COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Seth Jones has no snacks at his new place to offer a visitor. How about some water?
The Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman throws open the refrigerator and searches in vain before acknowledging that water, the bottled kind, is among the many things he has failed to stock up on at the grocery store.
Everything about Jones' otherwise well-appointed condo in downtown Columbus -- including its expansive view of the local Triple-A baseball stadium, an urban park, and the arts and entertainment area near Nationwide Arena -- suggests he's a young man in transition.
The condo, which came furnished, is owned by teammate Cam Atkinson.
The previous tenant?
A big grin spreads across Jones' face before he answers.
"Ryan Johansen," Jones said as he settled in for a chat at the kitchen island. "Kind of funny, right?"
The irony of renting the apartment that used to belong to the player for whom he was traded last season in one of the league's blockbuster deals is not lost on Jones. It's simply another reminder of how much more complicated and interconnected life has become for the young star.
Earlier in the afternoon, Jones and teammate Boone Jenner delivered meals to less fortunate Columbus residents.
They are the two leaders of a Blue Jackets team that is enjoying an unexpected revival this season. But they appear perfectly at ease with the elderly people to whom they are delivering hot meals, posing happily for pictures with folks who might not otherwise have any other human contact that day.
At one stop, a woman who has just lost her brother sits on the couch with the two players, one hand holding firmly onto Jenner's arm and the other just as firmly clenched on Jones' shoulder as though she has known them forever and doesn't want them to leave.
When they finally do depart, and head back to report for hockey duty, Jenner is asked about the Blue Jackets' recent surge to the top of the Metropolitan Division standings. He suggested with a smile that it's because Jones has been around for an entire season.
Jenner is partly trying to crack wise about Jones, who is standing within earshot -- but he's also saying it because it's true.
As young stars assert themselves throughout the league this season, Jones finds himself -- at the tender age of 22 -- straddling the line between looking up to his Blue Jackets teammates and leading them.
"He's a special kid," Columbus goalie Sergei Bobrovsky said of Jones. "He's everywhere. He's a great skater. He's got good vision of the rink. He's a good passer. When he's playing, everything is quiet. In your end you're calm, you're confident."
Three years ago, I visited with Jones and his mother, Amy, at the home they were renting outside Nashville, Tennessee. Seth, whom the Nashville Predators had selected with the fourth overall pick in 2013 a few months earlier, had just turned 19 and was a couple of months into his first NHL season.
The pair joked easily about how Seth needed to take out the trash, how Amy had rushed down to ice level to videotape her middle son during his first NHL warm-up, much to his eternal dismay, and the "pinky promise" Seth made that they would live together for the first three years of his NHL career.
Jones negotiated an out clause from the promise last season and moved into a downtown Nashville condo while his mother stayed in the area but moved into a house closer to the city.
A few weeks later, as Jones sat at the bar of a Nashville steak house awaiting his appetizers, he got a call from Predators GM David Poile.
"Your GM doesn't call you for fun at night," Jones said.
Dinner went by the boards, as Poile told Jones that he had been traded for Johansen, the fourth overall pick in 2010 and his old junior hockey teammate, in a blockbuster swap of franchise youngsters.
Two hours later, Jones was in Columbus getting ready to play back-to-back games for his new team.
"I wasn't pissed off," he insists. "But there were a lot of emotions flying, because that's your first team. You develop relationships. It kind of feels like your home."
While the Predators and Johansen advanced to the second round of the playoffs that spring, the Blue Jackets limped through another difficult season and finished 20 points out of a playoff spot.
"It was tough, for sure," Jones said. "Halfway through the season, everyone kind of knew it was over. You just had that feeling. So it was different."
He initially moved into a place set up by the team and then into a temporary apartment as he tried to get his bearings in his new environment.
"I think he spent probably the most of last season trying to figure out where he fits in," said longtime NHL player Jody Shelley, who provides analysis for the Blue Jackets. "And you could kind of see in his game that he had the skill. But it was almost like he was following a little bit, he was just falling in line. And that's understandable."
Jones returned to Columbus in September after the World Cup of Hockey, where he played well for Team North America. In his own space, his own city, for the first time in his life, he emerged as something else, someone else altogether. A leader, perhaps.
"I'm 22 years old and am by no means a veteran," Jones said. "But we have a lot of young guys on the team this year."
His regular defensive partner is 19-year-old Zach Werenski, a leading candidate for rookie of the year.
"I do feel like I'm the veteran on the D pair," Jones said. "I try to lead by example for Zach. Obviously I don't need to say much to him right now. He makes my life easier too already."
It's not just Werenski or Josh Anderson or any of the other young Blue Jackets -- who, along with the equally callow Toronto Maple Leafs, iced the youngest roster in the NHL at the start of the season -- who see in Jones' journey the kind of path that is possible for a young player. His younger brother, Caleb, is also watching.
The 19-year-old was drafted 117th overall in 2015 by the Edmonton Oilers. He's playing junior hockey for the WHL's Portland Silverhawks, with whom Seth starred, lives with the same family Seth did and even stays in the same bedroom his brother did.
While the brothers are intensely competitive, and spend summers working out together, there is an obvious understanding on Caleb's part that he has a unique window into the path to success.
"I realize how hard he's worked to get to where he is," Caleb said.
Once Caleb wrote a paper for a class talking about his respect for Seth's dedication. It brought their mother to tears. That respect has only deepened since.
"It's definitely the same," the younger Jones said. "It's a constant thing."
Being that kind of person, the one to whom others look up, who they want to emulate, can be a kind of burden. Some shrink from it. Jones has embraced it.
"It changes you," Shelley said. "He wants to be the guy. That's the sense I think I get from watching him."
He has made his apartment his own as well. The place has a comfy, lived-in feel. There are hoodies and jackets strewn on chairs. A computer sits on the couch where Jones spends a fair amount of his down time.
"I think it's been good for both of us," Jones said of his move to Columbus and Amy's subsequent return to Dallas.
He noted that his mother might disapprove of the clutter in his new place. The two are still close and keep in regular contact. Really regular contact, Jones joked, pointing out that he'll finish a game and have 10 texts from Amy, his phone almost buzzing out of his pocket.
"I'm like, 'Mom, 10 texts right after the game?'" Jones said with a smile. "It's like she expects me to answer them during intermission. She's funny. She gets fired up."
He still speaks regularly with his father, former NBA player Popeye Jones, who is now an assistant coach with the Indianapolis Pacers. Although their conflicting schedules make getting together in person a challenge, Jones is expecting a visit from his dad later in December.
Do the two talk about their shared lives as pro athletes? Not as much as they perhaps did when Jones first entered the NHL. "I think he understands that I've kind of gotten the hang of it a little bit," Jones said, "that I understand what's expected out of me for the most part."
He has become comfortable in his own skin here in Columbus, enjoying the moments of quiet.
"I like being alone, to be honest," Jones said. "That sounds terrible, but I don't mind being alone in my own space. I've had roommates, and you end up just not wanting to be around them because you're around them so much at the rink."
He doesn't do much entertaining here. Doesn't regularly whip up dinner for the boys.
"I like to cook," he insisted. "I just haven't done it. I cooked one time in training camp after I got back from the World Cup, and that was it."
Most nights, he and his teammates go out to eat at one of Columbus' restaurants.
"Boone's cooked a couple of times," he offered. "That's it. We don't mind cooking. It's hard to cook for one, but to get everyone over and then clean it all up, that's a real hassle, to be honest."
Is it the cooking or the cleaning?
"It's the cleaning," he said with a laugh.
Hey, when you're busy doing other things, like becoming a leader, chores go by the boards.