On Saturday afternoon, the Columbus Blue Jackets traded defenseman David Jiricek to the Minnesota Wild, along with their 2025 fifth round pick.
In return, the Blue Jackets received a first round pick in 2025 (top 5 protected), a third and fourth round pick in 2026 (originally from Colorado and Toronto, respectiely), and a 2027 second round pick, in addition to defenseman Daemon Hunt.
Hunt is a former third round pick from 2020. He’s 6’1″ 201 lbs and is a left handed shot. He was captain of the Moose Jaw Warriors, where he was teammates in 2022 with Denton Mateychuk. Hunt has played 13 games in the NHL (with 1 assist) and 125 in four seasons in the AHL. He was immediately assigned to the Cleveland Monsters. He has 45 points (6 goals, 39 assists) in his AHL career.
Hopes were high for Jiricek when he was selected with the 6th overall pick in the 2022 draft. Scouts were won over by the Czech prospect’s massive size (6’3″ 209 lbs) and offensive zone skills. The drawback was Jiricek’s skating, and while that was not as much of an issue at the World Juniors or in the AHL (where he was an all-star and all-rookie in 2022-23), it held him back at the NHL level.
In parts of 3 seasons in Columbus, Jiricek played 53 games and scored just 1 goal and 10 assists. This season, he dressed in just 6 of 18 games before being sent back to Cleveland. He had scored 2/1/3 in 4 games since the demotion, to bring his 3 year total to 15/45/60 in 88 games with the Monsters.
There are a couple of ways to view this trade:
The pessimist view
This is giving up way too early on an elite defensive prospect! Blue liners have a longer development timeline and it’s not always linear. Don Waddell was not able to bring back an equivalent prospect in return; instead he collected quantity of assets over quality. Minnesota currently has the second-best points percentage in the league, so the first round pick is likely to be late in the first round. Jiricek could have contributed as soon as next year, whereas those future picks won’t pay off for years, if ever.
Jiricek’s development was handled very poorly. There were 4 different head coaches in his 2.5 years here. After being told to get a place last fall by former GM Jarmo Kekalainen, Jiricek was demoted just a week later. This season, under new leadership, he barely got to dress, and when he did he often played less than 10 minutes. Those games were often spent with the dead weight of Jack Johnson. He was not able to play to his strengths of being an offensive defenseman.
If he reaches his potential in Minnesota, this will be seen as a hasty trade.
The optimist view
Waddell made moves in the off-season to open up an opportunity for Jiricek: fellow young, right-handed defensemen Adam Boqvist and Nick Blankenburg were let go. Jiricek started preseason on the second pair, with Ivan Provorov. That didn’t work out, and by the start of the season he was in a position of rotating on the third pair with Jordan Harris.
While Jiricek can position himself well to account for his lack of speed, that doesn’t fit with Dean Evason’s system. Evason needs his defensemen to be aggressive, and for whatever reason Jiricek just couldn’t make that happen.
Evason has a motto that “everything is earned, not given.” That means that even though we wanted to see Jiricek get more consistent game action, better partners, and some power play reps, he didn’t do enough at 5v5 to justify those opportunities. He’s been outplayed in recent weeks by Dante Fabbro, for crying out loud.
Clearly he hadn’t earned the trust of the coaching staff, and given how much most other players are thriving this season, I’m inclined to side with the coaches in this case.
I was concerned that trading Jiricek after a demotion would lower his value, but there were enough teams interested that the return ended up being bigger than I expected. While his value is lower than it would have been, say, a year ago, there’s also the risk of it falling even lower if Jiricek couldn’t get back on the NHL roster next fall.
It’s a disappointing ending to the relationship. We all hoped Jiricek would be here a long time as soon as he kissed the logo on his jersey on his draft day. At this point, however, it’s best for both sides to move on. We wish Jiricek the best, and hope for better news from other defensive prospects such as Denton Mateychuk, Charlie Elick, and Luca Marrelli.