JUMP-STARTING THE BLUE JACKETS

If all goes according to plan, John Davidson expects his tactics to lead the Columbus Blue Jackets into the realm of respectability

John Davidson knows what he has to do.

John Davidson was reminiscing about his three decades in New York as a Rangers goaltender and a television announcer. His feelings are warm, and reciprocated. Although he left seven years ago, he still receives mail from Rangers fans.

He reached across his desk and fished out a letter from a man who said his father was still upset with Davidson because he did not spend more time in the dad’s pizzeria in the 1970s.

“Oh, baby, that was great,” Davidson said with a chuckle. “Once New York is in your blood, it’s in your blood.”

Davidson, an always-on ambassador for the NHL, is now making his mark in far smaller cities. In 2006 he left broadcasting and moved to St. Louis, where he helped turn a lastplace team into a front-runner. His latest challenge is jump-starting the forlorn Columbus Blue Jackets.

After the Blues were sold last year, the new owners parted ways with Davidson, and he toyed with returning to the broadcast booth. But he warmed to Columbus, best known as the home of the Ohio State Buckeyes, because the Blue Jackets had excellent facilities and stable owners. Davidson, considered to have one of the sharpest minds in the game, was also getting in on the ground floor. The Blue Jackets finished last in the league last year, so the only way to go was up.

Indeed, after a slow start to the season, Columbus has come alive this month, vaulting into playoff contention.

Davidson, 60, has been there before. When he arrived in St. Louis, the Blues had also finished last in the league, their 25 consecutive playoff appearances a distant memory. Like the Blue Jackets, the Blues had stockpiled top draft picks, which Davidson parlayed into stars like David Perron and T.J. Oshie. After several rough years, the Blues blossomed last season, finishing second in the Western Conference.

“Having experienced it, I know what I have to do,” said Davidson, the Blue Jackets’ president for hockey operations, a newly created position. “This city is starving for a good team.”

By many measures, Columbus has not been a good team. Since entering the NHL in 2000, the Blue Jackets have qualified for the playoffs once, in 2009, when they were swept by the Detroit Red Wings. Since then attendance has fallen 12% and the number of season-ticket holders has dipped to about 7,000. Fans were so frustrated last season that a few hundred of them picketed outside Nationwide Arena.

Inconsistent drafting, trading and free-agent signings undermined confidence, especially when Jeff Carter, who had been acquired from Philadelphia, was shipped halfway through last season to Los Angeles, which won the Stanley Cup. Then Rick Nash, Columbus’ top player and the face of the franchise, asked to be traded. The Blue Jackets sent him to the Rangers for, among others, Brandon Dubinsky and Artem Anisimov, who have had substandard seasons, adding to the sense that Columbus is snakebit.

“The team has never had any legitimacy in this league,” said Morgan Langworthy, who writes for The Dark Blue Jacket, a blog dedicated to the club. “People don’t want to say this out loud, but it’s the team you don’t want to be traded to; it’s the team that is not taken seriously in the league.”

The team has yet to find a mass following in Ohio, too. Although the Blue Jackets have a solid core of fans, they take a back seat to the Buckeyes in Columbus, the way the NHL’s Hurricanes and the NBA’s Bobcats are viewed in North Carolina, another hotbed of college sports.

Davidson and other team officials bristle at being associated with other struggling NHL franchises like the Phoenix Coyotes.

The Blue Jackets are in no danger of moving because their owners, starting with the team’s founder, John H. McConnell, have always viewed the team as a civic institution and a vehicle for improving the city’s image.

“The city is bigger than the university, and that’s one of the roles of the team,” said Mike Priest, the Blue Jack- ets’ president. “We’re not in jeopardy of going anywhere.”

Bret Hoovler, a longtime fan who grew up near Columbus, said: “There’s a desire to have a winner, but also to get national recognition. We want to prove we’re not a cow town.”

In the meantime, Davidson is doing his best to rebrand the team. Relentlessly upbeat and friendly, he has met fans, business leaders and sponsors since arriving in October. He promised fans that the team would not be outworked, a goal that plays well in a blue-collar state like Ohio.

Aware of the team’s history with signing stars, he has also urged caution and vowed to build the team “one brick at a time” using draft picks, not splashy free agents.

“In this league, you can get a quick fix, but you’re not going to build a foundation,” Davidson said. “We have a ways to go, but we’re going to get it done.”

The lockout, which lasted until January, gave Davidson time to acclimate, but it also kept him from seeing his team play. The Blue Jackets started the season by playing many exasperating one-goal games, including one in February in which they came back four times against the Dallas Stars before falling in overtime. But they stuck to their blue-collar work ethic reeled off a franchise record of 12 straight games with a point and moved into playoff contention. They are 13-13-6 after a 5-2 loss in Nashville on Saturday, which broke the streak and left them one point out of eighth place in the Western Conference before Sunday’s games.

In addition to evaluating the current team, Davidson and new general manager Jarmo Kekalainen have to decide how to use their three firstround picks at the draft in June.

Hiring Davidson was partly about acquiring a talented evaluator of hockey players, Priest said, and partly about showing the fans “that we’re not about the status quo.”

“We’ve struggled on the ice, but our business side has held up reasonably well,” he said. “But we wanted our onice product to match what happened in St. Louis. We want John to duplicate the same success.”