(Ed. Note: There’s entirely too much sunshine in the summer. So your friends at Puck Daddy are offering a month of thrown shade and perpetual gloom. Behold, our Summer of Disappointment series, in which we ask fans of all 30 teams to recall the biggest bummer moments, teams and players in franchise history! Please wade into their misery like a freezing resort pool, and add your own choices in the comments!)

Written by Jacob Billiar et al. of Healthy Scratches

Most Disappointing Team: 2011-2012 Columbus Blue Jackets



The forecast for the 2011-12 season was sunny, but our return trip to the playoffs would be delayed and rescheduled before we even left home. The clouds were parting and Rick Nash’s first line center was finally delivered on a golden platter just like the Gold medal they shared.

View photos

It took a vow of silence and Nash’s sales pitch for Carter to reluctantly go through the motions in Columbus for the next 10 years or the trade deadline, whichever came first. Losing that first line center wasn’t all that painful because that’s how it’d always been. But scorning Columbus as a city was unacceptable and an even bigger blow came when our one and only, Rick Nash, wanted out. The whole season was a prolonged train-wreck as it became clear we were a lot further away from anything than we had thought.



So we tanked. We limped to a last place finish, the first in club history, and it seemed we finally succeeded at losing. We were pulling a Pittsburgh and gunning for the top spot. It was ours: the charismatic, elite Russian goal scorer already playing in Canada. We said goodbye to Nash and thought we were getting an Ovechkin. Not so fast. We even failed at losing.





Dumping salt in the wound was Scott How-is-he-still-GM-son, declaring even if we had the first pick we weren’t taking Yakupov. Hindsight may have vindicated him, but at the time there was no greater disappointment than listening to the fledgling GM act like we didn’t even want the top pick.



Dishonorable Mention: 2009-2010







Most Disappointing Blue Jacket: Nikita Filatov



Drafting Filatov was like going on a much-anticipated weekend getaway. Somewhere you’d been before that could’ve been the best weekend ever, but turned into an awful time through no fault of your own – bad weather, crummy hotels, etc.

But the potential was so tantalizing you decided to go back. Armed with a little experience and a plan, this time things would be different.



Flashy, exotic, dangerous, the Jackets returned to that region known as Eastern Europe. Ukraine had given us Nikolai Zherdev, dangling glimpses of brilliance but hundreds of headaches. Filatov supposedly knew English, wanted to be in the US, and was the consensus #1 European skater available with the sixth pick.





View photos