The Columbus Blue Jackets will pick 4th overall in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft. The Blue Jackets entered the lottery with better odds to fall than move up. Here were the odds pre-drawing. No teams behind the Blue Jackets moved ahead of them, and the Jackets did not win the lottery and move up. Ahead of the lottery, Bob McKenzie released his draft rankings – here’s what the… Source ..read more

Tonight at 6:30 PM EDT on ESPN, the NHL will announce the order of the first 16 picks in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft. Only teams in the bottom 11 are eligible to move up to the #1 pick, and only teams in the bottom 12 can move up to #2. The Columbus Blue Jackets were the fourth worst team in the league, so they can move up into the top 2, but are also most likely to move down to either #5 or #6. Source ..read more

Mr. Jiricek was a hot topic of conversation this season. From his performance on-ice to making the news off-ice, he was a contributor in many different ways. The good news is that his stock isn’t any less than it was a year ago. We will discuss the highs and lows later, but for now, let’s focus on the trend I mentioned in the Danforth review: coaching. Jiricek spent most of the season getting… Source ..read more

We’re finally in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and it looks to be a great set of series featuring the best teams in the league. Florida vs. Boston New York vs. Carolina Dallas vs. Colorado Vancouver vs. Edmonton In a bit of good news, the remaining field includes the top 6 of Burkus’s bandwagon rankings. The lowest remaining is #13 Boston, but at least it resulted in… Source ..read more

”Oh no, MrSwift is writing the Boone Jenner player review, I’m sure he’s going to dump all over him!” I can hear it now. But I promise you, I do not come here to dunk on Boone Jenner or inflame arguments about how he played, what he did, what his role should be on a successful team, etc. Battle lines have been drawn, endless arguments foisted in comments and articles, and no one is changing… Source ..read more

You would be hard-pressed to find a harder worker on the Blue Jackets than Justin Danforth. He’s relentless in all three zones and puts 110% effort into whatever he’s asked to do. This season, he was a big part of Vincent’s line blender. As we progress through these reviews, I suspect we are going to see a trend, and it starts with Danforth. As PD mentioned in the Gaudreau review… Source ..read more

The Columbus Blue Jackets season is over (and has been for quite some time, from a practical standpoint), but there is still a prize in grasp for the organization: the Calder Cup, awarded to the champion of the American Hockey League. The Cleveland Monsters won this championship back in 2016, in their first year of affiliation with the Jackets and with the help of future Columbus stars such as… Source ..read more

Full disclosure: among the staff here at The Cannon, there aren’t fans of Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Erik Gudbranson. We were universally opposed to his signing two years ago, and the results since then haven’t changed our mind. That being said, this season he was…fine? Not great, and still clearly overpaid, but he was a passable defense-first defenseman. In 2022-23… Source ..read more

First, the good news: for the second season in a row since signing with the Columbus Blue Jackets, Johnny Gaudreau led the team in scoring. That’s what you want from your highest-paid player, right? The bad news: Gaudreau’s 60 points were the lowest of his career in a full 82 game season. It was down 14 points from his first season in Columbus, and a far cry from his 115 point final season in… Source ..read more

Previously: October; November, December, January, February, March Coming off of a surprisingly competent 2021-22 season, the first under new coach Brad Larsen, and with the addition of major free agent signing Johnny Gaudreau, expectations were high for 2022-23. Instead, the Columbus Blue Jackets finished as the second-worst team in the entire league at 59 points, 22 points lower than 2021-22. Source ..read more