Week 8 Power Rankings - maintaining

TSN.ca - maintain the same spot at 6
Back-to-back wins has the Jackets on the right track and it just happened to coincide with Mike Peca's return to the lineup.

CBSSports.com - down from 19 to 22
Pascal Leclaire hasn't faltered yet, although he has been only ordinary a few times recently. But he is handling a workhorse load more than capably and he is making a Columbus team with limited talent among the skaters look better than it is.

CBC.ca - up to 17 from 19
Have cooled off, but still work hard.

ColumbusDispatch.com - Jackets nudge up to 10
Just three road games in December give the Jackets a chance to put a streak together.

THN.ca - Down from 16 to 18
Two straight wins including shootout victory over Wings

FoxSports.com - Down from 9 to 14
(.575) The Blue Jackets had a rough Week 7. The club dropped three of four and fell out of the Top 10 in the rankings and into the No. 14 position. Columbus stumbles into Week 8 having only won once in its past seven games.

Yahoo.com - Down from 16 to 20
Under the tutelage of Ken Hitchcock, who celebrated his one-year anniversary as coach of the team last week, Jackets are 39-38-9. Before Hitchcock, they were 144-229-33-24, for a .401 winning percentage. Enough said.

ESPN.com - awaiting release

Average Score: 14.88 (last week 14.42)

The Jackets slide ever so slightly this week. I scratch my head at some of these rankings, especially from CBSSports - Wes Goldstein obviously does not believe in the Jackets and what they have accomplished thus far this season and his rankings reflect it. Oh well, not much you can do about it. Jackets have to just keep chuggin along and of course it wouldn't hurt to pick up some road 'W's in Vancouver and Calgary here in the next two game.

-LTL