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Columbus Blue Jackets
2026-27 season preview

Columbus Blue Jackets

43-31-1096 pts11th of 32
Goals for
3.2
18th in the league
Goals against
3.08
16th in the league
Power play
18.9%
22nd in the league

Kodo projects the Columbus Blue Jackets for 43-31-10 (96 pts), carried by 10th-ranked expected offense. In a points-only league, the fantasy value runs through Zach Werenski and Kirill Marchenko on PP1. 2 core skaters project to rise and 4 to slip. Jet Greaves is the projected starter.

Your categories · using the preset above
Regression watch
finishing/on-ice luck ran hot — expect some pullback off last year's line
Buy-low
underlying shot/chance rates outran the results — a discount vs name value
The crease
Jet Greaves
Jet Greaves projects the crease (~49 starts), but Elvis Merzlikins (~35) makes it more timeshare than lock
Sleeper
projects 4 pts
Contents · 12 sections

Latest

lines, injuries and roster moves 1 / 12
TransactionMiles Wood added to CBJ roster · NHL transactions2026-08-13
TransactionZach Werenski added to CBJ roster · NHL transactions2026-08-13
TransactionDamon Severson added to CBJ roster · NHL transactions2026-08-13
TransactionIvan Provorov added to CBJ roster · NHL transactions2026-08-13
TransactionDenton Mateychuk added to CBJ roster · NHL transactions2026-08-13
Each item names its source. Kodo's own projected line changes are not reported here.
Carried into camp
Isac LundestromOut — Achilles · CBS2026-07-19 · 32d
Valeri NichushkinProbable for start of season — Lower Body · CBS2026-05-27 · 85d
Dmitri VoronkovProbable for start of season — Hand · CBS2026-04-14 · 128d
Damon SeversonProbable for start of season — Shoulder · CBS2026-04-04 · 138d
Reported more than 30 days ago, so listed as a standing condition rather than news. The date is the one the injury feed carries, which is the game the player was expected to miss — not the day anything was last checked.

Where this team sits

last season vs projection 2 / 12
25-2626-27Change
Goals for318th3.2010th+0.20▲8
Goals against3.0616th3.0821st+0.02▼5
Power play18.922nd19.2722nd+0.37
Penalty kill7628th78.8927th+2.89▲1
Faceoffs50.613th49.9713th-0.63
Points percentage0.56116th0.57111th+0.010▲5
How these projections are made
Both bars share one scale per row — the wider of the two league ranges — so a bar that moves is a number that moved. The grey tick is that column's league average, and the arrow is the change in league rank. Goals-against and expected-goals-against rank ascending, so low is good and green always means improved.
Goals for, goals against and points percentage come from the roster: summed player projections over the real 26-27 schedule, last season's expected goals against regressed toward the league and adjusted for projected goaltending, and a game-by-game simulation of that schedule.
The special teams are projected from how much each number actually carries over year to year, measured across 298 team-season pairs going back to 2010-11. The power play uses one prior season shrunk 0.36; the penalty kill uses three, weighted .5/.3/.2 and shrunk 0.38. Special teams barely persist, so a league-worst penalty kill is mostly bad luck and comes most of the way back, while the faceoff dot is a repeatable team skill. How far a club moves depends on how far from the mean it started: Vancouver sits near league average on both the power play and the faceoff dot and barely shifts, while Edmonton's 30.6% power play comes back to the middle and this penalty kill, worst in the league, is the biggest riser of all 32.
The penalty kill averages three seasons because one measures it so badly. Split a single season's spread into ability and sampling noise — a kill rate is a binomial over about 250 opportunities, so the noise is known rather than guessed — and only 33% of the gap between clubs is real. Divide the year-over-year correlation by that and the ability underneath comes out near 1.0: penalty killing is almost perfectly persistent and merely hard to see in one season. The cure for a noisy measurement is more of it, and three seasons beat one by 4.3% out of sample. Because averaging reorders clubs, that row's rank is a real forecast; the rows marked = are single-season regressions, which compress the values but keep them in order, so their rank is last season's by construction and only the value is a prediction.
A roster-aware faceoff model was built and rejected on the evidence. Draw counts are not stored, but they can be recovered exactly from the per-game percentages, and with real draws a club's number reconstructs from its own centres. It still does not predict better: given a club's first half to learn from and even handed the second half's draw distribution, it scored 2.24 against the plain regression's 2.26 across 32 clubs, and the best blend of the two puts almost no weight on it. A team's faceoff percentage already carries who takes its draws. Expected goals has no team projection at all, so that row shows last season alone.

How last season went

in quarters — where the season was won and lost 3 / 12
They held about the same pace all year-12 points of win percentage between the first quarter and the last.
Oct–Nov10-0911-18
50%10-10
for3.10
against3.25
Nov–Jan11-2001-04
38%8-13
for3.10
against3.43
Jan–Mar01-0603-05
70%14-6
for3.45
against2.80
Mar–Apr03-0704-14
38%8-13
for2.71
against2.86
Why the shape matters more than the total
Every rate on the board above is a season average, and an average cannot tell a club that was good all year from one that was excellent for six weeks and ordinary after. Those are different teams to draft into: the second one probably changed — an injury, a call-up, a coach — and whatever changed is likelier to still be true in October than the average is.
Read it against the roster movement section. A club that faded and then lost its best defenceman is not going to bounce; one that faded while carrying injuries and got everybody back is a different case entirely.
Quarters are equal shares of the games actually played, so the windows differ slightly by club depending on scheduling.

Schedule shape

games per week and per month, light nights, back-to-backs 4 / 12
Light nights
20.2%30th
17 of 84 games
Four-game weeks
720th
4 weeks of two or fewer
Back-to-backs
1325th
roughly one backup start each
Playoff-week games
929th
over 3 weeks
Games per week
2026-09-28on light nights2027-04-05
Games by month
Oct*
12
Nov
13
Dec
15
Jan
15
Feb
11
Mar
13
Apr*
5
* part of a month — the season opens and closes mid-month.
Why these three and not a schedule score
They answer different formats, so combining them would hide the answer rather than give it. Four-game weeks decide weekly-lineup leagues: the same player produces a third more in a four-game week than a three-game one, and clubs differ by several such weeks across a season. Light nights decide daily leagues and streaming — a light night is one carrying no more than the league's median number of games (6 this season), so your man is a far larger share of everything available than he is on a sixteen-game Tuesday. Playoff-week games counts the last three weeks of the season excluding the final one — most head-to-head leagues have crowned a champion before the NHL finishes, and that last week is short and full of rested stars. Back-to-backs decide the crease, because a starter rarely takes both ends, so each one is roughly a start handed to the backup.
Ranks are against all 32 clubs, and the whole thing is read off the published slate — no projection is involved.

Projected lineup

lines, pairs and both special teams, with what each man projects for 5 / 12
Lineup notes
This is the lineup the club can ice on opening night, not its best-case group. A player expected to miss more than the opening month is left out and his slot goes to whoever takes it — he keeps his projection below, he is out of the lineup, not out of the season.
Isac LundeströmAchilles: Expected to be out until at least Nov 10 · still projected 60 games
Projected ice time totals 298.1 of the 300 skater-minutes a game has. Power play 3.16′ on the first unit, 1.79′ on the second; the kill 2.35′, 1.67′ and 1′ across three units — all measured.Change this lineup →

Forward lines

L1
LW
Kirill MarchenkoG: 93rd percentileA: 89th percentileGA
71 pts · 18.0′
30G · 41A · 213SOG · 60HIT · 40BLK
C
Adam FantilliG: 92nd percentileA: 84th percentileGA
63 pts · 18.0′
29G · 34A · 207SOG · 120HIT · 47BLK
RW
Valeri NichushkinG: 82nd percentileA: 77th percentileGA
49 pts · 18.9′
21G · 28A · 149SOG · 59HIT · 27BLK
L2
LW
Charlie CoyleG: 75th percentileA: 79th percentileGA
47 pts · 17.5′
18G · 30A · 118SOG · 102HIT · 51BLK
C
Sean MonahanG: 73rd percentileA: 75th percentileGA
44 pts · 18.2′
17G · 27A · 127SOG · 40HIT · 35BLK
RW
Conor GarlandG: 72nd percentileA: 72nd percentileGA
41 pts · 16.9′
16G · 25A · 150SOG · 49HIT · 40BLK
L3
LW
Dmitri VoronkovG: 77th percentileA: 54th percentileGA
36 pts · 14.0′
18G · 18A · 123SOG · 97HIT · 34BLK
C
Cole SillingerG: 60th percentileA: 72nd percentileGA
37 pts · 13.2′
12G · 25A · 141SOG · 103HIT · 44BLK
RW
Mathieu OlivierG: 60th percentileA: 32nd percentileGA
22 pts · 13.2′
12G · 10A · 88SOG · 221HIT · 49BLK
L4
LW
Danton HeinenG: 40th percentileA: 30th percentileGA
16 pts · 10.7′
7G · 10A · 60SOG · 66HIT · 30BLK
C
Kent JohnsonG: 66th percentileA: 62nd percentileGA
34 pts · 13.9′
14G · 20A · 115SOG · 13HIT · 34BLK
RW
Miles WoodG: 35th percentileA: 14th percentileGA
11 pts · 10.7′
6G · 5A · 86SOG · 73HIT · 22BLK

Defence pairs

D1
LD
Zach WerenskiG: 82nd percentileA: 97th percentileGA
82 pts · 23.2′
21G · 61A · 264SOG · 27HIT · 107BLK
RD
Denton MateychukG: 53rd percentileA: 55th percentileGA
27 pts · 20.8′
9G · 18A · 89SOG · 30HIT · 92BLK
D2
LD
Damon SeversonG: 46th percentileA: 66th percentileGA
30 pts · 17.8′
8G · 23A · 92SOG · 43HIT · 95BLK
RD
Ivan ProvorovG: 44th percentileA: 65th percentileGA
29 pts · 20.9′
7G · 22A · 129SOG · 33HIT · 131BLK
D3
LD
Dante FabbroG: 22nd percentileA: 16th percentileGA
9 pts · 16.5′
3G · 6A · 73SOG · 67HIT · 125BLK
RD
Corson CeulemansG: 5th percentileA: 7th percentileGA
4 pts · 15.8′
1G · 3A · 13SOG · 26HIT · 31BLK

Special teams

Scratches & depth

Roster movement & minutes

who changed, and the minutes freed 6 / 12
Boone JennerWSH67 played · 15 missed
0.57 points a game and 16.1 minutes walked out of the lineup — about 9 points over a season.
Stepped up without him
playerwithw/outswing
Wood0.150.53+0.38
Werenski1.021.36+0.34
Smith0.000.29+0.29
Monahan0.410.67+0.26
Gaunce0.190.33+0.14
Faded without him
playerwithw/outswing
Chinakhov0.380.00-0.38
Johnson0.340.07-0.27
Aston-Reese0.240.00-0.24
Fabbro0.190.00-0.19
Marchenko0.910.73-0.18
Points per game with him in the lineup against the games he missed. Not a controlled experiment — absences cluster around injuries, so some of these games were missing other players too. Every absence for this club →
In Wood, Werenski, Severson, Provorov, Mateychuk, Gudbranson, Fabbro, Christiansen, Heinen, Lomberg, Nichushkin, Garland
Callup Ceulemans, Hemming, Lindstrom, Smith, Belluz
Out Chinakhov→PIT, Jenner, Zamula, Smith, Marchment
Monahan17.116.6 -0.5
Severson21.120.5 -0.6
Sillinger15.214.5 -0.7
Werenski26.625.7 -0.9
Coyle18.117 -1.1
Garland17.215.8 -1.4
Johnson13.211.8 -1.4
Provorov24.822.3 -2.5
Biggest projected minute changes either way — a club's ice time is a fixed budget, so the departures above are what free it up. Full board →

Camp battles

contested roles, priced in points 7 / 12
Top power-play unit — quarterback6.2 pts at stake
holds it
Zach Werenski
82 proj pts · 25.7′ · 3′ PP
vs
pushing
Ivan Provorov
29 proj pts · 22.3′ · 1.4′ PP
Zach Werenskimodel favours the incumbentIvan Provorov
1.40 more min/game on PP1 (measured PP1 vs PP2 minutes), at the challenger's own scoring rate over a full season. Power-play gaps come from measured PP minutes last season; even-strength gaps from the role model that drives every projection on this page.
First line4.3 pts at stake
holds it
Valeri Nichushkin
49 proj pts · 18.1′ · 2.1′ PP
vs
pushing
Charlie Coyle
47 proj pts · 17′ · 2.1′ PP
Valeri Nichushkinmodel favours the incumbentCharlie Coyle

Power play

18.9% last season · who it runs through, and what is left of it 8 / 12
Conversion
18.9%
on the man advantage
PP goals
42
509 shots
Expected goals
49.1
-7.1 vs actual
Shooting
8.3%
of PP shots go in
What left the power play
Chinakhov carried 5% of the power-play points on 1% of its minutes — a focal score of 7.5. He is not on this roster.
Who it runs through · last season
PlayerPP/gmSharePPGPPAPPP/60ixGIPPFocal
Marchenko2.9859%617236.16.163%1.33
Werenski359%417215.63.564%1.23
Coyle2.0841%76134.574.858%0.99
Voronkov2.0941%7294.14.955%0.89
Monahan2.0540%19103.763.260%0.82
Mateychuk0.6312%1233.80.40.81
Fantilli2.651%49133.666.347%0.8
Provorov1.3727%1452.671.258%0.58
Severson1.3627%1342.491.60.55
Johnson1.7234%1120.922.642%0.2
What IPP, focal and ixG mean
IPP is the share of the power-play goals he was on the ice for that he got a point on. It is the direct form of “the play runs through him”: two men can take the same unit minutes while one touches the puck on every goal and the other watches from the far circle. League average on the power play is 59%. It is computed from the on-ice record of every goal, corrected for the ~18% of goals with no on-ice row and shrunk toward the positional mean for thin samples, so it cannot exceed 1.
Focal is the older, cruder version — his share of the team's power-play points over his share of its minutes. It is team-relative, so it moves when a teammate is injured; IPP does not. ixG is the expected goals from his own shots on the man advantage. Minutes are measured, not modelled.
Projected PP1Marchenko23 PPP (23 last yr)Werenski23 PPP (21 last yr)Fantilli12 PPP (13 last yr)Monahan12 PPP (10 last yr)Johnson6 PPP (2 last yr)
Projected PP2Coyle10 PPP (13 last yr)Voronkov9 PPP (9 last yr)Provorov4 PPP (5 last yr)Garland11 PPP (10 last yr)Nichushkin8 PPP (4 last yr)

Hits, blocks and the rest

what a banger league is won with 9 / 12
Hits
172023rd
projected, this roster · of 32
Blocks
133312th
projected, this roster · of 32
Shots
26226th
projected, this roster · of 32
Penalty minutes
8188th
projected, this roster · of 32
Faceoff wins
207719th
projected, this roster · of 32
H+B
305318th
projected, this roster · of 32
S+H+B
567512th
projected, this roster · of 32
Who supplies them
PlayerGPHits/60Blks/60PKPIMFOW+/-H+BS+H+B
Olivier L36522114.48492.910.91005+4270358
Fabbro D373673.171255.861.736-4192265
Gudbranson60754.11035.832.835+3178232
Lindstrom5010528910133236
Lomberg6412715.09181.990.1585-3146202
Fantilli L1·PP1751205.38471.970.330465-6166373
Provorov D2·PP281330.831313.953.230+9165293
Sillinger L3761035.46442.140.937151-2147288
Severson D275431.56953.440.747+11138229
Voronkov L3·PP268977.19341.850.15637+2131254
Coyle L2·PP2781024.49512.142.118542+1153271
Werenski D1·PP177270.91072.831.422+6135398
Mateychuk D172301.08923.831.717+5122211
Wood L460735.88221.770.8415-795181
Marchenko L1·PP178602.55401.670.2288+7100313
Garland L2·PP279492.21401.571.44011-1289238
Heinen L460666.23302.770.22112+596157
Nichushkin L1·PP267602.59271.271.8222+887236
Smith28424319085117
Christiansen50384.5423.60.212-279116
Monahan L2·PP173402.07351.531.715640+375201
Lundeström60342.49372.491.56191-371118
What actually moves these numbers
Penalty-kill time is the strongest driver of blocks we can measure. Across 1,504 consecutive season pairs, a skater who gains a minute of shorthanded time a game adds a median 9.5 blocks over 84 games — a defenceman 16 — and the effect runs monotonically the other way too: lose a minute and it is −15.6, or −25.9 for a defenceman. The PK column is here for that reason.
But it is mostly the minutes, not the man. Shorthanded time correlates +0.52 with blocks per 60 across players and only +0.14 within the same player year to year, which says coaches pick shot-blockers for the kill more than the kill turns anyone into one. A player promoted onto PK1 gains blocks because he is on the ice for more shots, not because he changed — so price the ice time, not a breakout.
Hits run opposite to ice time. Total minutes correlate −0.57 with hits per 60, and −0.60 among forwards: the fourth line hits, the first line does not. So a rate beats a total here more than in any other category, which is what the /60 columns are for — a checker on eleven minutes at 12 hits per 60 is worth more than a first-liner at 5 on nineteen, and their season totals can look identical.
Power-play time predicts the absence of all of it — −0.43 with hits per 60, −0.47 with blocks, −0.26 with penalty minutes. The men who run a power play are not the men who supply a banger roster, which is why the two sections of this page rarely name anybody twice.
Faceoff wins are a volume category. They track draws taken far more than win rate, so the man to want is the one taking the most — normally the first-line centre and whoever takes defensive-zone draws on the kill.
Measured on 2022-23 through 2025-26, skaters with 40+ games and 200+ minutes at both ends of each pair.

Contracts and the cap

what the roster costs, and who reaches the market 10 / 12
$91.4Mcommitted · 24 of 28 on file
12reach the market after this season

Pending free agents · this summer

Elvis MerzlikinsGUFA$5.40M
Dmitri VoronkovLRFA$4.17M36 pts
Kirill MarchenkoRRFA$3.85M71 pts
Kent JohnsonCRFA$1.80M34 pts
Erik GudbransonDUFA$1.75M3 pts
Isac LundeströmCUFA$1.30M6 pts
Danton HeinenLUFA$1.00M16 pts
Jake ChristiansenDUFA$0.97M1 pts
Denton MateychukDRFA$0.89M27 pts
Luca Del Bel BelluzCRFA$0.86M16 pts
Corson CeulemansDRFA$0.85M4 pts
Adam FantilliCRFA63 pts

Free the summer after

Zach WerenskiD$9.58M82 pts
Ryan LombergL$1.30M5 pts

Biggest cap hits

Zach WerenskiD$9.58M1y left · NMC
Ivan ProvorovD$8.50M5y left · NMC
Damon SeversonD$6.25M4y left · NTC
Valeri NichushkinR$6.13M3y left · M-NTC
Charlie CoyleC$6.00M5y left · NMC
Conor GarlandR$6.00M5y left · NMC
Sean MonahanC$5.50M2y left · NMC
Elvis MerzlikinsG$5.40Mfinal yr · M-NTC

Cap hits from CapWages for the 24 men on file. A dash is a figure we do not have, usually a restricted free agent whose entry-level deal has lapsed, and those are left out of the committed total rather than counted as nothing.

The crease

GSAx last season, projected next 11 / 12
GSAx view
Greaves
53 starts last season
GSAx / start
-0.604
lg -0.858178th
Shot quality faced
0.0715
lg 0.073131th hardest
0.40-1.214182
10-start rolling GSAx · appearance 1-82 · shared scale
2026-27 projection
49 GS25 W (1227)0.907 SV%2.78 GAA
Merzlikins
29 starts last season
GSAx / start
-1.173
lg -0.858121th
Shot quality faced
0.0751
lg 0.073176th hardest
0.40-1.214182
10-start rolling GSAx · appearance 1-82 · shared scale
2026-27 projection
35 GS17 W (1125)0.894 SV%3.19 GAA
GSAx is goals saved above expected — what the shots he faced were worth, minus what he actually allowed. Shown per start, because a backup cannot out-accumulate a starter but can out-perform him on a per-night basis. Shot quality faced is expected goals per shot: higher means he was hung out to dry more often, and the percentile is where that workload ranks among goalies with 15+ starts. Rolling form is a 10-start moving average — is he playing well lately; running total is the season's accumulated damage. Per-game GSAx is too noisy to read either from directly.

Every skater

the reference table · Overall is value as a z-score against the league, so +1.00 is a standard deviation above average 12 / 12
Forwards · 17
PlayerRoleOverallGPGAP / ifPPPSHPSOGHITBLKPIM+/-FOWH+BS+H+BTrajectorySignals
Kirill MarchenkoL1·PP1+1.6178304170.5231213604028+78100313ascendingsell-highPP1
Adam FantilliL1·PP1+1.2975293462.71212071204730-6465166373PP1
Valeri NichushkinL1·PP2+0.7367212849.1/5981149602722+8287236
Charlie CoyleL2·PP2+0.6678183047.31011181025118+1542153271
Sean MonahanL2·PP1+0.5273172844.1122127403515+364075201decliningPP1
Conor GarlandL2·PP2+0.3979162541.1111150494040-121189238declining
Cole SillingerL3+0.2376122537.1211411034437-2151147288bounce-back
Dmitri VoronkovL3·PP2+0.2068181836.4/4390123973456+237131254
Kent JohnsonL4·PP1+0.0971142033.861115133419-4247162decliningbounce-backPP1
Cayden Lindstrom-0.275081725/3630103105289100133236
Mathieu OlivierL3-0.4065121021.9018822149100+45270358
Danton HeinenL4-0.646071016/221060663021+51296157declining
Luca Del Bel Belluz-0.643361016/302046401810058104
Miles WoodL4-0.86606510.90186732241-7595180
Oscar Hemming-1.0618156/231013291010003952
Isac Lundeström-1.0660245.8004734376-319171118
Ryan Lomberg-1.1264234.600571271858-35146202
Defence · 9
PlayerRoleOverallGPGAP / ifPPPSHPSOGHITBLKPIM+/-FOWH+BS+H+BTrajectorySignals
Zach WerenskiD1·PP1+2.09772161822322642710722+60135398PP1
Damon SeversonD2-0.067582330.13092439547+110138229
Ivan ProvorovD2·PP2-0.118172228.9411293313130+90165293ice time ↓
Denton MateychukD1-0.177291827.42089309217+50122211ascending
Dante FabbroD3-0.9573368.700736712536-40192265bounce-back
Jackson Smith-0.9828358/2010324243190085117
Corson CeulemansD3-1.1420134/12001326318005770
Erik Gudbranson-1.1960122.900547510335+30178232
Jake Christiansen-1.2550011.40037384212-2079116
Goalies · 2
GoalieGSWLOTLSV%GAASVSAGASHOGSAxGSAx/GS
Jet Greaves49251860.9072.78130614401332.3-32-0.604
Elvis Merzlikins35171440.8943.1991310201091.0-34-1.173

Projected record and projected ice time are model estimates; ranks, lines, projections and trend signals trace to real data.