The Columbus Blue Jackets have a problem: too many legitimate roster players under contract. After several seasons in the basement of the NHL’s standings, they have worked up a decent prospect pool, maybe the best in franchise history. However, the short-term prioritization of veterans could be hurting the long-term development of some of their younger players. Here’s a look at three of those youngsters who are being pushed down the totem pole.
Yegor Chinakhov
The Blue Jackets’ 2020 first-round pick, Yegor Chinakhov, has had a far from linear progression to the NHL. His first season in North America looked promising when he had seven goals in 62 games and spent most of the 2021-22 season in Columbus. He and fellow rookie Cole Sillinger looked like solid pieces in the first wave of the new young core. However, 2022-23 was a bit of a setback. After a lackluster performance with the big club, he was demoted to the American Hockey League (AHL) and then sidelined for the rest of the season with an injury.
The logjam in the forward corps has been particularly detrimental to him this season. With the additions of Adam Fantilli, Alexander Texier, and Dmitri Voronkov, Chinakhov was relegated to the minors because of his waiver ineligibility. So he started with the AHL’s Cleveland Monsters, before a call-up due to the demotion of Kent Johnson.
Being yo-yo-ed between the AHL and NHL isn’t generally a path to success for first-round draft picks. Despite scoring a couple of timely goals and looking like a difference-maker on many shifts, he’s still been playing limited minutes. It’s been reported that this has started to cause some strain on the relationship between the player and the team and that he’s become “unhappy.” If the Blue Jackets let Chinakhov sour on them and wind up moving him, he will be one player they will regret giving up on so easily.
Nick Blankenburg
Of all the players in the Monsters’ lineup, 25-year-old Nick Blankenburg is probably the one who deserves a look with the Blue Jackets the most. It is tough to be a smaller defender in the world’s premier league, but the feisty Michigander is often lauded for punching above his weight class.
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An underrated addition in the 2021-22 season, he has solid hockey IQ on both sides of the puck and plays with a reckless abandon that quickly endeared him to the fanbase. However, that reckless nature also left him vulnerable to injury, which limited him to 36 games last season.
The logjam on defense not only forced him to start the season in the AHL but also prevented him from being the first player called up after injury. That honor deservedly went to the sixth-overall pick from 2022, David Jiricek. There are a few ways that Blankenburg is unique to the Jackets’ blue line. He has a bulldog mentality, never quitting on a puck or giving up on a backcheck. His two-way play is stronger than most outside of the Blue Jackets’ top three rearguards with an above-average offensive mind. He also has the rare ability of being proficient as both a right and left-side defender.
To be frank, if he were a former first or second-round pick, like Jake Bean, Adam Boqvist, or Andrew Peeke, and if he weren’t waiver-exempt, he would be with the Blue Jackets right now, and one of those other three players wouldn’t be.
Adam Boqvist
Yes, Adam Boqvist could have shown up to training camp a little stronger than last year. Yes, Boqvist has a long way to go in improving his defensive game. However, no one on the Blue Jackets’ backend has the raw offensive talent that he does.
There is a reason that the former eighth-overall pick was compared to Erik Karlsson so often. It’s because he has an offense-first brain and the puck-handling skills to back it up. It’s not often that you see a 23-year-old defenseman with almost 200 games of NHL experience, yet Boqvist is in the midst of his fifth NHL season. Last season, he was on pace for 42 points, and the season before that, he scored 11 goals. The sky is still the limit for him.
I can sum up how the team’s logjam on defense has affected him in seven words: 10 consecutive games as a healthy scratch. How does the team expect him to reach his sky-high potential if he’s not in the lineup? Even if Boqvist doesn’t develop defensively and turns into the next Tony Deangelo-esque offensive specialist, there is some serious value in that for the team’s bottom-four and power-play unit. However, he has to play consistently to get comfortable enough to make those creative offensive plays. Unless the team moves a defender or two, there is a slim chance there will be space for Boqvist in the lineup once everyone is healthy again.
The long and short of it is that the Blue Jackets, in their attempts to be relevant in the short term, have begun harming the long-term development of some of their younger players. We can only hope the Blue Jackets’ inaction to clear their logjammed roster positions doesn’t hurt the development of key players like Chinakhov, Blankenburg, and Boqvist.
