It’s been a busy week already, with two major news items for the Columbus Blue Jackets: the hiring of Mike Babcock as head coach, and the trade acquisition of defenseman Ivan Provorov. Hiring a new head coach was of course the first priority of the off-season. Filling the Vladislav Gavrikov-shaped hole on the left side of the defense was also important, but we weren’t sure if it would occur via trade or free agent. We had a feeling we shouldn’t get too attached to that #22 pick.
There is no more point in profiling late first round prospects (I’m very sad that I didn’t get to write about the excellently-named Oliver Bonk), so instead today let’s look at what items remain on Jarmo Kekalainen’s to-do list for the next month.
Fill out the coaching staff
This is, of course, a delicate situation. Babcock remains under contract through the end of the month and attempts to reach an agreement with the Toronto Maple Leafs were unsuccessful, so the Jackets will wait until July 1 before that hire is official. The assistants, including Pascal Vincent and Steve McCarthy, remain under contract and Babcock and choose to retain them, though that seems highly unlikely. Vincent has also interviewed for the head coaching position in Calgary. The goalie coach position is vacant, and the Jackets have been interviewing candidates for that concurrently with their head coaching search. That position is ultimately Jarmo’s call, though at this point we can expect Babcock to have major input.
Will we end up with the assistant coaches hired before the head coach? Or will the team wait until July 1 to announce the entire staff? Or will the assistant hires not happen until after that?
The Draft
This is the big one. The first round is on Wednesday, June 28 in Nashville, with rounds 2-7 the next day. The Blue Jackets now hold just the #3 pick in the first round, and will most likely choose between Swedish center Leo Carlsson or America center Will Smith. There’s an outside chance that Canadian center Adam Fantilli will be available, but let’s not get our hopes up.
For Day 2, we still own our picks in Rounds 2, 3, 4, and 7. We also have Calgary’s pick in Round 3, Winnipeg’s pick in Round 4 (both acquired in the Oliver Bjorkstrand trade with Seattle) and Boston’s pick in Round 5 (from the Gus Nyquist trade with Minnesota).
Free Agency
With Provorov answering the big question on defense, and a plethora of prospects at both forward and defense, I don’t expect the Jackets to seek much outside help in free agency. The biggest need here could be a journeyman veteran goalie that could split time as a backup in the NHL and AHL. Basically another JF Berube or Michael Hutchinson type.
Re-sign pending free agents
Finally, there’s the business of re-signing players that are already under team control. A couple of deals have already happened: Yegor Chinakhov was an exclusive rights free agent (i.e. no one could make him an offer sheet) and he signed a 1 year, $800,000 extension a week before the season ended. Lost in all of the other news this week, on Monday defenseman Jake Christiansen signed a one year, two-way contract worth $775,000 in the NHL and $275,000 in the AHL. Fair deal for a useful tweener. That leaves approximately $12 million in cap space to work with for the names below.
Here are the pending free agents at each position (players with an asterisk are eligible for arbitration):
Forward
RFA:
Mathieu Olivier*
Joshua Dunne*
Trey Fix-Wolansky*
Carson Meyer*
UFA:
Lane Pederson
Joona Luoto
Justin Richards
Defense
RFA:
Tim Berni
Marcus Bjork*
UFA:
Gavin Bayreuther
Goalie
UFA:
Jon Gillies
Michael Hutchison
Extensions
By my count (per CapFriendly’s chart), there are currently 17 players whose contracts will expire in Summer 2024, and therefore would be eligible for a contract extension after July 1 of this year. This includes some big names like Alexandre Texier, Kent Johnson, Kirill Marchenko, Cole Sillinger, Emil Bemstrom, and Liam Foudy. Johnson is listed as an exclusive rights RFA, so he’ll certainly have to wait until next summer. Texier, Bemstrom, and Foudy all have arbitration rights, but all have some uncertainty about their long term future here, so best to let that play out. Marchenko may make the most sense to try to lock up long-term now, but my prediction is no early extensions happen this summer.
Naturally, we’ll be here for all of it. We’re excited to see how it unfolds, and share it with you all! There’s also some cool site stuff in the works that we should have in place for next season, including a shiny new logo coming between now and the draft, and related merch.