Granato's Arrival Is the Last Piece — Now Columbus Has to Actually Execute
The Blue Jackets didn't just miss the playoffs last spring. They collapsed into them, going 2-8 over their final ten games while scoring 2.1 goals per game — a drop of 1.3 goals from their earlier pace — and surrendering 3.4 per night at the other end. Both sides of the ice failed simultaneously, and Nationwide Arena became a house of horrors down the stretch, the team going 3-7 at home over their final twenty games. That is the wound Don Granato is being hired to help close.
Granato arrives as an assistant on Rick Bowness's staff, two years removed from his tenure in Buffalo, and the significance of the hire is less about his résumé than about what it signals. Columbus has spent this entire offseason building toward a specific thesis: that the 2025-26 collapse was a fixable execution problem, not a talent ceiling. They acquired Valeri Nichushkin to add scoring depth, signed Luke Tuch to a two-year, two-way deal to deepen the middle-six, locked Cole Sillinger into a three-year, $13.875 million contract, and committed $15 million over three years to stabilize the net with Jet Greaves. Granato's addition is the final layer — the coaching infrastructure to make all of it cohere.
The execution problem had a specific face. Adam Fantilli finished the season at 12 goals and 30 points in 49 games, which is a respectable line for a young center still developing. But over those final ten games, he generated 27 shots and scored zero times. The volume was there; the conversion was not. That kind of finishing drought at the worst possible moment isn't purely a talent question — it's a confidence and system question, the kind a skilled offensive voice on the bench can address. Granato, who built his reputation around player development and offensive structure, is precisely the profile you bring in when you believe the talent is real and the framework around it needs reinforcing.
The narrow path to a playoff berth in 2026-27 runs through a few specific outcomes. Zach Werenski, who produced 54 points in just 44 games last season, cannot be the primary engine of Columbus's offense — he was last year, and that dependency became unsustainable the moment the forwards faltered. Nichushkin needs to provide the kind of consistent secondary scoring the team lacked, and Fantilli needs a full season where his shot volume translates rather than evaporates. Greaves needs to be reliable enough that a bad defensive night doesn't automatically become a loss. And the home record has to be repaired; you cannot contend in the Eastern Conference going 3-7 at Nationwide over any meaningful stretch.
What breaks that path is straightforward, and worth naming plainly. If Isac Lundestrom's injury — reported out on July 25 with no clear timeline — costs him significant time, the forward depth that management spent the summer building gets tested before training camp even opens. If Fantilli's finishing struggles reflect something deeper than circumstance, no coaching hire fixes it. And if Granato and Bowness are working from different offensive philosophies rather than a unified one, the benefit of adding a former head coach to an assistant role can curdle into noise. The Granato hire only works if it's genuinely additive — if Bowness is using him to sharpen Fantilli, develop Sillinger in his new wing role, and install the kind of offensive structure that converts Werenski's production from a lifeline into a bonus. That is the version of this that gets Columbus back into the playoff picture. Everything else is just an expensive offseason.