Maurice of Orange
13:21 🏒🏒
- Feb 5, 2016
- 10,736
- 7,298
Seattle is at 21 players with only 4k of cap space and needs to move a player to fill out the rest of the roster. Brandon tanev for future considerations would be a good bottom 6 options for CBJ.
Tanev has been on my short list ever since FA ended. He checks so many boxes for the Blue Jackets needs right now. Veteran voice and a LW4. There is only one stipulation...he has to accept a new number
I could see him purely staying cause of the kids-his and Johnnys. He wanted his kids to grow up with JG's kids, IIRC
As a Blue Jackets fan I think the team needs to honor and memorialize Johnny Hockey while at the same time pressing forward. There is a season ahead and they are going to play it. They probably will dedicate the season to Gaudreau and thus will likely want to show up and make him proud.Hesitant to make this thread because I don't know where the line is here in terms of insensitivity.
It's an unspeakable tragedy what happen to Johnny and Matthew and this is going to be an insanely difficult year for CLB management, fans, and most of all, players. I'm sure on ice considerations are the furtherest thing from their minds at this exact moment.
With all of that said, the show must always go on and life must go on. Columbus are an NHL hockey team who have to play 82 games this year and they are a team overdue to compete. They've built up a very promising core and now have been dealt an awful blow not just in the locker room but on the ice too.
I'm sure there will be people to jump down my throat with "this isn't the time" or "who cares right now" but Don Waddell has to walk a tightrope of knowing when it's not appropriate to "replace" him in the lineup vs when he needs to focus on his job as a General Manager of a hockey club.
What do you think they do? What precedent is there for this in professional sports? They've lost their best forward and their biggest contract. Do they throw in the towel on this season and not even worry about on-ice results? Do they make a move before the season? Do they wait x amount of time until they feel it's appropriate to deal for a forward (deadline), next off season etc? There were rumblings about Kaprizov a while back, do they take a major run at him? Zegras?
Again, I'm not trying to take the focus off the tragedy and the lives lost, but there is a hockey element to this too. Hoping this can be a mature thread. Surely I'm not the only one to whom this thought has occurred and it does nothing to distract from the somber nature of the situation.
I get it.I had a lineup made for Columbus, but couldn’t bring myself to pick someone to play at 1LW.
Any type of hockey thought goes straight on Gaudreau brothers, just a range of emotions, as they weren’t that far away.
Benn was the faceoff guy on Johnstons line his first couple years...they shared duties while Johnston learned to be a top 6 center on the fly in the NHL.It's now certainly a rebuilding year. Maybe they get Hagens. They should pick up an overpaid solid vet with an expiring deal, e.g. Iafallo. Someone who is a good leader.
KJohnson Monahan Fantilli
Chinakhov Voronkov Marchenko
Sillinger Jenner Brindley
Iafallo Kuraly Danforth
Olivier
Werenski Mateychuk
Harris Severson
Provorov Gudbranson
Christiansen
FWIW Sillinger and Fantilli aren't good at center yet (or in Sillinger's case, not good anywhere). Jenner and Voronkov are solid centers, I don't know why they are penciled at wing by the media and fans. Sillinger and Fantilli can slide over when they're ready.
It's not last year's Gaudreau that is irreplaceable, but the best was still to come for Gaudreau in Columbus. I wrote a long piece breaking it down, his primary assists were still in the top group of wingers in the NHL, it's the secondarys and goals that cratered. He just struggled to finish his many chances, and the very low secondarys are directly attributable to his linemates. Having him with, say, Monahan and Fantilli this year could have changed that.
In Columbus you can't just pay someone else in UFA and expect a better deal. Heck, the most plausible argument to lure elite talent was players who wanted to play with Johnny Gaudreau. Now the club has $20m to spare and good luck finding an elite player willing to sign a more team friendly deal than Gaudreau's.
If Evason lobbies for him, maybe. But it's a four year deal for a guy to solve a potentially short term issue.
Why?This year they should maximize their cap space somehow targeting cap strapped GMs.
NHL should compensate with maybe the 33rdOA pick going to CBJ
I'm sure Meredith will move back to Philly where she's from and Johnny's family resides. Nothing beats family support.... especially for a single mother with two small children to raise.There are a lot of reasons why Monahan might prefer to stay in Columbus. There's some good vets to connect with like Jenner, Werenski, and Gudbranson, who he played with before, and Gudbranson was basically Johnny's best friend. And as you mention raising his kids with Johnny's kids is a big plus. I'm not sure if the Gaudreaus will stay in Columbus long term but it was where Meredith wanted to be and they have a ton of support there.
WTF are you talking about. The Blue Jackets have a very easy choice here. They were not a good team with JG. They take on a little short term salary for assets and draft high this year and maybe next. Then they spend said cap on FA's to fill in spots on their roster.What does the bluejackets do...?
a question easily ignored by 80% of posters.
In Columbus you can't just pay someone else in UFA and expect a better deal. Heck, the most plausible argument to lure elite talent was players who wanted to play with Johnny Gaudreau. Now the club has $20m to spare and good luck finding an elite player willing to sign a more team friendly deal than Gaudreau's.
What happened to JG is certainly a tragedy but I think (and hope) that you have misconceptions regarding the fragility of people.The Jackets will dedicate their season to 'Johnny Hockey'.......but you seriously wonder how a franchise can recover mentally and spiritually from that kind of blow. Not only was he their highest paid player, but he was being relied on heavily to provide offense for a team that has a dearth of scoring already.
Columbus has a few nice pieces via recent drafts; but too many holes elsewhere in the lineup to make any noise in the Eastern Conference. But if anyone can turn the ship around, it's incoming GM Don Waddell.
And based on the tragic start to the season; the Jackets are one of the few teams in the East that I'll be really pulling for.
13500 people in the USA were killed by drunk drivers in 2022. There were 21200 murders. Other tragic and untimely deaths make up significant numbers.
This is gonna be a rough year but there is alot of young raw talent on this team and a rather stong prospect pool that's only going to get stronger next summer. Looking at probably a top 5 and I wouldn't be shocked with 2 more 1st round picks (50% Provorov is going to 100% get a first as long as he's not injured NHL GMs for playoff depth as he's pretty much always available and I wouldn't be suprised we get a first for a major cap dump for someone trying to make room for playoff push and they need the space). We only have 1 contract that could age badly and even then its not that expensive. Basically Columbus is now an expansion team with how we should have been treated back in 2000. A hard reset on the franchise but should be promising long term as long as they don't start going big game hunting in FA until we know what holes to fill with what kid makes the cut and those who bomb out. The problem with Columbus really is they never truly committed to a proper rebuild/build up. The closest we got to that was right before our 2016-2020 playoff pushes.Would be awesome to see them rally and maybe sneak into a wild card spot but realistically see them in prime lottery position. A big almost free hit year to see if maybe Elvis bounces back, Fantilli development, who in the org really steps up and proves themself on a team where opportunities will be plentiful. Next offseason will be the big one with how much money is in play. Provorov off the books, how is Lindstrom looking a year after the draft? Maybe they pick top 5 again and get a guy who slots in right away? Do they chase Marner in FA?
Sadly it is a business. But I think Columbus could or may use the space to sign Fantilli and co. when the space is available.
Or potentially gather draft picks in a rebuild and take in some bad contracts.
I don't think they really care until the end of training camp so there is a lot of time to make a move or 2 to add $2.7 M in cap. They could just offer Tyler Johnson a 1 yr $2.7M contractI am curious how the nhl handles them being below the floor.
All it indicates is they wanted a clean book going forward. Retention would've been a red line item next season, too. A buyout would've been longer than that (which is why they didn't buy out Elvis - Waddell is literally on the record saying that).What's interesting is the Blue Jackets preferred to give a 2nd to unload 100% of Laine's contract and taking a cheap/young Harris contract in return. That indicates to me that they want a strict budget this season and mandated by their owner.
$2.7M short from the floor now?
This is such a dumb take. There's nothing left to blow up. This is year four of a rebuild. There is no more "move players for futures" at this stage of the rebuild, and losing Gaudreau doesn't change that at all. The pieces to move out are long gone. What's left is: the building blocks making up what is already a top five farm system, immovable Elvis, and two vets who are core pieces (Jenner and Werenski). Fourth line vets like Kuraly might yield a fourth at the deadline. They're not trading off a Russian (all of whom are U25 and the first two only just signed their second contracts this summer) for picks, Sillinger, or Jiricek. The kids just have to step up.I think the better course of action, at least for the long term future of the franchise, is to blow it up a bit, make some key trades and try to stack the deck in the draft over the next 2 or 3 years. Trade one or two of the best current players for futures and build around what you have in the minors and what you can pick up in the draft. You do it right, and this team could be a monster in a few years. They already have a decent farm, you could now make that farm elite.