Blue Jackets Prospect Oliver Bjorkstrand Named WHL Player Of The Year
By Frank Walker
Columbus Blue Jackets prospect Oliver Bjorkstrand was named the WHL Player of the Year on Wednesday. His stats are the kind of numbers that made this season a little easier for Jarmo and company to get through. In 59 games played he scored 63 goals, 55 assists and finished the season plus 60. Take a moment for those numbers to sink in. For an encore Oliver Bjorkstrand scored 13 goals and 12 assists in 17 playoff games. Let’s take a moment to enjoy the greatness:
After that I can’t wait to see him in the summer development camp….and I really want a Grand Slam for some reason.
It will obviously take a year or so for Oliver Bjorkstrand to raise his game from the WHL level to the NHL, but he seems like a fit for the major hole in the Blue Jackets top six, a dangerous scoring winger. When we evaluate teams that play for Stanley Cups there are a few things they have in common. One of these traits that the Blue Jackets have been lacking is a big-time secondary scoring threat. The team needs someone to compliment a top-flight first line center like Ryan Johansen. It is possible that Foligno’s big year continues into the next or that Dano becomes that type of player but it’s always nice to have another talent filled prospect coming down the pike.
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Oliver Bjorkstrand has that Patrick Kane like quality of being able to place the puck anywhere he wants when he shoots it. The best thing the Blue Jackets can do for him is give him a lot of time with the big club in the preseason and let him experience how much quicker the NHL game is so that he can adapt. Also I’m sure that if he needs to spend some time in the AHL our friends in Cleveland wouldn’t mind having him as an attraction for their first season as our affiliate. (As an aside, how happy would Monsters’ fans be to have both Rychel and Bjorkstrand up there for the season?)
Not only should Blue Jackets fans be happy about the possibility of a player with this potential in Columbus but how the team acquired him. Oliver Bjorkstrand was a third round pick. In the year that the Jackets drafted Wennburg, Rychel, and Dano in the first round Bjorkstrand was the third round pick. During the Blue Jacket’s acquisition of Kevin Connauton Kekalainen revealed that the Jacket’s have a file for every player involved in major or junior leagues in North America and a lot of players throughout the rest of the world. Those must be some awesome scouting reports. If the scouting department in Columbus can keep finding gems like this in the third round than the boys in union blue will be in good shape for years to come.