Big roster trim leaves Blue Jackets roster nearly regular season ready

The Columbus Blue Jackets are still 10 days away from the start of the regular season. On Sunday, they trimmed their training camp roster by 13 players, leaving them nearly compliant for the regular season.

Getting these cuts done early is part of the plan put forth by head coach Dean Evason and general manager Don Waddell. Doing so allows them to get into their regular season practice habits a little bit early.

There weren't any real surprises in the latest round of cuts. In fact, there haven't really been any big surprises at all, aside from goaltender Ivan Fedotov being sent through waivers on Friday. He still remains with the Jackets, however; as the team carries three goaltenders into this final week of the preseason.

With 25 players left on the roster and two cuts left to go, something will almost certainly have to give at the goaltending position, as the team seems hesitant to try to pass young defenseman Daemon Hunt through waivers.

With the roster trimmed down to 13 forwards and 9 defensemen, Hunt is almost certainly competing with defenseman Christian Jaros to avoid being the last cut made from the CBJ roster.

It's not surprising to see the team get right down to business at their forward positions. They had no problem generating offense last season, and the contract situations up front made this roster somewhat predictable.

Where the team needs to improve is on the blue line and in goal, so it is encouraging to see that Waddell and Evason have given these positions a little bit of extra time to work themselves out before finalizing the roster.

Line combinations give us further clue to the final look.

If you're a believer in practice lines, it's not difficult to work out the apparent opening night roster. Yesterday morning, this is how the team went to work:

Assuming this holds true, that would mean that Ivan Fedotov and Christian Jaros will be the final two cuts from Blue Jackets training camp this fall. Pretty much what we predicted last week, except the team opts to carry 8 defensemen and only 2 goaltenders.

The big surprise here comes in the apparent usage of Yegor Chinakhov. Known to be disgruntled with his situation, the young Russian appears to have began this season as he finished last season: in Evason's dog house.

Hopefully, this doesn't become an early season distraction for the team. A good week of practice and effort in the final two preseason games could still change a lot of things here. Though, with that in mind, it's tough to see much changing inside of this team's top-two forward lines. Those units look really good.

The Jackets are next in action tomorrow night, at home against the Washington Capitals. They will then play their final preseason game of the year on Saturday night in Washington. It will be interesting to see how the last training camp battles pan out.