Blue Jackets fans have had little to cheer since the team's first season in 2000-01. (Terry Gilliam/AP)

As this unusually calamitous NHL season pauses for a few days, the bleary eyes of the hockey world will try to focus on the big All-Star Weekend party in Ottawa. But about 650 miles to the southwest, a much smaller hockey gathering on Saturday will be less jovial. In fact, it will be somewhat angry.

In front of Nationwide Arena in Columbus, perhaps a few hundred fans will gather to protest the state of the Blue Jackets, the league’s worst team and a franchise that has never really achieved much of anything. They want team president Mike Priest and GM Scott Howson replaced — things that owner John P. McConnell told Aaron Portzline of The Columbus Dispatch in Friday’s edition he is not contemplating — and they want a fresh start for a team that had only 13 wins in 49 games before the break. This stands to become the Blue Jackets’ worst season yet.

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Like so much that has gone wrong for the Blue Jackets throughout their history, adding Jeff Carter (left) to help set up sniper Rick Nash (right) has turned out to be a miserable failure. (Photo by Terry Gilliam/AP)

It seemed as if the electrician arrived shortly after the Blue Jackets’ lost 7-4 to the no longer mighty Ducks on Sunday to fix the lightbulb over GM Scott Howson’s head. When it went on at last, a bright idea arrived: It was time to fire the coach of the NHL’s 30th-best team.

The truth is, the Jackets aren’t exactly swimming in money and they didn’t relish the thought of having to pay yet another coach not to coach. Further to Howson’s credit, he was loyal to Scott Arniel, his hand-picked selection, for longer than anybody expected. Arniel might well have what it takes to be a good bench boss — the players never quit on him – but Scotty Bowman couldn’t turn this impoverished group into winners. That task now falls to Arniel’s former assistant, Todd Richards, who had been head coach of the Minnesota Wild for the last couple of years while not getting them to the playoffs either time.

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Ex-Penguins favorite Jaromir Jagr is stunned by the level of animosity that Pittsburgh fans have for him. (Cliff Welch/Icon SMI)

With cameras everywhere, especially from HBO, the Flyers play their biggest rival on Thursday night in Pittsburgh. It will be the first trip back in the hated orange and black for two notable ex-Penguins, Max Talbot and Jaromir Jagr.

The welcome for Jagr likely won’t be any friendlier than it was when he returned with the Capitals and Rangers. He was loudly booed in the city where he began his career and once ranked second only to Mario Lemieux in adoration. In fact, the fans’ hostility might be more amped considering that Jagr flirted with signing with Pittsburgh last summer before reaching a deal with Philly.

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Ken Hitchcock is a Stanley Cup-winning taskmaster expected to whip the underachieving Blues into shape. (Jeff Roberson/AP Photos)

Sunday evening, the axe fell for the first time this season on an NHL coach: Davis Payne, who told Jeremy Rutherford of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch the move was “shocking and disappointing.” Other than Payne, not very many people were shocked because the only disappointing thing was his Blues’ record (6-7-0). The bigger surprise to some is that Ken Hitchcock has replaced Payne, because the NHL rumor wire — which has only a fleeting relationship with fact — had Hitchcock resuming his old job as coach of the Blue Jackets.
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Alex Ovechkin, taking off after a slow start, leads his unbeaten Caps against Detroit's stout defense. (AP)

They won’t be looking ahead of themselves, because the undefeated Red Wings must first host the Blue Jackets on Friday night, but we can look ahead for them because Detroit’s next foe comes on Saturday night when they visit Washington for a date against the unbeaten Capitals at 7 p.m. Eastern time (and televised on the NHL Network in the U.S.).

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