Could Blue Jackets get aggressive to bring in help at NHL Trade Deadline?
The Columbus Blue Jackets are a team to watch as they could get aggressive to bring in some help at the NHL Trade Deadline says Carter Hutton of Daily Faceoff.
Today on Daily Faceoff Live, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk spoke with Hutton about what the Blue Jackets could add to their lineup at the trade deadline to help push the team forward.
Tyler Yaremchuk: There’s also a big cushion of teams in the east right now. You can go to Columbus, Rangers, Detroit, Ottawa, and Montreal, they’re all within spitting distance of each other. Hutton, is there one of those teams that you think maybe should be more inclined to push some chips into the middle here, maybe more so than the others?
Carter Hutton: You know, maybe just principal alone for the Columbus Blue Jackets like where they’re at, just to send a message to their team that they’re for real, right? I think looking at this season headed in, this was kind of a survival mode, right?
Carter Hutton: But I think Dean Evason has done a very good job there. They have a lot of young talented players. So maybe adding a little piece, I think might show this team up into the playoffs and not necessarily the fact of thinking like, ‘Hey, we’re getting in, we’re gonna make a bunch of noise,’ but I also think there’s value in being in the playoffs and there’s value gained for younger players, experiencing, meaningful hockey, right? We look at this, you know, my example I use a lot is the Buffalo Sabers, right? You rip it down to the studs and you wanna rebuild, and it never comes back around, and there’s only so much time that you want your younger players playing meaningless hockey at that time of year. So I think for Columbus, there could be a lot of value down the road, you know, making the playoffs and gaming experience in that sense.
Frank Seravalli: I was just reading this quote from Don Waddell, the Columbus GM, who was just saying, 40 years in professional hockey, this is the proudest by far he’s ever been of a team with all the situations, the tragedy, all the injuries that have happened to this team, and how they’ve responded to it. So he was saying, that he was even waiting for the bubble to burst during the season that carries some weight when someone who’s been in hockey for four decades says that.
Carter Hutton: Yeah, and there’s value in that, right? That’s a guy who’s been around the game, he understands it, and it’s not necessarily we always think about these teams that are gonna be first-round exits per se, right? You can always have a Cinderella run, right? But when we look at Columbus, I think they’re going to be in tough in the east. But what I think in the future is getting meaningful games, drawing experience, helping these guys, and something that I reflect on, I guess in my career, was sometimes being in meaningful games.