Columbus Blue Jackets: How Has Jarmo Done at the NHL Draft?

The Blue Jackets went all in for the 2019 playoff run, which resulted in having only two picks heading into the 2019 NHL Draft. Jarmo acquired a third pick on draft day, but the team would make its fewest number of picks in franchise history – helping to thin out the prospect pool for the next couple of years.

The good news is, the Jackets seem to have found at least one NHL player in these three picks. Dmitri Voronkov (4th round, #114) recently signed with the team and will come over this fall. He’s been really good in Russia, and looks like he’ll be competing for a spot in the team’s bottom six. The other two picks in this draft were Eric Hjorth (4th round, #104), and Tyler Angle (7th round, #212). Hjorth wasn’t qualified by the team and looks to be an obvious miss, while Angle is still in the “wait and see” category – but his time may be running short here also.

The 2020 Draft will always be remembered for the audible gasps you could hear when Jarmo Kekalainen picked Yegor Chinakhov with the #21 overall pick. In the end, this seems like it might work out – before being injured, Yegor looked like he was well on his way to a solid season this year.

Even better for the Jackets: all of the other four picks in this draft seem to be progressing. Samuel Knazko (3rd round, #78), Mikael Pyyhtia (4th round, #114) have each played NHL games; while Ole Bjorgvik-Holm (5th round, #145) and Samuel Johannesson (6th round, #176) are still developing. With only five picks in the draft, the early returns here are really, really good.

Keeping it brief with the team’s most recent two drafts: the Jackets already have three NHL players from 16 picks made (if you include David Jiricek, and I do) – and you could make the case that they have at least six more with legitimate shots at cracking the league. That’s insane, when you think about it.

But even if we ignore these last two drafts, which look really strong, and go with the numbers from the first 5 years drafting here: the Jackets have drafted and developed NHL players with 36.1% of their picks over that span. Comparing this to the total from the entire NHL, they’re slightly ahead (248 out of 755 picks = 32.8%).

This number seems like it’s only going to improve for the Jackets as well. There’s a chance that 4 of 7 picks made in 2018 could be NHL players. At least 1 of 3 in 2019, maybe 3 of 5 in 2020 … you get the point.

One thing I’ll always stand behind Jarmo and his staff on, is their scouting ability. They have really good evaluators of talent here, and though there have been some obvious whiffs here and there, they generally do a nice job finding NHL talent in the draft – especially in the later rounds. This is a trait that could lead to this team being strong for many years to come, if they can just get back on a winning track.