As a general rule of thumb, you don't want to start your season 0-4 by being outscored 20-9.

It's just not a good look.

One struggles to imagine a club getting off to a worse start than that, even in the context of being historically bad. Last year, for example, the Buffalo Sabres started 1-3, outscored 17-7. And even the Columbus Blue Jackets' last-place finish in 2011-12 only saw them start 0-3-1 with scoring of 12-8. That latter team, of course, lost its first eight games, and so far that doesn't seem like it's an untouchable result for this shambolic club.

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But here's the thing: Much like the Oilers last year, this year’s Blue Jackets aren’t a club that's playing badly, so much as one that has unbelievably rotten luck at 5-on-5. Score-adjusted possession of 52.7 percent puts them eighth in the league. They're actually dominating in high-quality scoring chances (54.1 percent), all scoring chances (53.8 percent), and are still somehow above-water in terms of shots on goal as well (50.7 percent).

In addition, their power play has been incredible, scoring nearly 30 percent of the time.

So, y'know, not to pin everything on Sergei Bobrovsky and the defense or anything, but this is almost entirely Sergei Bobrovsky and the defense's fault.

Now, the club has allowed five power-play goals, but with the exception of one (a point shot), they've all come in exactly the area from which you'd expect to see a power play goal get scored, right around the crease, in the low slot, etc. Can't pin too much of that on Bobrovsky, and a team penalty kill percentage of 64.3 percent just isn't going to allow you to stay competitive.

With that having been said, though, Bobrovsky has done himself approximately zero favors in allowing the types of goals he has at 5-on-5. Here's a chart of all the shots on goal he's faced in his four games, with goals obviously noted as sirens. You can see that many are from high-percentage areas, but others are from bad angles and long distances, and most of those should be stopped.

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However, even that doesn't tell the full story, simply because the Blue Jackets have — predictably, given the personnel — been awful in their own zone.

If you go back and watch the goals, you see that of the 14 full-strength goals Bobrovsky allowed, six have been the result of turnovers, three each were from losing battles or blown assignments, one was an odd-man rush, and one was that brutal goal from the low right corner. Some of these were shots that Bobrovsky should have had, but by my very subjective measure, I count eight as being of “high” or “very high” quality, five more as being “medium” quality, and that last one as “very low” quality.

And often, the direct culprit in those goals has been Fedor Tyutin and Dalton Prout. Jack Johnson has been on the ice for four goals against, Prout, Tyutin, David Savard, and Kevin Connauton for three each, and finally Ryan Murray for “just” two. None have been on the ice for more than one goal for in four games.

So yes, these are high-quality chances that are ending up in the back of the net, but Columbus has actually been far better than most at keeping things to the outside. They're allowing just 9.9 shot attempts from high-percentage areas per 60 minutes of 5-on-5 time. The problem is that almost half of them (4.7) are ending up past either Bobrovsky or Curtis McElhinney (who has conceded once on seven shots in all situations).

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