Glad Grier seems to be involved. I’m a little worried at how much Jiricek is going to cost but I guess it also depends on what the Jackets are looking for. Roster players we don’t really have anything worthwhile (unless they value Ferraro highly or something), prospects we have aplenty but yeah, what are their needs?
I don’t super want to get into a bidding war and mortgage the future for someone I do really want but who has a lot of red flags.
My hope would be that they've managed to depress his trade value similar to what happened with Askarov. The appeal to me is that he's got two things we don't have in our defensive corps at all - size and offensive skill from the right side. Obviously he's got some downside or he wouldn't be available at all, but given that we still need to be adding elite talent through the draft, this is a perfect situation for him to make mistakes, improve his conditioning and skating, and develop his game at the NHL level. Of course, Columbus should be in the same boat as us, but for some reason they'd rather play bums over developing this kid in the NHL.
Sans a second round pick or someone else's first round pick though, this is gonna be a tough trade to pull off and give Columbus what they perceive to be adequate compensation for giving up on a #6 draft pick.