Surprised? Not Really. It is tough to come up with brilliant material on a weekly basis when nothing is going on in the college football landscape. Here is a quick list of 20 general happenings over the last few months:

1. Tim Tebow did something magical…not quite sure what it was…
2. The CBJ made the playoffs and were happy to be there for a week.
3. Jamal Berry likes to carry the ‘sticky icky‘ in his car.
4. FC Barcelona won the Champions League against Manchester United and an angel got it’s wings.
5. Tim Tebow did something philanthropic…not quite sure what it was…
6. Carlos Hyde is a poor test-taker, or he is dumb, or he doesnt care, or he just really wanted to attend Fork Union next year.
7. Terrelle Pryor looks like he can read a defense and cleaned up his throwing motion (a little), but there are still 4 QB’s on the Penn State roster that are better than him and a few PSU trainers, as well (Source: Any Ohio State Thread on Audibles).
8. Ole Miss and North Caolina are in the top 10 in the pre-season polls. Thus fulfilling reason #4576 why polls shouldnt be released until the sixth week of the season.
9. EDSBS’s Digital Viking Series has won over a nation of blog readers
10. Deadspin…something is missing over there..well..besides Leitch, “Hirshey is the Closer”, and a gentle dose of “This Week’s Apologies”, but hey, they can embed youtube music videos like no other.
11. Real Madrid spent over 200 million euros on two players…and that is without including the player salaries for the non-soccer crowd.
12. The Cleveland Indians bi-annual YNBA soul killing exercise is in full effect this year.
13. We were kind of ‘witnesses’ to BronBron getting faced…in a Ferris Bueller 31-Flavors kind of way…
14. The Cavs got Shaq Diesel. Well maybe the Bio-Diesel Version. Doesnt this make Cavs fan hate Carlos Boozer a little more each year?
15. The US Men’s Soccer Team had a great and completely unexpected run in the Confederations Cup (Spain…really?) and Landon Donovan has been rejuvenated. Did you hear that? That was Bob Bradley getting up from sucking his thumb in the corner.
16. The Browns continue to be the Browns, but it could be worse…they could be the Seahawks (giggle giggle).
17. Our Honor Defend’s “Better Know a Buckeye” Series has been top notch work for a slow summer.
18. David Beckham came back from Italy to sounds of boo’s and a simple chorus of no one really giving a flying crap about David Beckham anymore. Beckham Experiment = EPIC FAIL
19. Rick Nash signs with the CBJ for 25 years. Oh alright…8 years. Sorry Maple Leaf Fans.
20. South Carolina really wants Ohioans to leave. It’s like a little kid running a lemonade stand asking someone with a ten dollar bill to get lost.

When a player is flying through the air, moving his skates backward relative to his body in order to not slice the jugular of your flavor-of-the-month goaltender, and the puck bounces off his edges & goes into the net, it is not a “distinct kicking motion.” Mmkay?

Nobody on planet Earth, including the die-hardiest Dallas hockey fans, think the Toronto war room should have even reviewed, much less overturned, Malhotra’s game winning goal.

Between last night’s fiasco and the referree shamefest of Fail that was the Oct 25th CBJ/Wild game, that’s three points the Jackets have lost this year, directly due to the officials changing the outcome of the game.

Those two circumstances have completely changed the Jackets’ place in the standings (from their earned 35-point 7th position to their current 32-point 12th), and by domino effect, the entire makeup of the Western Conference:

Does this type of thing happen to other teams? Sure, but – and this is important – never to the level that it happens to Columbus.

There is clear, historical evidence that the Jackets suffer from consistently poor and/or controversial officiating. Last night’s blatant failfest. The deceit/subsequent revelations following the Wild game mentioned above. The infamous “scoring a goal after the horn sounded” fiasco against Calgary. And we can’t forget the “Wes Walz Copperfield” goal where the center carried the puck into the net inside his pants leg, the goal was waved off (hence unreviewable), yet Toronto decided to break its own rules and give the game to Minnesota. And on and on and on.

Look, exactly how long is the unwritten expansion franchise always gets the bad calls thing going to last? If you could let those of us in Columbus know, we’d appreciate it.

Meanwhile, get control of your review process. You’re alienating a huge part of your fanbase, and not doing a particularly good job of hiding your disdain for the Jackets. When Dallas fans acknowledge they were fortunate, you’re not exactly being subtle anymore.

In fact, they’ve amazingly moved up to 8th place in the West. Collecting nine points in six games will do that.

Mason is performing admirably. The young guns on the team are forming a chemistry – they seem to be playing more as a team and less as individuals. Brassard’s Rookie of the Month award for October was well-deserved. There’s still tons of inconsistency, but every so often, flashes of brilliance appear that grab the attention, and give some encouragement as the meat of the season gets underway.

For an example, check out the second goal of last Wednesday’s Edmonton game (starts at 1:03). The offensive effort was brilliant. Commodore comes out of the box, joins the rush, and several dizzying passes later, Brassard wrists it into the net. They looked like NHL veterans, but there were three rookies and three defensmen on the ice for that play.

Of course, when a team starts out at dead last in the standings, any rise defines “improvement.” But in the Jackets’ case, there does seem to be a bit of a fire brewing that was not there in early October.

Portzline’s piece will make CBJ fans want to listen to Arcade Fire and cut themselves. He talks about his “friend” who has lost his interest in the Blue Jackets (ya sure, he’s your “friend,” Aaron).

For those who don’t know Portzline, he’s paid to cover the Blue Jackets. And yet the team chemistry is so terrible that he’s finding it hard to stay interested in them. Ouch.

In other news that reveals how abso-freakin-lutely desperate the team is, Rick Nash will be starting at center tonight. He hasn’t played center “since he was 10 or 11 years old.”

Still, it wouldn’t be late October unless the Jackets were at the bottom of the standings. Silver lining viewpoint – at least there’s only one place to go when you’re at the bottom, right?

(No, I don’t mean ‘Toronto’.)

So what’s Peca’s side of the story? Via the Dog-patch:

“The only contact was me grabbing his arm to slow him down,” Peca said, “because he was skating away and I wanted to plead my case.

“They’ve claiming I hit (a) linesman with my stick after I hit the glass with it, which is completely false.”

Peca was apoplectic at the fact that the officials not only saw him get slew-footed by Morrow on a 5-on-3 (video here, the event occurs at the 04:15 mark), but that they continued to ignore the infraction even though Morrow was the one who scored the goal immediately after, while Peca was scrambling to get up and back into position.

The FSN coverage did not capture Peca’s confrontation with the officials, but a Dallas fan’s video did:

You can see Peca arguing his case starting at the 1:15 mark (right after the vid goes blurry and comes back into focus again). The video is a bit blurry and jumpy after the goal, but if you watch Peca, you can clearly see him skate around behind the net and tug on the official’s jersey to get his attention. Only someone using his wildest imagination would perceive this as a violent act against the official.

Here’s the best frame grab I could pull off (again, you can see this better in the video at ~1:16):

Not as clear as FSN high-def, that’s for sure, but clear enough to see that Peca did not “hit a linesman with his stick.”

Here’s a frame from a moment later, when he had skated in front of the officials:

It’s blurry, but you can see from this picture that:

• Peca is not near the glass, so his stick could not have “bounced” off the glass and into an official.
• Peca’s stick is being held in his left hand, with the blade on the ice by his right foot. He also appears to be be pointing up with his right hand (perhaps as if to say, “check the replay!!”)
• It actually appears that the official’s hand is making contact with Peca. FWIW.

I suddenly feel like I’ve gone all Zapruder on you, and I don’t want to come off as if I condone violence against officials (well, officials not named Kowal, anyway). But it’s a shame that this is the situation that the league is using to exemplify the ref-protection rules. It’s the definition of “ticky-tac.”

Had this been a minor penalty, or even a game misconduct, it wouldn’t have been that big a deal. But to accuse a player of hitting you with his stick — when it didn’t happen — just because you were irritated when he tugged on your shirt sleeve is dishonest at best and malicious at worst. Furthermore, attempting to enforce a 10 game suspension on him just wrong.

Peca has appealed the ruling, which will be heard this week. Here’s hoping he comes back soon – the Jackets have suffered a bit in his absence (especially on PK duty).

Great way to start the season, folks. The Jackets totally owned the first period; the Stars the second; both teams shared the third. With 20 seconds left in OT, Nash takes a perfect pass from Chimmy and executes a mach 1 snapshot to get the two points.

Nail biter? Yes. But overall, it was a very positive performance from everyone, especially the new faces. Voracek got the first goal of the season, and Commodore was an absolute force on the blueline, with a couple of all-star hits (the worst of which was laid on that scumbucket Avery). I like Commodore… he’s deceptively big (6’5″, 228 lbs.). I’m looking forward to watching him this year.

Now, the bad news: the Jackets again struggled, going 0-fer on power plays again. Peca was given a 10 minute and a game misconduct for arguing with a (blind) official, who did not call a penalty when Peca was slew footed in front of the net on a Dallas 5 on 3. Peca attempted to get re-set, but was unable to get back into the defense before the puck went into the net.

But hey, the Jackets beat the Stars for only the second time in the last 19 tries, and did it in front of a hostile 100% capacity Stars crowd. The only reason the game was close was due to the Jackets’ mistakes of the second period, with three PKs back-to-back (including two 5 on 3s) and losing Peca. Those types of discipline issues are coachable, though. And while the new faces were establishing their identities, it was the veterans who stepped in when the team needed it most (OT).

Tomorrow Hitch will take a tired team to Phoenix, and hopefully to another road victory.

The drama started last weekend, when Duvie was put on waivers. I guess we saw this coming. Great attitude, but he never really reclaimed his status after the 2006 injury, so with the young ones of the future making waves behind and around him, this wasn’t much of a surprise.

Then Zhil-Bayer was handed his hat to make room for Rafael Torres, who’s only got one good ACL working. As long as he can get back to 100%, I get the sense that most feel this is an overall positive move.

Speaking of positive moves, Howson snagged Mike Commodore. We were hoping for a more offensive blueliner, but at least the club has spackled the hole left by Adam Foote.

…and then… just wow. At the risk of using an inappropriate metaphor, what the heck – this came out of freakin’ left field. The one thing the club desperately needs is goal scorers, and what a shock to see Nik – the #2 scorer last season – get shown the door. The fact that the team invested in him through the drama of the past couple of years seemed to indicate they were willing to be patient – I, personally, expected one more year before they cut strings. If you’ve read this site, you know I like Zherdev, and the cynic in me says that we are going to watch him grow into a talented veteran, but wearing another team’s sweater. Losing Fritsche was painful, too. He was a fan favorite for a reason. I can’t put my finger on it, but his impact was noticeable even if his stats weren’t; he played with energy and self-sacrifice.

Yeah, Huselius, that should help, but we wanted someone who could put up good numbers alongside people like Zherdev, not ‘in place of.’ We’ll see.

What we know now is that the club appears to be stacked with solid defensemen. There is still a hole left at center, and sadly, there are no notable top-notch centers left. Reports are indicating that Peca is being courted again, and that may help a little, but I can’t help wondering if this was part of the plan all along, or if something big was supposed to happen after Zherdev/Fritsche, but it fell through and Peca is Plan B.

Either way, my overall feeling on these moves is a bit melancholy. I guess a silver lining would be to consider an old hypothesis – that Columbus’s mediocrity has always been due to some form of self-fulfilling prophecy. Talent was never an issue, development and consistency were. Now that the team is so radically different than what it was just two years ago, perhaps it’s possible that this team will form a different overall attitude, and maybe won’t have the black cloud of lowered expectation following it around.

At least in the meantime, the Jackets have something they’ve never really had before – some commodities. If and when further adjustments are needed over the upcoming seasons, the team will actually have quite a few players that other teams may want or need. If they can’t land a franchise center this year, perhaps they’re setting themselves up to be in a better position to land that dream center next year.

And with that, I’ll bid a fond farewell to Nikolai Zherdev, with my favorite memory from his tenure here:

As expected, 23-year-old Rick Nash has been chosen as team captain for your Columbus Blue Jackets.

Rick is the fifth captain for the franchise, which has never seen a captain last more than three seasons.

It’s another in a string of ‘good long-term decisions that may not pay off right away,’ (something that Jackets fans are quite used to). Nash will have to grow into the role, but as we’ve seen, he’s been able to do everything asked of him so far. It’s a good move.

Link

I’m somewhere in the middle. I’m sure the Jackets could not have done much better with regards to Fedorov. With the possibility of him bolting this summer, at least they got something out of it now.

Same with Foote. To me, the way his situation worked out seemed more like “shades of MacLean” than anything else. Still, it was clear that Howson saw the writing on the wall here and thought now was as good a time as ever.

The surprising thing to me, though, was that it stopped there. Peca, Vyborny, et. al made it through yesterday without having to change PO boxes. I can’t tell if this was a wise, ‘surgical’ approach to making the team more competitive, or a rather poorly-executed attempt at cleaning house.

One thing is clear: come summertime, the Jackets will be at least $20-25 million under the salary cap. Whatever Howson’s plans for the summer were, at least now he’ll have a little more breathing room.

Nash’s take on the trades:

“I just don’t know what the thought process is. I feel like we have been building for a few years now to get to the point that we’re at. It’s tough to see these guys leave, but if they don’t feel like this is our year and they want to free up some money and get some young players I guess.”

I like this quote. There’s so much here for us to read-between-the-lines. Rick expresses his puzzlement, and wonders where this fits into the moves the team has made over the past few years. Then he wonders aloud if the trades mean the brass is surrendering on this season. (Ruh-roh, Astro.) Rick wraps up with a final shot about them wanting to “get some more young players in here.”

It says a lot.

His thoughts on possibly wearing the ‘C’:

“I’m still a guy who’s 23 years old. It’s kind of tough telling a guy who’s 30 years old to pick up his game and things like that, they might not listen, but I’m ready to take that jump, starting trying those things and I’m sure a lot of guys will be behind me.”

After having some more time to think about it, I’m fairly certain that Nash will be the captain next year. When Hitch came to the team last season, he told a Columbus radio station that the reason he immediately put Nash on the PK was because Nash played his best when he was forced to work outside of his comfort zone. Paraphrasing, he said, ‘Nash is a great shooter with great talent, it’ll be up to me and the veterans to make him a good, well-rounded hockey player.’

And I wonder if that’s how we’ll define Fedorov’s CBJ legacy — if nothing else, as a mentor to the younger players like Rick, Nik, Zhil-Bayre, etc. Sergei didn’t come in here and challenge any scoring records, that’s for sure, but he played hard and did anything asked of him. First line center? Okay. PK? Youbetcha. Oh, want me on the blue line for a couple of weeks? No problem. That attitude had to be contagiously beneficial to the others alongside him in the dressing room.

But back to the trades. No matter what, the first reasonable expectation of playoff-level performance should come next year. Hitch and Howson have set themselves up for a rather critical evaluation next season. We’ll be watching with higher expectations, for sure.

Captain Adam Foote.

Foote was traded to the Avs for a 2009 first-round and conditional fourth-round pick.

So, who will be the new team captain in 2008/9? Nash is still quite young, but will no doubt be the fan favorite. I wonder if the team will go with Fedorov for his experience.

Who do you want leading your Jackets in the locker room?

UPDATE: Fedorov has also been traded (to Washington). The trades of the past few weeks make it clear that (1) Howson is trying to free up tons of money for a free agent, and (2) he doesn’t care how much of a veteran you are, you’re in danger if you don’t have a good plus/minus.