Columbus Blue Jackets happy after completing Seth Jones trade with Chicago Blackhawks
MONTREAL — Another NHL draft is in the books.
A league that’s had three straight seasons altered by the pandemic returned to what commissioner Gary Bettman termed “normalcy” on Thursday and Friday at Bell Centre, where fans in attendance proved it with the usual chorus of boos that follows him around.
The draft was also memorable for other reasons, including some head-scratching moves by the Chicago Blackhawks, top prospect Shane Wright’s tumble to the Seattle Kraken fourth overall and the Blue Jackets officially completing a trade that sent Seth Jones to Chicago before the start of last year's draft.
The return package for Jones is now known.
It's center Cole Sillinger (No. 12, 2021), defenseman Adam Boqvist, defenseman Jake Bean and defenseman David Jiricek, who was selected sixth Thursday with a pick that Chicago included. That’s three young NHL players plus a highly-regarded defensive prospect (Jiricek) who is expected to make it to Columbus within a year or two.
Chicago, which signed Jones to an eight-year, $76 million contract extension that starts next season, received the Jackets’ former star defenseman plus two picks used to select defenseman Nolan Allen in last year’s first round (No. 32) and forward Dominic James in this year’s sixth round (No. 173).
More time is needed to determine a winner of the deal, but the Blue Jackets are running away with the short-term return, which is lopsided in their favor. That point was made a number of times at Bell Centre, where the Blackhawks torched their roster with surprising trades that turned 23-year old star Alex DeBrincat and 21-year old center Kirby Dach (third overall, 2019) into first-round picks.
Asked about his own trade with Chicago a year ago, Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen was matter-of-fact about the haul he got back.
“I’ve said it before, that when you part with a real good player like Seth Jones, you expect to have a good return, and I think we got a good return,” Kekalainen said. “We’re happy with it and we’re building to the future with a lot of those parts that we got in the trade.”
That’s a big reason Kekalainen calls what he’s done the past couple of seasons a “reset” instead of a “rebuild,” like the Blackhawks are starting.
Blue Jackets address system needs in 2022 NHL draft
After adding to an overload of defensive prospects by taking Jiricek sixth and Denton Mateychuk 12th, the Blue Jackets carefully worked off their rankings list to fill organizational needs on the draft’s second day.
Luca Del Bel Belluz, a center from the Ontario Hockey League’s Mississauga Steelheads, went 44th as the 12th pick of the second round. Jordan Dumais, an undersized scoring forward from the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, went late in the third round (No. 96).
Kirill Dolzhenkov, a 6-foot-6, 236-pound forward from Russia, was selected in the fourth round (No. 109). Undersized Russian goalie Sergei Ivanov was selected in the fifth round (No. 138), after the Jackets swapped their 2023 fifth-rounder to get the pick from the San Jose Sharks. Their draft concluded with the selection of power forward James Fisher from Belmont Hill, Massachusetts.
In all, the Jackets added two defensemen, four forwards and a goalie to help rebuild organizational depth in net.
“That’s what you want to accomplish in the draft,” Kekalainen said. “And that’s where, when we didn’t have those middle-round picks, we were able to get one, swap the fifth into next year’s fifth and we filled that goalie need that we felt we needed to put into our depth charts. So, we’re good.”
Blue Jackets ignore signing risks, select Russian pair
Prior to the draft, Kekalainen said the Jackets didn’t adjust the team’s master rankings to reflect potential risks in signing Russian players during Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russian prospects may have dropped a little farther than normal, but it didn't seem drastic. Columbus took Dolzhenkov in the fourth round and Ivanov in the fifth, which Kekalainen didn’t feel was a precipitous drop for either.
“We just did our list the way it was,” he said. “When it came to us, it felt that it was the appropriate time to draft them and that’s it.”
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Blue Jackets excited by draft return from Seth Jones trade
