COLUMBUS, Ohio — A collection of notes, insights, ruminations and did-you-knows gathered throughout the week that was for the Columbus Blue Jackets:Item No. 1: What a messIt’s hard to imagine an NHL club — or, for that matter, any amateur outfit — messing up their coaching search quite like the Edmonton Oilers have this offseason. And now the Blue Jackets get to pay a price for it.The next few weeks are some of the busiest and most exciting on the league’s calendar, with the NHL Draft in two weeks and the start of free agency just one week later. There are contracts to sign, trades to make, buyouts and offer sheets to consider.With a rising salary cap and abundant money to spend for most clubs, general managers are expecting this summer to mark the return of actual hockey trades, not just bad contract dumps and exchanges of broken parts.The Blue Jackets, however, will have another storyline looming over their heads: a three-year-old story they’ve always wished would go away. But Mike Babcock is back in their lives again.Let’s recap the mess the Oilers have created.Shortly after they were bounced from the first round of the playoffs by the Anaheim Ducks, the Oilers sought permission from the Vegas Golden Knights, their Pacific Division rivals, to interview Vegas’ former coach, Bruce Cassidy.They took this step before they fired their coach at the time, Kris Knoblauch, just eight months after signing him to a three-year extension that was supposed to start next season. This, despite Knoblauch leading the Oilers to the Stanley Cup Final in each of the two previous seasons.Vegas, which lost to Edmonton in the second round of the playoffs just last season, denied the Oilers permission to interview Cassidy, which is their right given the terms of Cassidy’s contract.Well, secrets last about as long as $20 bills in Vegas. This story got messy. Knoblauch was fired to spare him the twisting in the wind, and Cassidy has since gone on podcasts and other outlets trying to talk his way into early free agency.The Golden Knights will not relent. Why?One of the few mistakes Vegas has made in its first decade in the league — the Golden Knights would say as much, too — was allowing coach Peter DeBoer, whom they fired after missing the playoffs in 2021-22, to interview with the Dallas Stars.The Stars hired DeBoer, and two years later, Dallas knocked out the Golden Knights in the first round of the playoffs. Vegas likely learned a lesson from that, and the Stars are merely a Western Conference rival, not a division foe like Edmonton.With Cassidy’s availability seeming unlikely, the Oilers moved on to another candidate … one who has been accused by former players of psychological abuse and bullying behavior at all four of his NHL coaching stops.Do the Oilers only want what they can’t have?The most recent of Babcock’s stops was with the Blue Jackets in 2023.Babcock was accused by players in Columbus of invading their privacy during one-on-one meetings by looking at their cellphone pictures to see what kind of life they were living away from the rink, a story first reported on the “Spittin’ Chiclets” podcast.The NHL was planning to investigate this three years ago but Babcock resigned before they could follow through. The league, like most everybody else in hockey, must have thought Babcock’s days as a coaching candidate were done, so they stopped the investigation.Now, in order for the Oilers to gain clearance to hire Babcock, the investigation is planned anew. As of Sunday, the Blue Jackets had not heard from the NHL, according to president of hockey operations and general manager Don Waddell.“I’ve deferred everything to our lawyer,” Waddell told The Athletic. “I wasn’t here. I’ve heard the stories, but I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t.”The two Blue Jackets’ bosses who made the decision to hire Babcock against the protestations of many in the fan base were then-president of hockey operations John Davidson and general manager Jarmo Kekäläinen.Davidson is mostly retired and living in Florida, though he does join Blue Jackets broadcasts when full-time analyst Jody Shelley is pulled away for national broadcasts. He remains an alternate governor with the club. Kekäläinen is now the GM in Buffalo.Whether they are compelled to answer all of the NHL’s questions remains to be seen. But it seems as if the Blue Jackets players from the 2023 club would be far more pertinent to what actually happened. They’re scattered all over the globe, meaning this could take a while.