Blue Jackets sat on their hands too long
After trading Pierre Luc-Dubois for Patrick Laine a little over two years ago one may have believed Jarmo Kekäläinen was firmly in the driver's seat guiding the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Unfortunately, as is life in the National Hockey League sometimes things don't go according to plan and you're stuck near the bottom of the standings of the entire league.
This brings us to today and with a week to go before what some hockey fans call the most wonderful time of the year; the 2023 trade deadline day, March 3rd.
In the last few days, the Blue Jackets were believed to be in talks with the Boston Bruins for a deal that centered around Jackets defenceman Vladislav Gavrikov, however, the Bruins asked for more time.
It has now been disclosed that Columbus wanted to do the deal ahead of time so they could potentially flip the 1st round pick they were asking from Boston in a possible trade for Jacob Chychrun.
It's now widely known that the Bruins decided to go in a different direction and make a deal with the Washington Capitals for Defenceman Dmitry Orlov and forward Garnet Hathaway. For their troubles, the Bruins sent a 2023 first-round draft pick, a 2025 second-round draft pick, a 2024 third-round draft pick, and forward Craig Smith.
The National Hockey League is a business and in business more often than not you're bound to get screwed, but the question that likely needs to be asked is whether this indecision by the Bruins and the complacency by the Blue Jackets will have President of Hockey Operations visiting Kekäläinen sooner rather than later to have a chat about his future.
