John Tortorella Can't Fix the Columbus Blue Jackets

The Columbus Blue Jackets hired John Tortorella as their new coach in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. After a horrendous 0-7-0 start to the season, Blue Jackets management might have thought that the hiring was one of those rare late-night strokes of genius.

More likely it was a decision brought on by delirium, the product of nearly two weeks of sleepless nights since the team got off to one of the worst starts in the NHL in recent memory.

After all, the hiring of Tortorella, now known better as a perennially angry sound-bite machine than an effective coach in the NHL, is not the solution for the woeful Blue Jackets.

This is a team that entered the year looking intriguing: after losing a combined 508 man-games to injuries last season, an NHL worst, they sprinted to a 15-1-1 finish to end the season. After the Blue Jackets added promising young forward Brandon Saad, analysts thought they might make some noise in the Metropolitan Division.

But things spiraled out of control quickly and radically: after just three games Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekäläinen said the team's confidence and game were "off the rails." In retrospect, Kekäläinen looked a bit prophetic, as the team's early season losses to very good New York Islanders and Rangers teams were nothing compared to the lackadaisical effort they put in against the lowly Toronto Maple Leafs.

Now Tortorella may inspire an otherwise uninspired team enough that they win a few games in the immediate future, but that doesn't mean rashly hiring him was the right choice. His biggest strengths are also his biggest weaknesses in today's NHL: he's a hard-ass, no-nonsense guy whose aggressive approach with players and continued focus on elements of the game such as shot-blocking will hurt the team more than they will help it in the long run. He preaches patience then shows little of it.

The Blue Jackets, at this point, are a collection of skilled (and some less skilled) players and little else. Whatever glue was supposed to hold this team together has dried up. There's talent, but not cohesiveness. For instance, their eight highest-paid players were acquired via trade, deemed expendable by their former teams. Theirs is not an uncommon problem in modern sports: teams piece together rosters with players who experienced relative success elsewhere and hope for the best.

Adding the 22-year-old Saad from the Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks in a trade this off-season could've been considered a coup, for example. Saad is a young, heart-and-soul guy with tremendous offensive upside. But dishing him a 6-year, $36 million contract, while a fair going rate these days, may also have an adverse effect.

At 22, Saad is the highest paid Blue Jacket forward, a group that includes 27-year-old captain Nick Foligno, gritty 33-year-old Scott Hartnell, and 23-year-old Ryan Johansen, the only elite player on the team.

Can a team build an identity on a revolving door of marginal talent? The Blue Jackets have answered that question resoundingly so far this season.

At first glance, their stats are not terrible. According to Hockey Analysis, they're getting shot attempts, with a 5-on-5 CF% of 52.3, which puts them in the top 10 teams in the league.

It's the inability to get those shots at a consistent rate that's hurting them. Only 25.2 percent of their 5-on-5 face-offs occur in the offensive zone, good for third-worst in the league. They're also taking an alarming amount of face-offs in their own zone, and goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky, only three seasons removed from a Vezina Trophy, is reeling.

"I have zero confidence right now," he said after the team's fourth loss of the season. They're a mess defensively, lacking any serious structure.

Think Torts is the man to inspire that confidence? In his last stint in the NHL, with the Vancouver Canucks in 2013-14, Tortorella's team finished tied for fifth-worst in the league in 5-on-5 defensive zone face-offs. (Tortorella was canned by the Canucks after just one season, and even he admitted that it was the right move.) Expect Bobrovsky to face just as much pressure. If the Blue Jackets are going to win games, they're going to do so in an ugly manner.

The Blue Jackets' biggest problem is their back-end: they can't limit opposing shots or break out of their own zone safely. Tortorella himself identified some of the many Blue Jackets defensive woes just days ago as an analyst on the NHL Network. In that Monday night segment, he said that the Blue Jackets were a "well-coached team. We saw that. And they have some good, young kids. I think there's some work to be done at the back end, the blue line."

"It's fixable. It's not too late here. It's not about pushing a panic button," he added.

Obviously the front office disagreed. They pushed it, and out the door went Todd Richards.

During his introductory press conference, Tortorella said that he wasn't going to reinvent the wheel in Columbus. He did say, however, that he was looking for the team to develop an identity.

He may do his part and light a fire under the veterans, but his very presence is proof that the team's problems have as much to do with an impatient and easily panicked front office as with the departed Richards. That front office, by the way, will be hamstrung in undoing their own damage, as five of their eight highest-paid players have No Movement Clauses in their contracts.

Making matters even worse, the Blue Jackets had to send a second-round pick to the Canucks per the NHL's compensation rule, because Tortorella was still owed four more years at $2 million per year from the Vancouver Canucks. Loaded with players they did not develop, the Blue Jackets have taken another step away from a successful future by dropping that draft pick.

John Tortorella is a band-aid stuck onto a fractured leg. It's not even a surface solution. The Columbus Blue Jackets are still broken.