Written by Adam Burke

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Justifiably, a team who has had none of its players play like an all-star this season will not have any representatives in this weekend’s All-Star Game in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Technically, the Blue Jackets are sending rookie Ryan Johansen to the festivities to be added to one of the two teams for the skills competition, but no Jackets player will be in uniform for Sunday night’s game.

This year’s two teams are captained by Zdeno Chara and Daniel Alfredsson with a televised fantasy draft on Thursday night where both captains will pick their roster. A full list of the players who will be in the game, as well as the rookies added to participate in Saturday night’s Skills Competition can be found here. The Skills Competition will air Saturday night at 7 on NBC Sports Network (formerly Versus) and the All-Star game will air Sunday at 4 pm on NBC.

As for the Blue Jackets, the team will enjoy a week-long break from losing before getting back on the ice next Tuesday night in San Jose. As for the Blue Jackets front office, one would think that Scott Howson will be busy working the phone lines and sending emails as the trade deadline is just one month from Friday. Between now and February 27, general managers across the league will be burning up the phone lines. As I hinted at in last week’s TCF 30 for 30 Part Two piece, the market for buyers and sellers should be much clearer than in the past couple of seasons. That should make for a highly interesting trade deadline and playoff chase as the calendar inches closer to springtime.

Blue Jackets beat writer Aaron Portzline tweeted the other day that it has been 71 games since the team won back-to-back games in regulation. That would be February 22-25, 2011. Perhaps the ugliest stat to come out of the 2011-12 season is that every team in the Central Division has double the points that the Blue Jackets have. I have always said that the Blue Jackets might be in the hardest division in the NHL. They have been historically bad, but the 64 points that fourth-place Chicago has would lead the Southeast and Pacific Divisions, be tied for the lead in the Northwest and Northeast Divisions, and be just two points behind the Atlantic Division leader.

The Jackets enter the All-Star break with five less wins than any other NHL team.

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Without much more to say about the Blue Jackets, some interesting realignment things have come to the forefront. Back in December, I wrote this abridged version of the NHL’s Realignment Plan that 26 of the league’s 30 owners accepted.

You’ll note where I said “The NHL Players Association still has to approve the changes, but the league expects little resistance as the new format is friendlier to travel and puts an emphasis on bitter rivalries.” Clearly, the league underestimated the players association.

My favorite hockey resource on the internet, Yahoo’s Puck Daddy blog, runs a weekly piece written by an anonymous player. This week’s was on why the players association shot down the realignment plan.

It’s really interesting to hear the spin from both sides. The league interprets the players’ decision as a “shot across the bow” in upcoming CBA negotiations. The players association cites a lack of communication between the league in regards to the new schedule that mandates a road game in every NHL city and also looks at the chief sticking point of how much harder a playoff berth is to get in a division with eight teams instead of seven.

It’s difficult to fathom why the league would not have open lines of communication with players association when they were asking for a simple request. According to this anonymous player, the NHLPA simply wanted to see a mock version of the revised schedule so they could see what the cross-country travel would look like, in hopes that all long distance road games would be grouped together. The league refused. Players’ unions really have all the power in professional sports and the players rarely make more concessions than the league and its owners do.

As a result of rubbing the NHLPA the wrong way, the new realignment plan failed. According to the anonymous player, Commissioner Gary Bettman wanted just a yes or no vote from the players and would not make any changes to the proposal. With a league that had a very difficult time bringing back its fan base after the 2004-05 lockout, and a league that was unable to get a noteworthy cable television contract (prior to being NBC Sports Network or Versus, hockey was on the Outdoor Life Network), this latest refusal to work with the players association is a sign of bad things to come.

Either way, the next summer of CBA negotiations is sure to include plenty of fireworks.