Granato Is on Staff. Now Columbus Has to Actually Execute.

Don Granato joined Rick Bowness's staff last Wednesday, and I wrote the note when it happened — former Buffalo head coach, two years removed, brings a certain credibility to a room that needs it. The hire made sense on paper. What matters now is whether it translates.

The Blue Jackets have spent the summer building something. Valeri Nichushkin came over from Colorado. Luke Tuch signed on. Jet Greaves got a three-year commitment. Cole Sillinger avoided arbitration and locked in. That is a meaningful amount of organizational will expressed in a short window, all of it aimed at the same problem: a team that scored 2.1 goals a game over its final 10 and went 2-8 while Nationwide Arena emptied out. The pieces are there. The question is always the pieces.

Granato's value in this context is specific. He has run a bench, managed a rebuild, and watched a promising roster underperform — which is exactly the recent history Columbus is trying not to repeat. What an assistant can actually do with that experience depends on Bowness and on how the staff divides its work, neither of which I can tell you from here. But the profile fits what this team needs around it: someone who has felt the weight of a late-season collapse, not just read about one.

Training camp is close. Isac Lundestrom's status is still unresolved, which I flagged earlier this week and which continues to hang over the forward depth planning. The roster is mostly set. The coaching staff is assembled. The next thing that happens is actual hockey.