The Columbus Blue Jackets are, without a doubt, the biggest surprise in the National Hockey League this season.

A team pegged by many pundits for last place in the Metro Division is on pace for 124 points – a 48-point turnaround from last season, which would be the largest for a team since the Jackets joined the league in 2000.

A coach many thought was an ill fit for what was allegedly a rebuild instead has them thriving in his system. Their offensive has gone from 2.60 goals per game last season to 3.34 this season. Their power play remains at a 27.7-percent conversion rate, and they have the fewest power-play attempts (83) in the league.

Their defense has gone from 3.02 last season to 2.07 this season, and that’s not all Sergei Bobrovsky.

So the Blue Jackets are rolling at an historic clip, and look destined for a playoff spot. The pundits were wrong, and Blue Jackets fans don’t hesitate to remind them of that fact. Which leads us to our Puck Daddy Roundtable discussion:

How are you coping with the undeniable success of the Columbus Blue jackets? Happy? Skeptical? Sad you were wrong?

And here … we … go.

GREG WYSHYNSKI, Puck Daddy Editor

It’s weird. This is a moment in which I feel like I should be popping bottles of Edmund Fitzgerald Porter and celebrating the hell out of my beloved little ‘Lumbus rolling through the Eastern Conference like Sauron marauding through an army with the One Ring.

Yet I have these conflicted feelings about it.

I’m conflicted because no one likes to be wrong, and clearly we missed something about this team. And not just the current incarnation of the team, but the direction of the franchise, in the sense that John Tortorella seemed like a terrible fit, for what seemed like a protracted rebuild. So perhaps we all slept on the leap the younger players were going to take, and how much a healthy Bobrovsky could transform this team. And then there were the unpredictable things, like Sam Gagner having more goals (13) than Connor McDavid and Patrick Kane at this point.

I’m conflicted because I generally don’t like John Tortorella as a coach, temperamentally and tactically. And yes, some of this is the lingering taste of bile from the World Cup of Hockey and the embarrassment that was Team USA, but that’s as much on management as it was on the coach. There’s no denying the impact he’s had on this team, and the fact that he’s probably going to win the Jack Adams unless Guy Boucher somehow makes a stronger case.

I’m conflicted because I genuinely like the Blue Jackets and their fans, but some of them have been complete [expletives] in the face of this success. And I get that, as a Devils fan: You watch the rest of the hockey world drop their pants and defecate on your team, city and existence long enough, and you’re going to want to throw as much crap back at them as possible when given the chance.

But I think part of this reaction from some segments – not all – of Blue Jackets fans on social media is also a rebuke of analytics, which told us early on that these results weren’t sustainable. They’re still fifth in score-adjusted PDO and hence punching above their weight. (From a possession standpoint, they’re in the positive at 51.17 percent.) Plus that power play is going to fall at some point, historically. Yet simply stating these facts, or even applauding how some of these metrics have turned around during their run, gets you a swift kick in the Fenwicks.

(I’ll also note that many of these same fans were as skeptical as any about Tortorella, management and the team after last season.)

So in trying to suss out my sour feelings towards Columbus this season, I’ve come to this conclusion:

The Blue Jackets are a team that’s defying conventional wisdom and proving the pundits to be inaccurate. Their fans – good, hard-working Midwesterners – are rejecting data and science, as their coach does; and in the process, they’re backing a man who I don’t respect in the job, who has shown both a disdain for the media and megalomaniacal tendencies in the past.

Apologies, CBJ fans: It’s a triggering effect.

I’m sure I’ll eventually be happy that someone Made Columbus Great Again (#MCGA).

SEAN LEAHY, Puck Daddy Editor

I had the Blue Jackets finishing last in the Metro when we made our preseason picks and that one is looking spot on at the moment…

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