is, Carolina hasn't resembled the team that won the Stanley Cup last season at all this year - something that's tough to chalk up simply to the three losses (Martin Gerber, Aaron Ward, Matt Cullen) to free agency.

Rather, it's been the cast that's stayed that has let this team down, a group that starts with Eric Staal. A super sophomore last season with 45 goals and 100 points, he's on pace to barely crack the 30/70 marks this year and is a minus-six.

Last season saw Carolina with six players on the cusp of posting a point a game; this year, only Ray Whitney and Rod Brind'Amour have come close.

But the biggest hole has been on defence, where a late-season injury to Bret Hedican exposed just how limp the blueline has been this season. Frantisek Kaberle has played well since returning from a serious shoulder injury of his own, but when your top-scoring blueliner is Mike Commodore with 27 points on the season, there's a problem. Add in the fact that Cory Stillman has had just a terrible half season and Cam Ward's struggles and, well, those are the ingredients for a playoff miss.

The 'Canes have to now run the table and cross their fingers - which might not be a bad plan given how the Eastern Conference contenders have been dropping games as of late.

With the Islanders all but out of it without starting netminder Rick DiPietro and Carolina on its last legs, it's looking more and more like the conference's eighth spot is going to come down to the second to last night of the season when the Maple Leafs host the Canadiens.

And by that point a few more teams should be officially dead in the water.