Breaking down the 5 rumored candidates to become the next GM of the Blue Jackets

The names are starting to pop up, one by one. And one by one, it's hard to get excited by any of them. After all, the Blue Jackets have to get this hire correct. Everything depends on it.

But, as these names pop up, I'm seeing a common theme; and it makes me wonder if they're actually being looked at for a General Manager position ... or something else entirely? Let's take a look.

Ken Holland

This is a name that came into the light just yesterday. Right off, a lot of CBJ fans hated it (including yours truly).

Look, it's not that Ken Holland hasn't been a successful GM in the NHL. It's just that, his success was mostly 15+ years ago. The NHL has changed a lot since his heyday.

Look no further than his recent success - or lack thereof. He's managing the Edmonton Oilers, who have two of the best offensive weapons in the NHL; yet he cannot get them over the hump.

Any team with Connor McDavid on it should have multiple Stanley Cups. I'm sorry, but that's just a fact. He's a literal cheat code, and it should not be all that hard to build a Cup-worthy roster around him.

My feeling on Holland is that he isn't built for the salary cap era. The Oilers are pressed right up to the cap, but still have glaring weaknesses on their roster that prevent them from contending. A lot of that is his doing.

I also want to critique his legacy in Detroit. Look, he deserves a lot of credit for icing as many championship teams as he did there.

But let's be honest, would the Red Wings have been able to gather so many Hall of Fame players under his tutelage in a cap world? Or better yet, would they have been able to gather them all without the players that were already there when Holland arrived?

You know, guys like Steve Yzerman, Nicklas Lidstrom, Sergei Fedorov, Slava Kozlov, Igor Larionov, and so on...

Guys like that will always attract other talent, such as Brendan Shanahan, Brett Hull, and the others who chose to go to Detroit and win Cups at the end of their careers.

We don't have guys like that in Columbus.

But, as I thought further about the potential of hiring Holland last night, I got to wondering: what if the Jackets aren't trying to get him for their GM role?

What if John Davidson is looking to move on, but wants to leave this franchise in experienced hands?

If the Oilers don't fire Holland after this season, he's their general manager for another five seasons beyond this one. Would he willfully leave for a GM role with a franchise that doesn't have as much to build around as the Oilers?

It might take a promotion in role for him to do so. Just something I was kicking around in my head.

If that's the case, I could probably live with having an experienced mind like that running our hockey ops department - as long as the GM they bring in is more in tune with today's NHL.

There are other names in the works here, as well. I like some of them even less.

Marc Bergevin

Speaking of names I like even less, Marc Bergevin would honestly be one of my last choices to run this team.

The best analogy I can come up with here is the Blue Jackets team from, say, 2013-2020. That was a team that was mostly stacked full of middle-of-the-lineup talent.

They hired a coach who squeezed every ounce of everything out of that roster. They added a couple of cornerstone pieces ... and maxed out as a middle of the pack team.

That's exactly what Marc Bergevin did in Montreal.

The Canadiens did make one Stanley Cup Finals appearance under his leadership, but I'm always quick to point out that this happened in the COVID bubble year, when they didn't face a standard playoff format.

And, they did it on the back of a Hall of Fame goaltender that was already in place when Bergevin was hired.

If you need any more convincing, just look at his trade history for the Habs. There is a whole lot of "mid" going on here, and I'm in no hurry to see the Blue Jackets become a heavy, slogging neutral zone team again.

8th seed in the East, here we come!

No thanks. I don't want Marc Bergevin anywhere near our front office. I don't even want to talk about him any more. Let's look at a candidate who might actually make sense here.

Mathieu Darche

In my opinion, this is the kind of candidate the Blue Jackets should absolutely consider.

Darche was hired as the president of hockey operations in 2019; eventually promoted to assistant general manager for the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Now, he doesn't get a ton of credit, because the roster that went to three straight Stanley Cup Finals (winning two of them) was mostly established by the time he got there.

But, he's been part of a winning organization. He's seen firsthand what it takes to get over the hill, and in recent years. Years that would actually apply to what the Jackets are hoping to become now. It would be hard for him not to soak up a lot of that knowledge.

More importantly, he's considered one of the game's best up and coming executives. Isn't that what we want?

Darche is also a former Blue Jacket, which earns him some extra points in my opinion.

My thought here would be this: if we're looking for an inevitable JD replacement, and the eventual plan here is to have Rick Nash take over as our GM in a few years ... why wouldn't we want to bring a guy like Darche on board?

If he does a good job as GM, he can be mentored into the President role. Then, when he's ready, and Nash is ready, you can promote both of them up the chain.

Doesn't that make a ton of sense? We could have a (hopefully) competent hockey operations department here for many years to come. With two guys who played in Columbus.

Sign me up for that kind of thinking. That's the kind of progressive, new-age decision that should be made here.

Lets look at two more names churning through the rumor mill. One of them is somewhat surprising.

Mark Hunter

I wrote a pretty scathing article about hiring Mark Hunter just last week, but if our choice is between him and, say, someone like Bergevin, or Botterill, or Holland ... I can warm up to the idea pretty quickly.

Hunter has at least proven that he can build championship teams in today's hockey world. And, he's done it with young players, in the OHL.

If he can figure out how to do that in the cap-management world, sure, maybe it could work. But what concerns me here is, what kind of culture would we be getting in Columbus?

I suppose winning would be better than seeing our best-ever chance at having a contending team get flushed away by another member of the NHL's management castaways.

In the end, I would not be surprised if the Jackets hire any of these guys. It would be right on par with the history of our franchise to do the exact wrong thing.

They did it just last summer, in fact.

My hope, however, is history repeating itself in a different way. Last year, nobody talked about this team hiring Mike Babcock as their head coach.

Maybe they'll do the same thing with this GM hire, and choose someone that nobody is expecting for the gig. That's my hope. Fingers crossed.

I just fear that the "hands off" ownership might bite us in the behind here. They want someone who has experience running an NHL team.

I don't think that's the correct approach in today's NHL. It's time to turn the page and give someone new a chance. The wrong move here, is hiring someone based on a 25 year old legacy.