Career year. Eleventh overall in points. First career hat trick. First career thirty goal season. All-Star captain.

Nick Foligno has had a breakout year. The league is starting to take notice; for the first time, he is included in discussions of elite players. He is no longer the third-line comic relief guy. His underlying numbers have been good—very good—and his production is falling in line with that now. When he was named All-Star captain, most of hockey media took it as something of a joke. "Who is this guy, anyway?" was the popular narrative. Few are saying that now.

Something has changed for him, and for the Blue Jackets as a whole.

The tipping point for him, perhaps, was the birth of his daughter Milana. She was born during the 2013-14 season, and within three weeks of her birth required emergency, experimental heart surgery because of a congenital heart defect. Foligno became, in short order, both a father and the parent of a sick child, and perhaps his career priorities changed. Stability became more paramount than ever; a third-line winger with average production is expendable. He is a piece that can be moved easily, and is moved often. A producer--and a leader--is not so easily replaced.

Enter the 2014-2015 season, and all the disaster that came with it. By December, the Blue Jackets were in a three-way tie with Edmonton and Buffalo for last place and had an injured list so stupendously large it defied description. Every time a player came back, two more went down. Blocked shots became undisclosed upper body injuries. Every hit was potential disaster. Abdominal surgeries abounded. The only curse that was dodged was the mumps, which was a minor miracle given the luck of the season.

This grisly setting turned out to be Foligno’s proving ground. Given first-line minutes for the first time in his career, largely out of necessity, he began to steadily rack up points. With a void of leadership and a team falling into the despair of its situation, he began to step up in other ways as well. He helped rookie call-ups work on their shots after practice. He went out and played his heart out in games with a roster too patchwork to have a prayer of winning. And perhaps most importantly, he was able to be a bright spot in the room during the worst stretches.

"It’s the way he carries himself. All the tough things we’ve been through, all the dark times, and he’s the same guy every day, always a big smile on his face," Ryan Johansen said after Foligno’s first ever hat trick in an early April game against the Pittsburgh Penguins. He became a point that the team could rally around.

He proved himself more than capable of dealing with the media spotlight, too, during the All-Star Game; while his selection as captain was met with skepticism, he turned out to be one of the most dynamic personalities of the weekend.

Slowly, but surely, since that point the tide has been shifting towards Columbus having a captain again. Fans of other teams, at times, react with genuine surprise when told Foligno has no letter. The NHL twitter, mistakenly, captioned a picture of one of his iconic post-win hugs with Bobrovsky—hugs that are becoming the defining image of the Blue Jackets franchise—as "the bond between a captain and his goalie." In the last game of the season against the New York Islanders, at one point during the first period the New York commentators described "the captains" talking to the referees about a penalty dispute. The image shown was Foligno and Tavares; with no letter, he was nonetheless the one who was allowed to step up and argue his case for a call. And lastly, in the final home game against Buffalo, during the post-game ceremony where jerseys were given to fans, Foligno was the one given the microphone to address the crowd and promise a Cup-winning future. That speaks of captaincy too.

The Blue Jackets are ready for a captain to be named. Players have expressed that it is time, and general manager Jarmo Kekkalainen has promised that one will be named. At the beginning of the season, this was a hotly-disputed idea, and now it is an inevitability. There is only one player who has redefined his role so drastically in the space of a season. The tide has turned in the discussion of captaincy.

It’s time to give Nick Foligno the "C" he has earned.