It has been a season of growing pains for the Columbus Blue Jackets. A new head coach, a new system, and another rash of injuries gave this team a slow first half of the 2023-24 season. There have been a lot of changes in the personnel department of the forward corps as well, with a few younger players joining the team.
Of those, Dmitri Voronkov has been one of the NHL’s best rookies in his first season in North America – he just needs to find a little more consistency to prove he’s a legitimate top-six option. Adam Fantilli, the third overall pick in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft, has shown that he’s got a real chance to become the true franchise center that the organization has been looking for since its inception. And Alexandre Texier, who returned after a year-long sabbatical in the Swiss National League, has had maybe a different impact than expected. The once highly-touted Blue Jackets prospect could find his new ceiling as a steady bottom-six forward… and maybe that’s not the end of the world.
Texier’s Early Career Projections
The feisty Frenchman, Texier, was a second-round pick of the Blue Jackets in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft. He was picked out of Grenoble in the French league (the only player ever drafted directly out of the French league that I’ve found) and then went to play for KalPa Kuopio in the Finnish SM-Liiga.
He had a decent rookie season in Finland, after which he signed his entry-level contract with the Blue Jackets. He followed that with another year overseas; his sublime sophomore season in which he led his team in scoring with 14 goals and 41 points in 55 games as a 19-year-old. That’s not an easy feat in the notoriously low-scoring Finnish league. After the conclusion of that team’s season, he made his way to North America to close out the 2018-19 season as a small part of the best Blue Jackets team ever assembled.
While he was only in a limited role for the offensively loaded squad, the 2019 Playoffs served as a coming-out party for Texier. He showed his ‘never give up’ attitude which endeared him to the fanbase and to taskmaster head coach John Tortorella. His best performance was in Game 4 against the Tampa Bay Lightning, when he scored two goals in the series-clinching win.
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That hot start put him on a pedestal as the Blue Jackets next young star with sights as a long-term top-six forward option. However, circumstances got in the way of that development path. Injuries, a global pandemic, and some personal matters limited him to only 49 games played in the five seasons since.
His best showing by far was the 2021-22 season, when he was on pace for 25 goals and 45 points. At times he was the Blue Jackets’ best forward and he even spent time as the team’s number one center between Patrik Laine and Jakub Voracek. He showed his work ethic and even garnered a bit of national attention on the highlight reel with his trademark “fire-poker” shootout move.
However, that was the season when personal matters forced him to take a leave of absence after only 36 games and he missed the rest of the season. He spent the next year playing in the Swiss league and that derailed any progress he was making in his development.
Texier’s 2023-24 Season
After a middling season in Switzerland, Texier returned to the Blue Jackets who received him with open arms. I’m reminded of a quote from Jackets’ head coach Pascal Vincent who was ecstatic to have Texier back in training camp.
“[Texier], if he’s on a line, for some reason that line is just going […] He’s the type of guy that [when] one line is not going you take a guy like Texier, you put in on that line and then they just take off. That’s what he did for us. I don’t know if you remember we had him with Kuraly, and [Eric Robinson]. We moved ‘Tex’ around and then all of a sudden first thing you know the line he’s on is our best line. It’s so exciting for the organization that he’s back. He fits the values that we try to develop as a Blue Jacket. He’s a good man, a great hockey player, and he’s a great teammate.”
Through the first half of the season, Texier hasn’t been counted on offensively and it shows. He’s on pace to play 80 games and only score 12 goals and 26 points. It’s by far the worst offensive production of his career. To be fair, that’s mostly because he’s been used on the fourth line and as a penalty-killing specialist. Furthermore, he’s been one of the Jackets’ go-to guys on the defensive side of the puck, averaging 1:59 on the penalty kill per game. While it’s not often on the scoresheet, his impact is still felt in each game.
Texier’s Possible Career Path Comparables
With all that history, you’d think that Texier would have to be 27 or 28 years old by now. No, he’s actually still only 24. There are still a couple of years left for him to continue to develop into a really valuable player for the Blue Jackets as they continue to build their new core. So let’s look ahead at a couple of ways that his career path could take him.
When thinking of player comparables for Texier, a couple of names came to mind. First was Michael Frolik from the 2013 Stanley Cup-winning Chicago Blackhawks. He was a speedy forward who never gave up on the puck. He spent most of the time on the fourth line and along with Marcus Kruger formed one of the best penalty-killing duos in the NHL. Frolik elevated his game in the big moments, scoring as many goals and points in 23 playoff games as in the 45 regular season games before it.
Frolik went on to be a 15-20 goal, 40-ish point player for several different teams and carved out a rather decent career. Based on the role and opportunity that Texier’s been getting on the fourth line and penalty kill under Vincent, that’s one way his career path could lead him.
Another comparable hits a little bit closer to home, in former Blue Jacket Gustav Nyquist. He has also become a two-way force after busting onto the scene as more of a skill player. He and Texier have a similar tenacity when it comes to tracking down the puck, and are both defensively strong more so through positioning than physicality. He’s consistently put up around 15-20 goals as well, with around 45-50 points a year. The key similarity with Nyquist is the ability to inject some energy into the players around him while playing a defensively responsible game.
In the right circumstances, Texier could still evolve into a top-six forward. However, the opportunity likely isn’t there in Columbus as long as Johnny Gaudreau, Patrik Laine, Kent Johnson, Kirill Marchenko, Yegor Chinakhov, Cole Sillinger, Voronkov, and Fantilli are all seemingly ahead of him on the depth chart. It’s more realistic that he finds his new ceiling as a bottom-six forward, which wouldn’t be the end of the world.
