News and Notes: Kyle Dubas talks about facing the Blue Jackets, whether this year’s Stanley Cup will have an asterisk, and more

DUBAS: I haven’t really spent a ton of time yet focusing on the matchup precisely. I think our focus right now has to be on our own team and what we can do to control everything that we do. The one thing that we have stressed has been that there is going to be a massive advantage and edge to the teams that come back in great physical condition and great shape and are able to guard against injuries and all of the other things that are going to crop up as we do something that is unprecedented — which is return right back into the heat of competition.

They’re obviously a very, very well-coached and well-managed team and have a great identity to them. We are certainly not taking them lightly and we know what we will be in for in terms of style of play, but for right now, I think we really need to focus on ourselves and putting ourselves in the best spot to have success.

DUBAS: I think they put a lot of work into it. I don’t think there was a perfect way to just decide it. Purely based on playoff odds and probabilities, we were looking good, although on some nights, you wouldn’t say that about us. And lots of people will remind us that we did have our ups and downs. Purely on the probability standpoint, if you look only at the math of it, our odds were very good, and now we will have to play in a series.

In the long run, I think this will be a very good thing for our group and for the growth and development for our group of players and our whole organization. If we are going to win the Stanley Cup now, we have to win 19 games rather than 16. We are going to start off with a very difficult opponent that obviously made waves in the playoffs last year and has had a great year.

DUBAS: I think people can say whatever they want and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference to us and to our fans — certainly not to our staff or players. I’m sure the other 23 teams that are going into the competition will feel the same way.

Because of how difficult it’s going to be with the lockdown at the end of the season, and then into this competition after training camp, with how difficult this is going to be for the whole organization to deal with in July and August, I think it’s going to be one of the more difficult championships to win.

DUBAS: As of right now, we do have players on the injured reserve. Of those players, it’s our expectation that Muzzin and Mikheyev will likely be cleared. They can’t be formally cleared until they go through that entire return-to-play process, which will include actual practicing and contact and so on. They remain on the injured reserve.

Johnsson will not be ready. He is a ways away yet. It was a pretty substantial surgery — six-month recovery at the time, and that was in mid-March. He is still three months away or approximately three months away from us even considering him as eligible.

DUBAS: I’ll just clarify. Number one, he is going to come in, if he would like to, and he is on his way here to voluntarily report in for the training camp part of it, and then we’ll make our decision with whatever is decided in the process of naming the roster.

Whether I misspoke earlier or not, I’m not exactly sure, but my answer was to whether he was going to be a part of it, and my answer is yes. He is going to be a part of Phase 2 because he has already traveled into Ontario so he can do his quarantine. He will be a part of Phase 2 and Phase 3. Whatever he gets from there will be whatever he earns in training camp in the Phase 3 part of it.

At the very least, it will be a great experience for him and his development. At best for him, he continues to show the strides he did during the year and forces our hand and finds his way onto the roster and into the lineup.

At worst, even if he doesn’t make it into the formal tournament, I think it is a great experience for him and his development. I know that he will be raring to go whenever he is cleared to begin participating.

DUBAS: A lot happened during the year. I think the thing I was most happy about… We had a lot of disappointing stretches and moments during the year where we weren’t happy with the way that we performed, and the thing I came to like most about the group — even going back to the last game we played versus Tampa after a very disappointing trip to California — whether it was in Tampa Bay after the Carolina game or the stretch in February where we went into Buffalo and Pittsburgh and got our butt kicked, when we had dangerous opponents waiting for us in the moments when we were vulnerable and our back was against the wall, the team was showing a real ability to push back and buckle down defensively.

Now that the season is over, we can say that in a lot of those games and in some of those stretches, we didn’t have Rielly, Muzzin, or Ceci. I was really proud of the way that the group was able to respond in those moments. I wish we were never in those positions and we were a little more consistent, but I think part of the growth is being able to find your way out of it when things aren’t going well.

I think the group was really starting to show that. The next step for us to embrace those obstacles as they come and become much more consistent in our mindset and day-to-day performance. I think that will eliminate a lot of the ups and downs and drama that comes along with it.