Jiricek situation in Columbus is a shitshow. The team thinks he’s not ready for the NHL but he disagrees. His skating in particular needs serious work. Lateral and backwards skating are nowhere near NHL standard for a defenseman, dude can't defend righ now. He got sent down the last 2 years and apparently he doesn’t want to go back again.
Blue Jackets beat writer Aaron Portzline wrote this recently :
Here are a few things give me pause right now - Portzline’s Sunday gathering
Waddell said he kept Walsh (Jiricek’s agent) aware that coaches were going to turn it up a notch on Jiricek. It’s important, he knows, for all parties to be on board. Part of that is Jiricek’s willingness to accept constructive criticism from a GM and coach with long NHL resumes.
“We made it clear to (Jiricek) that if we’re not trying to help him, we’re not doing our job,” Waddell said. “But he’s got to help himself, too.”
I think there could be a consideration of moving Jiricek, it certainly doesn’t make sense to sit him at the NHL level, and you wonder what might happen if you send him down again.
Then on the Inside Edge on Tuesday Jody Shelley was talking about when we might see Mateychuk
“So they have eight bodies here. Who knows how it’s going to shake out, but the way it’s going to start, you know, you’ve got some good veteran players back there. Mateychuk is a puck mover, a skater that can help you get out of your zone.
Let’s see how the first few games go here with the Blue Jackets. It’s such a key to be able to get out of your zone cleanly and to have an asset like that in Cleveland. I would expect maybe a trade, maybe some moves to make a spot for him.”
This just seems like a lot of interesting development- I guess they could be talking about Provorov? But why is he playing on the right? Or maybe Harris? But that seems weird that they would trade him right after acquiring him.
I also really can’t see Jiricek handling it well if he went back to Cleveland and Mateychuk stayed up here at one point.
And when he was still the head coach for the Jackets last year, this is what Pascal Vincent said about Jiricek.
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So, another McGroarty/Askarov situation. Give me NHL NOW! But Columbus disagrees.
If you head over to the CBJ board, you’ll get a feel for what they think about him as a fanbase. Not good.
If you don’t want to head over there, this the resume ; He looked bad in camp, healthy scratch for the first 3 games of the season, doesn’t want to go down. Definitely could be trade bait sooner than later. Some posters talking about flipping him for Rasmus Andersson.