Inside Zach Werenski's breakout season for the Blue Jackets - ESPN

Eternal optimism is a job requirement in professional sports. So is balancing expectations with reality.

It's a fine line, and one that hockey veterans like Columbus Blue Jackets general manager Don Waddell walk regularly. And while a positive attitude alone won't win championships, there's always that chance a team — or player — will surpass an executive's loftiest preseason ambitions.

Waddell can admit that's the case for Columbus now. The formerly beleaguered Blue Jackets are (shockingly) still in the hunt for a playoff spot in the final days of the NHL regular season — thanks in large part to their bus-driving, ice-tilting, game-changing defenseman Zach Werenski.

Even Waddell didn't see all of that coming.

«I'd be lying if I said I thought Werenski would be having this good of a year,» Waddell told ESPN last month. «We were hoping he could. Now it's happening. The way he's playing and carrying our team, without him, I don't know where we'd be.»

Werenski can forgive Waddell his previous doubts. The blueliner didn't exactly predict such a triumphant season, either. But like Waddell, he had faith something like this was within him, a campaign so undeniably strong it captured the entire league's attention and put Werenski firmly in the discussion as a Norris Trophy contender; in a recent poll of PHWA voters by ESPN's Greg Wyshynski, Werenski earned 48% of the first-place votes.

It's no pipe dream now. Werenski is the real deal.

«I feel like in years past, that's kind of slipped for me, the idea of being in that Norris conversation,» Werenski told ESPN this week. «And now I'm getting back to a level where people can talk about me in that space, right?

»I just want to help this team win. I feel like, if that's happening,