As Blue Jackets fans gathered at McFerson Commons on Feb. 10 for a free outdoor practice, they had no idea that one of the team’s most important meetings was wrapping up across the street at Nationwide Arena.

Inside the Jackets’ locker room, players and coaches spoke candidly about the malaise that had enveloped the club since their 16-game winning streak ended. The Jackets had fallen 3-0 a night earlier to Vancouver, and it was another in a disturbing pattern of performances in which effort and urgency appeared lacking.

The team had gone 7-9-1 since its historic run concluded on Jan. 5, and its goals-against average was 3.38 in that span.

“Human nature is, when things start to go (bad), you start to go on your own page,” captain Nick Foligno said. “That’s what was making us look bad, making us look like we weren’t working hard, when it was more of not working together.”

Foligno said nobody entered the room that day with the intention of making it “The Meeting.” It was no emergency session. But nearly a month later, the captain agreed it was one of their “most productive” gatherings.

The Jackets are 7-3-1 with a 1.53 GAA since the meeting.

“What I took out of it was we were all on the same page again,” veteran wing Scott Hartnell said. “It’s not management versus coaches versus players versus trainers. (Coach John Tortorella) may not have been happy with our play. He might have been barking at us, and we were (barking) at him, and it seemed we got lost for a while there and lost our focus.”

The meeting generated national headlines for one nugget: Sportsnet analysts Nick Kypreos and Elliotte Friedman reported that players asked Tortorella to dial back his criticism. Nobody in the organization has disputed that detail, but players say that the free-flowing exchange was multifaceted and that the request was one of many items covered.

It started with Tortorella asking players to watch the Canucks game in its entirety. Normally, they will scan clips from a game with the coach in the room. On this occasion, Tortorella wasn’t present.

“We watched that whole thing, and it was like, ‘Wow, we need to be better’ and ‘(The coaches) are right with some of the things they were saying,’” Foligno recalled.

Tortorella entered the locker room after the video, and the conversation grew organically, players said. He spoke. Veteran players spoke. What Foligno thought important was that “first-year guys” voiced opinions, too.

“It just helped us come into one common goal,” the captain said. “When you do that, when you give everyone a voice, people tend to feel like they are a part of it and take some ownership.”

Tortorella said Hartnell, the club’s oldest player at age 34, made significant contributions.

“I knew we had lost the night before, and it was like, ‘What are we doing here? We’ve totally lost our focus.’” Hartnell said. “It was like we were going in different directions.

“The meeting got put together, and I voiced my opinion. It wasn’t anything negative. It was just making sure everyone realized what we had. If you get off track, you can go haywire really fast.”

The Jackets have lost four times in the past 11 games, but a lack of desire or urgency has not been among the culprits in defeat.

“Torts has been awesome since then,” Hartnell said. “We have not given him any doubt about our effort or our 'want' to play hard and play the right way.”