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Coming off a severe shoulder injury that caused Ryan Murray to miss much of his last season in junior, the prized defenseman bounced back in a big way en route to a successful rookie year with Columbus.

The 2012 2nd overall pick posted 21 points in 66 regular season games while averaging 19:52TOI per game, which ranked 4th among all Blue Jackets.

While he was spoon fed some easy minutes - only Corey Tropp started a higher percentage of shifts in the offensive zone - he did fare quite well, posting a 51.6 Corsi rating and 52.5 goals for percentage. Both numbers were at or above average relative to the rest of the team.

Taking all into account Murray's rookie campaign was certainly a good one, but he didn't do nearly as well away from James Wisniewski as he did playing on the same pairing.



As you can see, Murray was significantly better with Wisniewski than without him. Those two posted great numbers bordering on elite in both possession and goals for. That said, judging by Murray's numbers away from Wisniewski it's safe to say that Wisniewski was more responsible for the pairing's success than Murray.

That in mind, it is worth noting again that Murray was just a rookie. He had a good campaign, and the future certainly looks bright for him. It's a bit of a concern he struggled without Wisniewski, but the only semi-regular partners he had besides Wisniewski were possession anchor Jack Johnson,who I still believe the team should listen to offers on, and fellow rookie David Savard.

It'd be nice to see Murray post better numbers without Wisniewski going forward, but the good news for the young blue liner is he spent 75% of his rookie season on the same pairing, and there's no reason to expect any different in 2014-15.

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