Blue Jackets’ Day 2 Draft Targets

The Columbus Blue Jackets strongly executed a plan to get a winger with size in the first round of the draft after they drafted Boston College’s Oscar Hemming 14th overall. He is a big winger with endless amounts of potential, as he was the youngest player in college hockey this past season, and he was already developing quite nicely.

He will almost certainly return to Boston College for his sophomore season, where he will likely continue to play top-line minutes. The Blue Jackets will closely be watching the college hockey season with both Hemming and Jackson Smith, two of their top prospects, who are both expected to return to play college hockey again this upcoming season.

Hemming is a big add for the Blue Jackets’ prospect pool that desperately needed a big winger with playmaking ability, as well as a hard one-timer he likes to snap off from the faceoff dot, specifically on the power play.

With Hemming added, what will the Blue Jackets look to do on day two of the NHL Entry Draft? Their next pick is slated to come at 94th overall, as they traded their 43rd overall pick, among other future draft assets, in order to land Valeri Nichushkin from the Colorado Avalanche.

At the position of number 94 in the draft, the Blue Jackets can look for more measurables and production rather than fit in the organization currently. Players drafted on the second day of the draft are likely to be a few years out from competing for an NHL roster spot. So, who are some of the best projectable players left?

Third and Fourth Round Potential

As The Hockey Writers’ Mark Scheig gathered from general manager Don Waddell’s post-draft takeaways following day one of the draft, he wants to take the best available. This could illustrate his want for traits, and there are tons of them still left in the draft class.

However, the Blue Jackets also have some serious holes in their prospect pool currently. One of the big needs they could fit would be on the blue line, but more specifically, a defenseman with size and offensive upside to continue that progression, and potentially deal with life after Zach Werenski.

One of those prospects who catches my eye is Adam Goljer out of Slovakia. He is a 6-foot-3 defenseman who just turned 18 years old earlier this month. He has the offensive upside to play up in the rush, and could really help a team in transition up the ice, but his defensive skillset is enough to warrant him being drafted earlier on day two.

He played most of this past season as a 17-year-old, against grown men in the Slovak Extraliga; he learned quickly how to hold his own. He played a lot of minutes, and he showed a lot of potential, but would obviously still be a bit of a more raw prospect for the Blue Jackets in round three of the draft.

He has great speed to move up and down the ice quickly, and would be a nice fit in Columbus with other offensively minded defenders like Werenski, Denton Mateychuk, and Damon Severson. He could also join Jackson Smith as a prospect that the Blue Jackets look ahead to joining the roster in Columbus in the coming years.

Late Round Potential

A guy who could slip past pick 100, and land as a later in the day pick, could be Matias Vanhanen. The main reason he could slip would be because of his size. He is quite a bit undersized, at 5-foot-10, 174 pounds as a winger, with extreme playmaking ability.

This past season for the Everett Silvertips of the Western Hockey League (WHL), he set Everett’s franchise rookie scoring record with 87 points in 62 games, including 66 assists. He won the WHL’s Rookie of the Month twice, in both February and April, and had the scoring to at least attract the eyes of many scouts again at the Memorial Cup.

He will likely fall somewhere in the third to fifth round, but he could be someone who slips with teams being scared of that size and how he would match up in the NHL.

He would be a big addition to a pool of prospects lacking major upside offensively for the Blue Jackets. He is a scorer when he needs to be, but he finds his teammates and is a top-tier setup man in this class. On the power play specifically, they don’t have enough of that.

Vanhanen is a guy who could make the leap much quicker than most late-round draft picks do, simply because he has already developed a major skill set to score and find his teammates. I would imagine the Blue Jackets at this point in the draft would look at the tape and see a player with a good ability to fit into a middle-six forward role, with the potential to be a major player on the power play.

He almost has a Johnny Gaudreau feel to his size and production. He was beloved in Columbus and around the league, and the Blue Jackets could find a similar type of player with Vanhanen late in the draft. Columbus has five picks in the last six rounds of the draft; it all starts at 11 a.m. ET on ESPN+ or NHL Network.