The Jarmo Thread

[Cowumbus]

I don't know what Jarmo privately thought about whether it was going to be a rebuild or not.

But either way, rebuilding teams actually do sign veteran players, sometimes very very expensive ones. They usually hover around being the youngest club in the league, which we are doing. They don't follow the HF rebuild fantasy and field a team of junior eligibles.

Yes they do. Are you insinuating that I think there should have been no signings? I’m talking roster moves. Rebuilding teams don’t move pieces like Bjorkstrand instead of Nyquist to add cap space. They don’t sign 29 year old Severson to a 6.25x8 with an already crowded blue line of young players looking for icetime. I don’t think rebuilding teams even really want to take on UFA deals longer than 2-3 years. Rebuilding Ownership is usually willing to retain salary at the TDL to help the long term outlook. They don’t play Jiricek before he is NHL ready. They don’t trade 1sts in deep drafts for rentals. They don’t *usually?* fire a coach after 1 losing season (even if I thought Larsen sucked).

I just can’t see their vision.

 

[majormajor]

Yes they do. Are you insinuating that I think there should have been no signings? I’m talking roster moves. Rebuilding teams don’t move pieces like Bjorkstrand instead of Nyquist to add cap space. They don’t sign 29 year old Severson to a 6.25x8 with an already crowded blue line of young players looking for icetime. I don’t think rebuilding teams even really want to take on UFA deals longer than 2-3 years. Rebuilding Ownership is usually willing to retain salary at the TDL to help the long term outlook. They don’t play Jiricek before he is NHL ready. They don’t trade 1sts in deep drafts for rentals. They don’t *usually?* fire a coach after 1 losing season (even if I thought Larsen sucked).

I just can’t see their vision.

That's not really true. Just off the top of my head, the Devils signed Dougie Hamilton to a $63m deal in the middle of a rebuild. And the Rangers announced to their fans that they were rebuilding and then gave Panarin $80+m. That's just UFAs from the UFA market, rebuilding clubs very often give long term deals to their best players, if they can get them to stay.

Again I don't know what kind of rebuild/retool they were trying to do here, I'm saying that your idea of what constitutes a rebuild is just an idealized form, and not what teams actually do.

 

[EspenK]

Hamilton,Panarin,Severson - One of these is different

 

[Napoli]

I disagree with the "over a decade" to assemble the roster argument.

He did assemble a competitive roster from 2013-2019. The roster he assembled consisting of Bobrovsky, Panarin, Jones, Werenski, PLD, and Foligno was a competitive and likely would have been a successful one. It unfortunately was undone by the players who made purely personal decisions.

If we are judging Jarmo by the time he has put together a competitive roster, it doesn't start until the current rebuild starts which was 2020. Unless we want to hold him accountable for things that are outside of his control in which case we should also blame him for the weather and the existence of state and local income tax.

So we're not allowed to criticize Jarmo because two players wanted to leave? That seems....off.

If we're going off the "current rebuild" I'd say this team is not even close to playing meaningful games. The entire defense has been constructed poorly and needs gutting. Throw in Werenski and Severson contracts and there's two overpaid dmen who can't stay healthy/play defense.

 

[Cyclones Rock]

I disagree with the "over a decade" to assemble the roster argument.

He did assemble a competitive roster from 2013-2019. The roster he assembled consisting of Bobrovsky, Panarin, Jones, Werenski, PLD, and Foligno was a competitive and likely would have been a successful one. It unfortunately was undone by the players who made purely personal decisions.

If we are judging Jarmo by the time he has put together a competitive roster, it doesn't start until the current rebuild starts which was 2020. Unless we want to hold him accountable for things that are outside of his control in which case we should also blame him for the weather and the existence of state and local income tax.

The highlighted players were Howson acquisitions. Panarin was clear that he was just playing out his time until he could cash in and move to The Rotten Apple or another Big Lights Big City team. I'll always consider Jarmo flat out lucky on the Saad/Panarin trade. Toews and Kane wanted to get the band back together from the Stanley Cup days and Bowman was foolish enough to make the trade.

In any case, that core wasn't Stanley Cup winning material. Trading a first for Duchene and not trading Bobrovsky and/or Panarin when it was known that all three players weren't interested in staying set the franchise back considerably. The fluky sweep of Tampa probably wasn't worth it-though understandable in light of the sorry history of a franchise with zero playoff series wins prior to it.

While the collection of the younger players on the current squad certainly looks promising, it's quite the stretch to call this core Stanley Cup winning material. Holes in the defense and goaltending are enough to derail any playoff run. The long term deals to Severson and JHockey aren't exactly looking like coups for the franchise. Jarmo's handling of RFAs in his decade plus tenure doesn't inspire much confidence in allowing him to handle the current crop as the decisions on this group will have a decade worth of ramifications.

I've been calling for the heads of Jarmo and JD for several years. It's high time it happens at season's end. JD brings nothing to the table and Jarmo is best suited to be a young talent evaluator and not the architect of the entire composition of the organization. 11 years is far more than enough time to get better results than he has gotten or is likely to get.

 

[BB88]

The biggest risk is that when/if Jarmo gets fired they’ll be the next Buffalo.

They should be patient and avoid making massive player changes but I doubt that would be the case if/when the management gets changed.

New management will come in and want to make their mark on the roster, when they should just give more time for the kids to gain experience and let them take over the team when they are ready.

 

[koteka]

If we are judging Jarmo by the time he has put together a competitive roster, it doesn't start until the current rebuild starts which was 2020. Unless we want to hold him accountable for things that are outside of his control in which case we should also blame him for the weather and the existence of state and local income tax.

If you are going to take this approach, do you give him credit for drafting Fantilli or Jiricek who were obvious draft choices for a team with those picks? I see people giving Jarmo credit for having a good young core — which he only has because this team absolutely sucked in seasons when Jarmo was trying to make the playoffs. He didn’t tear the team down and tank to get high draft picks — he spent to the cap and publicly stated we were not rebuilding.

I was a Jarmo fan as he and Torts built a fun and likeable team that had the greatest success in franchise history.
But he has made blunder after blunder the last few years from coaching hires (which on their own should get him fired), icing a team with Peeke as the toughest guy, scrambling to find a tough guy in desperation because he had a team that got pushed around and giving too much term to Gudbranson, not finding defensive players who can play defense and giving a bad contract to offense-minded Severson, etc. Don’t even get me started on goalies or the development of Sillinger.

Let’s bring in someone from a franchise that has had success at “retooling” like Boston or Dallas instead of keeping Jarmo and JD.

 

[koteka]

And before someone says “but he has a really good track record with the Russians”, I haven’t seen a single person call for Ville Siren or our European scouts to be fired.

 

[Napoli]

The highlighted players were Howson acquisitions. Panarin was clear that he was just playing out his time until he could cash in and move to The Rotten Apple or another Big Lights Big City team. I'll always consider Jarmo flat out lucky on the Saad/Panarin trade. Toews and Kane wanted to get the band back together from the Stanley Cup days and Bowman was foolish enough to make the trade.

In any case, that core wasn't Stanley Cup winning material. Trading a first for Duchene and not trading Bobrovsky and/or Panarin when it was known that all three players weren't interested in staying set the franchise back considerably. The fluky sweep of Tampa probably wasn't worth it-though understandable in light of the sorry history of a franchise with zero playoff series wins prior to it.

While the collection of the younger players on the current squad certainly looks promising, it's quite the stretch to call this core Stanley Cup winning material. Holes in the defense and goaltending are enough to derail any playoff run. The long term deals to Severson and JHockey aren't exactly looking like coups for the franchise. Jarmo's handling of RFAs in his decade plus tenure doesn't inspire much confidence in allowing him to handle the current crop as the decisions on this group will have a decade worth of ramifications.

I've been calling for the heads of Jarmo and JD for several years. It's high time it happens at season's end. JD brings nothing to the table and Jarmo is best suited to be a young talent evaluator and not the architect of the entire composition of the organization. 11 years is far more than enough time to get better results than he has gotten or is likely to get.

This is spot on imo.

A lot of harsh truths in there too. Plenty of people will claim that team had enough to win it but the reality is it set Columbus back another 5 years. Jarmo has no real plan on building the team, he's a great drafter but that's where it ends.

 

[squashmaple]

I think Jarmo did, in fact, build a successful team here once. And that team fell apart really due to no fault of Jarmo's, as he happened to assemble players who all wanted to be somewhere else more than they wanted to try to win together (most of them signed with teams that were worse than Columbus at the time, in fact). Maybe scouting and player conversations could've given them a hint, but would you point-blank tell an employer you want to be somewhere else? No, no one does that.

The best time to move on from him was in 2020, when it was clear the team was headed to a full rebuild. Clean house, blank slate, etc. But I can also see why ownership/Priest/etc didn't, as that was the height of the pandemic and the league and teams wanted whatever stability they could hold onto. Changing the entire front office during that time when everything was chaos would've been too much for risk-averse business people like Priest to bear. And also, Jarmo had proven that he could build a playoff team, just happened to be one in the same division as two generational talents in their primes with good teams around them (again, not Jarmo's fault).

Jarmo took a team with no prospect pool to speak of in 2019 and built a top-five pool within three years. Sure, make the claim that he doesn't deserve credit for top-five picks. But he's also had numerous mid and late round gems. The Blue Jackets have the best percentage of draftees who played in the NHL in the league (and you know that wasn't because of Dougie) (source: this guy who did the math and shares his spreadsheet to show it... although you can argue that his cut off of 1 game played is too small). It's okay to acknowledge that his regime is pretty good at that part. I was skeptical but ultimately fine with him remaining GM because he did have a history of building successful teams (St. Louis, the 2017-2020 Jackets). The effect of the pandemic on player development across the league cannot be emphasized enough, and prospects and young players drafted 2017 on were all negatively impacted.

That said, there's much more to the GM job than drafting. His coaching hires have been disasters except for Torts. Larsen was a horrible choice from day one, and the Babcock debacle should've been a fatal blow.

 

[koteka]

To me, the one thing Jarmo truly excels at is finding bottom 6 guys that are assets to the team and don’t cost much. Draft picks like Kolesar or Bemstrom, free agent signings like Robinson and Danforth, or trades like Olivier are examples. If I had a good team that needed cheap depth forwards, I’d call Jarmo. He also can find those late round guys like TF-W or Tyler Angle who are AHLers but can play an NHL game or two if needed. But what he hasn’t done is find that late first or early second round Aho type pick which is really what the team needed for a retool instead of a rebuild. I will grant finding an Aho type guy is hard, but it is the kind of thing you need to do if you want to spend 12+ years in the same organization.

 

[Cowumbus]

That's not really true. Just off the top of my head, the Devils signed Dougie Hamilton to a $63m deal in the middle of a rebuild. And the Rangers announced to their fans that they were rebuilding and then gave Panarin $80+m. That's just UFAs from the UFA market, rebuilding clubs very often give long term deals to their best players, if they can get them to stay.

Again I don't know what kind of rebuild/retool they were trying to do here, I'm saying that your idea of what constitutes a rebuild is just an idealized form, and not what teams actually do.

The Rangers situation is different no? At minimum, Panarin >>> Severson/Hamilton. The Rangers had Lundqvist/Shesterkin/Georgiev, they had Zibanejad putting up 70+ points. Kreider, Buchnevich, Strome, Skjei, DeAngelo. Then traded Pionk to add Trouba the same off-season. They had Adam Fox making his rookie debut. Severson is a 2nd pairing D signed for 8 years. Not the same IMO, but maybe you disagree.

The Rangers did not trade 19OA in 2020 even after winning the draft lottery. They moved Skjei to get that 1st rounfpick.

 

[stevo61]

The Rangers situation is different no? At minimum, Panarin >>> Severson/Hamilton. The Rangers had Lundqvist/Shesterkin/Georgiev, they had Zibanejad putting up 70+ points. Kreider, Buchnevich, Strome, Skjei, DeAngelo. Then traded Pionk to add Trouba the same off-season. They had Adam Fox making his rookie debut. Severson is a 2nd pairing D signed for 8 years. Not the same IMO, but maybe you disagree.

The Rangers did not trade 19OA in 2020 even after winning the draft lottery. They moved Skjei to get that 1st rounfpick.

What about Gaudreau? Thats more of our mid rebuild major signing. Severson is signed to a strange term but contract value obviously isnt to the degree of the other guys. We also drafted a lot more than NY did. They didnt know Fox would be a Norris caliber guy and they also gave Buchnevich away.

We didnt have lottery luck like the Rangers did but I think we got a hell of lot more lucky sucking in a year we got Fantilli 3rd vs Laf or Kakko. Add in some of our other picks and we did a lot better than they did at that part of a rebuild. They just had more established vets even if the team is slow and flawed. Also not scared to make management/coaching changes when they are unsatisfied with the teams results

 

[Marioesque]

So we're not allowed to criticize Jarmo because two players wanted to leave? That seems....off.

How has anyone stopped anyone here from criticizing Jarmo? That's the main consistent topic for at least 5-10 different posters.

Just because you get push back for your opinion doesn't mean you're not allowed to say it. You are, but people are just as much allowed to tell you where to shove it. That's how it's always been and when people use "you can't even say anymore" sounds more like whining about any disagreement others might have with the opinion.

Yes you can campaign on that opinion as much as you want, but it doesn't happen without some people criticizing you for it. It's not censorship, it's peer review

 

[Cowumbus]

What about Gaudreau? Thats more of our mid rebuild major signing.

His signing was fine, I guess. I don’t think you can pay/have both Laine and Gaudreau on a winning team though, especially if they don’t really work together.

Severson is signed to a strange term but contract value obviously isnt to the degree of the other guys. We also drafted a lot more than NY did. They didnt know Fox would be a Norris caliber guy and they also gave Buchnevich away.

The thing with Severson is that I don’t know that his contract is moveable. Same with a few others Jarmo signed.

They didn’t really need him to be a Norris candidate. They had acquired Trouba, and had K Miller in the system. Maybe I am misremembering but I think most thought Fox would be at least a good player, after his NCAA tenure + WJC.

We didnt have lottery luck like the Rangers did but I think we got a hell of lot more lucky sucking in a year we got Fantilli 3rd vs Laf or Kakko.

For sure. But I don’t think being that bad was by design.

Add in some of our other picks and we did a lot better than they did at that part of a rebuild. They just had more established vets even if the team is slow and flawed. Also not scared to make management/coaching changes when they are unsatisfied with the teams results

Pretty much

 

[stevo61]

His signing was fine, I guess. I don’t think you can pay/have both Laine and Gaudreau on a winning team though, especially if they don’t really work together.

The thing with Severson is that I don’t know that his contract is moveable. Same with a few others Jarmo signed.

They didn’t really need him to be a Norris candidate. They had acquired Trouba, and had K Miller in the system. Maybe I am misremembering but I think most thought Fox would be at least a good player, after his NCAA tenure + WJC.

For sure. But I don’t think being that bad was by design.

Pretty much

Yeah Fox was expected to be pretty good but Norris caliber is obviously hard to predict for anyone. Like us they got a lot of luck though. They won 2 draft lotteries but also had Fox and Trouba force their way to NY just for the simple fact its NY. You take a Norris caliber D away from any team and theyll suffer massively, that defense without Fox is alright but nothing special

 

[Cowumbus]

Yeah Fox was expected to be pretty good but Norris caliber is obviously hard to predict for anyone. Like us they got a lot of luck though. They won 2 draft lotteries but also had Fox and Trouba force their way to NY just for the simple fact it’s NY. You take a Norris caliber D away from any team and theyll suffer massively, that defense without Fox is alright but nothing special

I like that Schneider kid a lot, as well as K. Miller, they seem pretty good to me. Maybe I’m giving them too much credit.

 

[stevo61]

I like that Schneider kid a lot, as well as K. Miller, they seem pretty good to me. Maybe I’m giving them too much credit.

Schneider is ok, still young and going through the usual defenseman up and downs. Miller is fantastic but slot those guys up 1 more spot without Fox there and it probably doesnt look as good. But even so, we are in that same spot just a couple years behind with guys like Jiricek/Mateychuk. Our issue is our number 1 is having major injury troubles and his play hasnt been completely to his standards

 

[Cowumbus]

Jarmo took a team with no prospect pool to speak of in 2019 and built a top-five pool within three years. Sure, make the claim that he doesn't deserve credit for top-five picks. But he's also had numerous mid and late round gems. The Blue Jackets have the best percentage of draftees who played in the NHL in the league (and you know that wasn't because of Dougie) (source: this guy who did the math and shares his spreadsheet to show it... although you can argue that his cut off of 1 game played is too small). It's okay to acknowledge that his regime is pretty good at that part. I was skeptical but ultimately fine with him remaining GM because he did have a history of building successful teams (St. Louis, the 2017-2020 Jackets). The effect of the pandemic on player development across the league cannot be emphasized enough, and prospects and young players drafted 2017 on were all negatively impacted.

The Athletic did a study on NHL GMs and their ability to draft, and based on draft position Jarmo is performing worse than expected. I posted it in here earlier this year. I’ll see if I can find it:

*****
The athletic put out an article ranking the best drafting teams since 2007. So now is probably a long enough time to look back on the draft. The Jackets ranked 24th in the NHL. I understand that Jarmo was not here 2007-2012, however, from 2013 - 2018 he has accounted for 10 wins less than expected, added through the draft. They stop the calculations in 2018, but our 2019 & 2020 drafts combined look to have at best 3 NHL players. https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2023/11/22193314/ColumbusDraft.png

Ranking the NHL’s best and worst drafting teams since 2007: 16-1​

These are the teams ranked from 16 to 1 using our thorough analysis of NHL Draft data.
theathletic.com

“The Blue Jackets faithful deserve a winning franchise given how electric their arena is when games matter. They don’t have much of that though, and it starts at the draft where things have been a little up-and-down.
In 2013, the team hired Jarmo Kekäläinen and his first draft was an immediate improvement, nabbing Oliver Bjorkstrand and Alex Wennberg. In the years that followed, they added Zach Werenski and Pierre-Luc Dubois to an already deep team, but it wasn’t quite enough to put them over the top. Other selections didn’t move the needle enough (and Andrew Peeke moved it in the wrong direction in 2016 as a sub-replaceme
nt-level defender).
Recent drafts look like they have the potential to be promising as the Blue Jackets have fallen into a much-needed rebuild. But the track record before that hasn’t been the best.”

 

[Marioesque]

The Athletic did a study on NHL GMs and their ability to draft, and based on draft position Jarmo is performing worse than expected. I posted it in here earlier this year. I’ll see if I can find it.

I'd really like to see what they are talking about, because just looking at the production of Columbus draft picks has given me the impression that they are maybe the best. And the video and spreadsheet show it to be so, as @squashmaple pointed out. I have my doubts about this The Athletic article existing, or showing what you think it does. The video suggests CBJ are the greatest draft team of all time, and it backs it up too.

 

[Cowumbus]

I'd really like to see what they are talking about, because just looking at the production of Columbus draft picks has given me the impression that they are maybe the best. And the video and spreadsheet show it to be so, as @squashmaple pointed out. I have my doubts about this The Athletic article existing, or showing what you think it does. The video suggests CBJ are the greatest draft team, and it backs it up.

You think someone playing 1 NHL game means they were a good draft pick??? That is what @squashmaple video is going off of.

Gabe Carlsson, Liam Foudy, Kerby Rychel and Marko Dano were great!

 

[Marioesque]

You think someone playing 1 NHL game means they were a good draft pick??? That is what @squashmaple video is going off of.

No of course not. There's a lot of different criteria for me that are not at all covered in the video. The video just points to players who have made it to NHL level. It's an all time chart, not a Jarmo relevant one.


But if you look at the level our russians are now playing at (legit 2nd line production) and KJ, Fantilli, Jiricek and outside of NHL Brindley, Dumais, Mateychuk etc.

I watched a lot of Buffalo last season and everyone expected them to be a team on the rise and going to playoffs but I see our development better over the last years. They have some good young pieces too but I really can't think of another team that's done better since 2020 than CBJ, just by bringing in the players and having them reach a good NHL player level already. Anaheim is competition in that, but the point remains that we're actually one of the better ones. Like top 3 currently.

 

[Cyclones Rock]

The biggest risk is that when/if Jarmo gets fired they’ll be the next Buffalo.

They should be patient and avoid making massive player changes but I doubt that would be the case if/when the management gets changed.

New management will come in and want to make their mark on the roster, when they should just give more time for the kids to gain experience and let them take over the team when they are ready.

I would think that a decent hire would appreciate most of the younger talent (Russians/KJ/Fantilli/Jiricek) and only move them it would improve the team.

One of the best selling points of the CBJ GM/Team Prez positions is that any period of sustained success (winning 2 or more playoff series in a year multiple times within a 5 year period) would be considered an unqualified success. That would not be the case for most NHL franchises.

I would imagine that several qualified GM candidates are salivating at the prospect of running this franchise. It's up to ownership to make the right hires. Should ownership sense that a candidate is likely to gut the roster to "put his mark" on the team, then that candidate should be eliminated from consideration immediately.

You think someone playing 1 NHL game means they were a good draft pick??? That is what @squashmaple video is going off of.

Gabe Carlsson, Liam Foudy, Kerby Rychel and Marko Dano were great!

Kerby Rychel was underappreciated by everyone except for himself. Just ask him.

 

[Napoli]

How has anyone stopped anyone here from criticizing Jarmo? That's the main consistent topic for at least 5-10 different posters.

Just because you get push back for your opinion doesn't mean you're not allowed to say it. You are, but people are just as much allowed to tell you where to shove it. That's how it's always been and when people use "you can't even say anymore" sounds more like whining about any disagreement others might have with the opinion.

Yes you can campaign on that opinion as much as you want, but it doesn't happen without some people criticizing you for it. It's not censorship, it's peer review

Relax man, you're allowed to voice opinions but he claimed Jarmo didn't have a decade to construct a roster due to two guys leaving. That's a cop out excuse.

People really need to read entire posts for context as it would remove knee-jerk responses.

As for the "you can't even say" bit, judging Jarmo from 2020 and on is a ridiculous reach to try and salvage his recent awful tenure as the GM, hence why I called it out.

 

[EspenK]

Spare me the Jarmo Draft Genius moniker.

Since 2013 these are guys he missed:

Shea Theodore
David Pastrnak
Ilya Sorokin chosen after Siebentaler(sp?)
Brayden Point right after Sorokin
Timo Meier
Mikko Rantannen (the last 2 were after Werenski at a time when our D pool sucked)
Devon Toews (right after Julian Pelletier)
Igor Shesterkin
Roop Hintz
Anthony Cirelli
Jordan Kyrou
Alex DeBrincat
Adam Fox (drafted right after Abramanov)
K'Andre MIller

Not saying he should have hit on all of these but as a draft genius you would think he would have gotten at least one?