Center Jeff Carter is available in the Blue Jackets' fire sale and the Kings need some scoring. A match? (John Grieshop/Getty Images)

The NHL trade deadline arrives on Feb. 27 and unlike last year when February turned into trade season, there has been little movement thus far. As Kevin Allen noted last week in USA Today, the trade market appears to be stalled with many teams still evaluating their situation.  Should they be “buyers” or “sellers”? Asking prices for potential trade targets are said to be prohibitively high.

The first deal, however, could break things open. That may not happen until we get closer to deadline day and the undecided teams determine for sure if they want to build for next season or take a shot at the playoffs. Then the “buyers” — the teams hoping for a playoff spot or a deep postseason run — will have more trading partners among the “sellers,” who will be looking more long term while trying to clear out cap space for future moves or acquiring useful players now.

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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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