Tuesday night's game against Vancouver might as well have been Kids Night Out at Nationwide. When do you know that long-suffering fans of the Columbus Blue Jackets have packed it in for the season? When you look around Nationwide Arena and all you see is cotton candy, Dippin' Dots and Starbust. When the lines to rent beer (and return it) are non-existent. When the loudest mouth in section 120 is a 5 year old girl who is yelling at the top of her precious little lungs, "Come on Jackets! You can do it! Just score one more time so we can go home!" God bless her.

In February of 2009, the Blue Jackets were a young team with a veteran coach who was leading the franchise to the playoffs for the first time in their nine year history. One year later they are an enigma, a team many expected to finish in the top 4 or 6 in the Western Conference, now guided by an interim coach, fighting to figure out where things went wrong and trying re-establish themselves. As the trade deadline arrived today, the Blue Jackets found themselves in the familiar role of  selling off excess inventory, open box items and "B" stock in a year-end clearance event. What a difference a year makes.

After watching Ryan Miller put a less-than-star-studded Team USA lineup on his back in the Olympics, and recalling the way Steve Mason did much the same thing for the Blue Jackets last season, it would be easy to say that Mason's personal reversal of fortunes this season is to blame. The problem a lot of people have calling what has happened to Mase a "sophomore slump" is that "slump" is too soft a word to describe it.  Maybe "sophomore dump" is more accurate. But there is more to it than that. Coaching. Conditioning. The lack of a true center on the top line, or at least one that can unlock the handcuffs on Rick Nash., etc., etc. Who knows what caused the collapse? Raffi Torres, who was shipped to the Buffalo Sabres at the deadline, doesn't.

Based on what Scott Howson did (or didn't do) at the trade deadline, it doesn't look like he is completely sure what went wrong either. Howson played it safe. Trading three unrestricted free agents and two journeymen for three draft picks, a prospect and two different journeymen is not going to shake things up, one way or the other. Until he names his coach for next season, it really doesn't make sense for Howson to make any kind of definitive diagnosis or implement a treatment plan.

And so the 2009-2010 Blue Jackets limp to the finish line with a lot of questions needing to be answered. Will Claude Noel win Howson over and get the "interim" tag lifted from his title? If not, to whom will Howson turn to coach this team up next year? Will Nikita Filatov see the departure of Ken Hitchcock as something akin to the parting of the Red Sea and return to Columbus ready to fulfill his potential? Will the citizens of Franklin County embrace the concept of a public/private partnership and do what they need to do to keep the NHL in Columbus? What a difference a year makes. Or at least Blue Jacket fans sure hope so.