At some point in time, we will look back upon Jarmo Kekalainen's tenure as GM of the Columbus Blue Jackets and appreciate what he did here. His scouting of talent was terrific. If only he could have gotten better development and not been such a hard negotiator when contract time came.
While Jarmo's drafting certainly wasn't perfect, I will always stand by that regime's reasoning for making some of the picks they made. They had a clear and distinct scouting system that brought a lot of talent to the organization. That was true at the pro scouting level, as well.
At the moment, I cannot say the same things about Don Waddell and the current amateur scouting department. After three years of drafting, there are no players even seemingly close to the NHL. And most of his picks don't look like they will pan out even in the long run.
The 2024 Draft had to be successful for this franchise. It has not been.
Waddell came to Columbus with a roster that was underperforming, a bunch of high end young talent, and another high draft pick in his back pocket. His first opportunity to make an impact to the CBJ roster was with the fourth overall pick at the 2024 NHL Draft.
In my opinion, this was the first time in the history of this franchise that they might be able to find the cherry on top of their already high end prospect pool. At the time, they had an obvious future #1 center (Adam Fantilli), a potentially elite playmaker (Kent Johnson), and a couple of hopeful future top pairing defensemen (David Jiricek and Denton Mateychuk).
They didn't have to target any one specific position with this draft pick. Their only goal should have been selecting the best player on the board. Seems easy enough, right? Whoever falls into your laps at #4, pick the player with the highest potential.
The Jackets thought they did that, marching to the podium and selecting 6'4" center Cayden Lindstrom from the WHL's Medicine Hat Tigers. The pick was immediately controversial, because the player had missed much of his draft season due to a back injury.
At the time, I defended the pick. Mainly for two reasons. First, the team assured everyone that his back was fully healed and he would be ready for the upcoming season. Second, because if that were true, Cayden was a bit of a unicorn. Had he been healthy, he would have fallen no farther than second overall.
Of course, revisionist history tells the story here. Cayden would not play another hockey game until almost a full year later, as the Tigers played in the CHL's Memorial Cup tournament. He followed that up by another injury-riddled campaign last year at Michigan State University, where he scored just 3 goals and 10 points in 37 games.
Meanwhile, the player picked immediately after him scored 19 goals and 62 points in 82 games last season, finishing as a runner-up in Calder Trophy voting for NHL rookie of the year.
Lindstrom looks to be bouncing back this year. He's off to a pretty good start for the Spartans, already surpassing last year's goal total in just 9 games played. But at this point in time, it's hard to see him turning into the top-2 center we thought we were getting. I'm cautiously hopeful that he can be a bottom-six player for the Blue Jackets in a few years.
This also ignores the fact that there was a deal on the table from the Chicago Blackhawks. Desperate to acquire this pick and (likely) select Ivan Demidov, they offered their 2025 first rounder unprotected, along with a second round pick, to try to acquire this spot. How much different would our outlook of the Blue Jackets be with Anton Frondell in the works right now?
The simple facts of this situation: you cannot miss with top-5 draft picks. This decision is going to sting for a long time. It would sting a lot less if they made some of their other picks count. Narrator: they did not.
Lets move to the next slide and look at their drafting a little further.
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