The Columbus Blue Jackets extended their four expected qualifying offers, now begins the more difficult part

In four expected moves this afternoon, the Columbus Blue Jackets extended qualifying offers to four of their pending restricted free agents: Adam Fantilli, Cole Sillinger and Luke Tuch. They already had previously offered a qualifying offer to Jet Greaves prior to the 2026 IIHF World Championships.

The qualifying offer was likely sent for Jet Greaves ahead of time for the World Championships in order to ensure he was fully insured to be able to sign a temporary international contract to play for Team Canada, as they had done for Mikael Pyythia last year.

This, of course, also means that pending RFAs Stanislav Svozil and Egor Zamula were not tendered their qualifying offers, making them unrestricted free agents. However, neither skater is expected to remain in North America, and Svozil has already signed a deal to play for HC Kometa Brno in the Czech Extraliga.

Qualifying offers are sent by the 5:00 PM Eastern deadline on June 29th in order for the pending restricted free agent's club's right to continue to negotiate with that RFA past the July 1st free agency date and to match any offer sheet that RFA may attempt to sign with any other club in the NHL.

The Jackets will, hopefully, end up extending all of Adam Fantilli, Cole Sillinger, Jet Greaves, and Luke Tuch, but were unable to do so before this deadline. If they are not signed to extensions before July 1st, each player would then be eligible to accept an offer sheet from any other NHL club that wishes to sign them on. The CBJ would then have the right to match, or accept draft pick compensation in accordance with the AAV value that player is signed to.

The odds that the CBJ would allow any of their RFAs to walk is slim-to-none, but they will certainly be listening to any offers that may come in with the recent news of Zach Werenski and Kirill Marchenko that is of concern to the club.

Meanwhile, the expected departures of Egor Zamula and Stanislav Svozil are of no real surprise. Zamula is likely headed back to Russia to sign a deal after an non-notable season in the NHL, and Svozil has already signed back in the Czech Republic as previously covered.

Svozil is perhaps the more disappointing of the pair, as Jackets fans just a few years ago perhaps dreamed of his addition as a third pairing defenseman in the future. At least for now, that possibility appears to be remote at best.

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