Woe is them.

After an abysmal start to the 2011-12 season, the Blue Jackets find themselves in complete disarray once more as general manager Scott Howson has relieved Scott Arniel of the head coaching duties. Arniel was halfway through just his second season with the club and had guided the team this year to an 11-25-5 record.

The most surprising thing about his firing is that it didn't come sooner.

But Arniel is not the sole cause for concern. The laundry list of problems extends as high as the front office and as close to the ice as the myriad issues with the players' health, energy, and confidence.

High-priced stick Jeff Carter separated his shoulder in the team's loss on Sunday to the Ducks and will likely miss a considerable amount of time. Key defenseman James Wisniewski is out for about another month with a broken ankle, and this after already having served an eight-game suspension. Former Rookie of the Year goalie Steve Mason has been getting thrashed routinely and seems to have lost every bit of poise he previously possessed.

To top it all off, franchise winger Rick Nash is now chirping to the media about waiving his no-trade clause if the situation ever came up.

It's a far cry from the 2008-09 season, which, while it ended in defeat, at least saw the team competitive on a playoff-caliber level. It's more akin to the pre-Nash days – the club's infancy in which the team had no identity and notched 57 points in an entire season. Despite the talent on the roster, those days appear to be here again.

And is anyone surprised? Doesn't this seem to be the way of things with Ohio professional sports?

The Indians go to the playoffs in 2007, blew a 3-1 lead in the ALCS to Boston, and haven't been the same since. The Browns went 10-6 the same year, lost out on the second season on a tie-breaker, and haven't won more than five games in a season since.

The Cincinnati Bengals followed up their 10-6 2009 with a 12-loss season, and while they appear to be on the up-tick now, wouldn't it be about right if their recent demolition at the hands of the Houston Texans shoved them right back into the big oily pit of mediocrity with which they're so familiar?

The Jackets will trudge through the remainder of the season under the eye of interim coach Todd Richards, who most recently went 77-71-16 as head coach of the Minnesota Wild between 2009 and 2011. The change may give a spark to a listless roster, and maybe they'll string together a decent skein (and cost themselves draft position). Whether that equates to any measurable progress is a totally different story.