The Blue Jackets have five players that will be unrestricted free agents after this year, and four that will be restricted free agents. Coming up on the trade deadline, they have three options with players whose contracts are coming to an end: trade them before the deadline, resign them for next year, or let their contracts expire and let them go into the free agent market.
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Most Simply put, the difference between a UFA and RFA is the ability of another team to sign the player. A UFA can be signed by any team he wishes, whereas with an RFA the player’s current team has the right to extend him an offer matching that of any other team he receives offers from. His current team must give him a qualifying offer that changes his salary based on how much his current contract is worth. If his current team doesn’t extend an offer, he becomes a UFA. For the purposes of this article, I am only going to focus on the CBJ players who will be unrestricted free agents after this season.
With that said, here are my predictions for what team management will do with the upcoming free agents this year.