Going into their league-mandated bye week, the Columbus Blue Jackets suffered two embarrassing losses, to Buffalo and Vancouver. Each is one of the worst teams in the league this season. Yet after the break, the Jackets beat the Dallas Stars, who are one of the better teams in the league this season, just two weeks after beating those Stars in Dallas to open the new year. Are the Blue Jackets playing down to bad teams, and playing up against quality opponents?
For this analysis, I broke up the league into 3 tiers: the top 10 teams, the bottom 10 teams, then the 10 teams in the middle (which fall right around Columbus in the standings at this point, incidentally).