The Blue Jackets opened the season Thursday night looking like everything fans hoped they might become. Two nights later, they looked like a team that still has a lot to figure out.
Welcome to the 2026-27 Columbus Blue Jackets.
Thursday’s 6-3 win over Buffalo was about as encouraging as an opener could be. Matthew Knies scored twice and added an assist in his Columbus debut, the offense looked dangerous, and a roster filled with new pieces appeared to fit together almost immediately. Then Utah came to Nationwide Arena on Saturday and handed Columbus a 4-1 loss in which the Jackets struggled to generate offense and were thoroughly beaten on special teams.
Get used to some of that — not necessarily the losing part, but the inconsistency.
This is a Blue Jackets team with enough talent to be very good, but it is also a team undergoing a real-time transformation. Knies, Valeri Nichushkin, Conor Garland, Danton Heinen, and Ryan Lomberg are among the new faces in the forward group, and Rick Bowness is trying to determine how all of those pieces best fit alongside Adam Fantilli, Kent Johnson, Sean Monahan, Dmitri Voronkov, and the rest of Columbus’ returning core.
That does not happen in two games. Chemistry in hockey matters in a way that can be difficult to quantify. A winger needs to know where his center wants the puck, a center needs to anticipate where his linemates will be before they get there, and eventually players need to understand one another’s tendencies well enough that they stop thinking and simply react.
You can work on it throughout training camp all you want, but the only way to truly build that familiarity is by playing games together.
Knies is perhaps the perfect example. He joined the Blue Jackets only days before the season began and then promptly produced three points against Buffalo. That does not mean he and Fantilli suddenly possess years of chemistry because one night went well. It means the talent is obvious, and now Bowness has to determine how to make that talent work together consistently.
The same applies throughout the lineup. Which players complement Fantilli best? Does Garland make more sense with Monahan or somewhere else? Where does Nichushkin create the biggest matchup problem? How does Voronkov fit when Bowness wants more size on a particular line? Which combinations can be trusted defensively while still generating enough offense?
Those questions will not necessarily have the same answers in October that they have in January, and that is fine. The danger would be treating every good game as proof that Bowness has solved the puzzle and every bad game as evidence that something is wrong.
Thursday did not make Columbus a Stanley Cup contender overnight, and Saturday did not make the Jackets a bad hockey team. They are two games into an 84-game season with a roster that has undergone significant turnover and a defense that has already been forced to deal with injuries to Dante Fabbro, Ivan Provorov, and Damon Severson.
There are going to be nights when everything clicks like it did against Buffalo. There are also going to be nights when the passes are a half-second late, the spacing is wrong, the power play looks disjointed, and the team resembles 18 players wearing the same sweater more than one cohesive unit.
Saturday looked a little like that.
The encouraging part is that Bowness has the ingredients. Now he has to figure out the recipe.
That process may occasionally be frustrating, particularly for a fan base that has waited long enough to see postseason hockey return to Columbus. Expectations should be higher for this team, and patience should not become an excuse for poor play.
But patience and expectations can exist at the same time. The Blue Jackets should expect to win this season, and fans should expect them to compete for the playoffs. They should also expect a few nights like Saturday along the way while a new-look roster learns how to play together.
Two games have shown us both sides of what this team can be. The next few months will determine which one we see more often.
