Columbus Blue Jackets

The NHL draft is all about the culmination of years of hard work and dreams coming true for the best young hockey players in the world.

But one of them wanted to recognize everyone who helped him along the way on Wednesday.

As Aaron Portzline of The Athletic shared, Columbus Blue Jackets draftee Adam Fantilli wore a custom-made suit to the draft that featured more than 140 names of family members, coaches, teachers and more who helped him reach hockey's ultimate level:

Columbus selected Fantilli with the No. 3 overall pick in Wednesday's draft after an excellent season at the University of Michigan that saw him finish with 65 points and lead the Wolverines to the Frozen Four.

If he lives up to his potential, he can be a franchise cornerstone at center for years to come and perhaps create a potent offensive attack alongside Johnny Gaudreau and Patrik Laine on the wings.

Even if he finds that success at the NHL level, it is clear he isn't going to forget those who helped him achieve it.

The New Jersey Devils and Columbus Blue Jackets reportedly agreed to a sign-and-trade deal Friday that will send defenseman Damon Severson to Columbus.

According to TSN's Chris Johnston, the move will see Severson sign a new eight-year contract with the Devils before getting shipped to the Blue Jackets.

Severson had been set to be one of the top available players in free agency and arguably the best defenseman on the open market.

Per Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff, the Devils will receive the Calgary Flames' third-round pick in the 2023 NHL draft, which is No. 80 overall, in exchange for sign-and-trading Severson.

The 28-year-old Severson was originally a second-round pick by the Devils in the 2012 NHL draft. He went on to spend his first nine NHL seasons in New Jersey.

In 647 regular-season games for the Devils, Severson recorded 58 goals and 205 assists for 263 points, and he posted a minus-120 rating.

His most productive season came in 2021-22 when he appeared in 80 games and set career highs in goals (11), assists (35) and points (46). Severson also averaged a career-high time on ice of 23:36 per game as a top-pairing blueliner.

This season, Severson registered seven goals and 26 assists for 33 points in 81 games, which represented a drop-off in production. However, he was a plus player for the first time in his career, delivering a plus-9 rating.

Severson fell in New Jersey's defensive pecking order, averaging just 19:57 in ice time per game, which was his lowest since the 2017-18 season, as he averaged at least 22 minutes per game in four straight seasons entering this year.

Dougie Hamilton, John Marino and Jonas Siegenthaler all averaged more time on ice this season among Devils defensemen, which may have contributed to the organization viewing Severson as dispensable.

The Blue Jackets have been hard at work rebuilding their defense corps in recent days, as they acquired defenseman Ivan Provorov in a trade with the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday.

Every defenseman who played more than two games for the Blue Jackets this season had a minus rating, including Andrew Peeke, who was a team-worst minus-41 in 80 games.

The Blue Jackets were badly hurt by the fact that top defenseman Zach Werenski missed all but 13 games this season due to a shoulder injury.

Assuming Werenski returns to full health, Columbus is now set to have a defense corps led by Werenski, Provorov and Severson next season, which represents a massive upgrade.

That alone should help the Blue Jackets fare significantly better than they did this season. They posted only 59 points, which was tied for the second-fewest in the NHL.

The Columbus Blue Jackets announced Saturday they fired head coach Brad Larsen.

Columbus had the worst record (25-48-9) in the Eastern Conference in 2022-23 after missing the playoffs in Larsen's first season at the helm.

General manager Jarmo Kekalainen said the season "has been extremely disappointing" when addressing the departures of Larsen and goaltending coach Manny Legace:

These decisions were difficult and not made lightly given our respect for both Brad and Manny as coaches and people. Brad has been part of our organization for more than a decade, and we are extremely thankful for his hard work and many contributions—both on and off the ice—during that time. We wish nothing but the best for Brad and his family in the future.

The Columbus Dispatch's Brian Hedger noted the Blue Jackets had 47 different players, including six goaltenders, suit up for them this year because of injuries across the roster. The combined absences amounted to a franchise-record 563 games lost.

There's no question Larsen was dealt a tough hand. Columbus wasn't exactly considered a Stanley Cup favorite coming into the season, either. Even with the offseason addition of Johnny Gaudreau, Bleacher Report's Lyle Fitzsimmons ranked the team 23rd in the league prior to opening night.

Still, Larsen's ouster is a sign of the organization's ambitions, and the coach deserves a share of blame for how things transpired on the ice.

Well before the injuries took their toll, the Blue Jackets dug themselves an early hole by winning just three of their first 12 games. Defense was a persistent problem, too, as they allowed the second-most shots (2,903) and the second-highest goals-against average (4.00).

The John Tortorella era ran its course by the end of 2020-21, and pivoting to a younger, more inexperienced replacement made plenty of sense. Larsen, 45, was already an assistant coach as well, so he had plenty of familiarity with the squad.

Kekalainen was effusive in his praise of Larsen when he was first hired and told reporters that none of the candidates the team interviewed surpassed the "Lars bar."

Making a change this soon doesn't exactly reflect well on the front office, but forging ahead with a coach you don't believe in largely to avoid bad optics is a self-defeating strategy.

Fans will obviously be eager to see how the search for Larsen's replacement evolves because whomever Columbus hires will indicate to some extent how far Kekalainen believes the Jackets are from contention.

Jonathan Quick's 16-year run with the Los Angeles Kings has come to an end.

The Kings have sent the two-time Stanley Cup-winning goalie and two draft picks to the Columbus Blue Jackets for Vladislav Gavrikov and Joonas Korpisalo.

Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff and Bally Sports noted it would be an "understatement" to say Quick is unhappy with the trade and that the entire team was "a bit down" with the move coming off a win over the Winnipeg Jets.

The Kings have been in pursuit of a defenseman, but it was assumed their top target was Jakob Chychrun of the Arizona Coyotes.

The Coyotes announced on Feb. 11 Chychrun was a healthy scratch for their game against the St. Louis Blues "due to trade related reasons."

SportsNet's Jeff Marek reported the same day that several teams, including the Kings, were not in the mix at that point. Los Angeles comes out of the deal with the Blue Jackets with Gavrikov added to their defensive line.

Korpisalo will also give the Kings a younger backup goalie than Quick, who can spell Pheonix Copley. An eight-year veteran, Korpisalo is 11-11-3 with a 3.17 goals-against average in 28 appearances this season.

The Kings added Copley as a free agent during the offseason. He supplanted Quick and Calvin Peterson as the No. 1 goaltender after being called up from the AHL in December.

Quick is having the worst full season of his career. He ranks 46th out of 52 qualified goalies in goals-against average (3.50) and 51st in save percentage (87.6). The Finland native is in the final season of a 10-year, $58 million contract that was signed in June 2012.

Los Angeles selected Quick in the third round of the 2005 NHL draft. He is the franchise's all-time leader among goaltenders in games played (743), games started (729) and wins (370).

Quick won the William M. Jennings Trophy in 2013-14 and 2017-18. He's the only player in Kings history to win the Conn Smythe Trophy after posting a 94.6 save percentage in 20 playoff starts to lead the team to its first Stanley Cup title during the 2011-12 season.

The Kings won a second Stanley Cup during the 2013-14 season. Quick was terrific in that postseason run, allowing 69 goals in 29 games.

The trade deadline has a way of manufacturing anxiety and a sudden sense of urgency in even the coolest cucumbers among us.

Sometimes the urgency is warranted. Let's say your team is in a playoff spot, but a key player suffered a season-ending injury a few weeks before the trade deadline. Your team is going to want to outsource a replacement with a similar skill set, and you're right to be disappointed if it has the cap space and the problem spelled out like this and it still doesn't get anything done.

Other times no one is injured but your playoff-bound team has identified an issue specific enough to improve upon by adding a player—weak depth at left defense position, lack of finishing touch with scoring, a stale power play that could use an extra playmaker, etc.

Or perhaps it's more simple: There's a solid player available and your team has the resources and cap space to make the acquisition. I'm not going to fault anyone for seeking out a pre-playoff boost.

All of this is to say, I was grappling with the Boston Bruins' options headed into the March 3 deadline before they ended up making the surprising-yet-savvy acquisition of Garnet Hathaway and Dmitry Orlov from the Capitals in a three-team deal Thursday. In exchange, the Bruins sent them Craig Smith, a 2023 first-round pick, a 2024 third-round pick and a 2025 second-round pick. The Minnesota Wild also received a 2023 fifth-round pick and will retain 25 percent of Orlov's salary.

More on the trade later, back to the grappling.

The Bruins are ripping through regular-season NHL records, with new head coach Jim Montgomery helping younger players maximize their games and breathing life into the battle-tested core. Their 91 points through 56 games (43-8-5) tied an NHL record for the fewest games to reach 90 points, and they're currently on pace to break the NHL records for most points (132 by the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens) and wins (62 by the 1995-96 Detroit Red Wings and the 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning) in a regular season.

In the same breath, this Bruins leadership group knows as well as anyone that the Presidents' Trophy means little when faced with a clean slate in the playoffs.

"People have talked a lot about some of these records that we could potentially hit or we have hit. Nobody cares about those in this room," Brad Marchand told ESPN's Greg Wyshynski Wednesday. "We could care less about any of these regular-season records. Because they really don't mean anything."

I get his point, but to me, all this record-hunting shows that this is a team with great chemistry and the potential to win a Cup—a prospect not many anticipated in the offseason when we were wondering if captain Patrice Bergeron was going to return.

To me, the almost surprise dominance of the season added a twist to the Bruins' trade deadline options—do you take advantage of this situation and "go all in"? What would that even look like for this team? Or do you add complementary pieces that don't disrupt the locker room by trading minimal NHL roster players?

The Bruins appear to have chosen the latter—barring a blockbuster in the coming days—and it feels like the right call. They fulfilled their "needs" (more like wants) on defense and toughness with a little bit of depth scoring, and they only had to give up Craig Smith from the current NHL roster. They had been looking to unload his $3.1 million contract as it was.

According to ESPN insider Emily Kaplan, the Bruins had been monitoring "all" of the big names, with an emphasis on left defense, before going in on Orlov and Hathaway.

The Bruins had been reportedly keeping tabs on Jakob Chychrun for a while now. And up to hours before the actual trade, insiders including Kaplan pointed to Columbus' Vladislav Gavrikov. Kaplan said the talks were "advanced" between the two clubs.

Gavrikov owns a $2.8 million cap hit, which certainly isn't the end of the world for a defenseman who could play alongside star Charlie McAvoy (for the record, "could" is doing a lot of work for me here). But according to CapFriendly, the Bruins were projected to have less than $50,000 in cap space before the trade, which is obviously why they got rid of Smith's relatively pricey contract.

If they had snagged Gavrikov instead, that would have likely been the only bigger move the Bruins could have afforded without compromising too much of the clearly magical roster. And it likely would have cost a similar amount of draft capital. Would that have been a mistake for Boston?

Gavrikov brings size and strength at 6'3", and I see the appeal of having a bouncer type like him. But McAvoy and Matt Grzelcyk are doing more than fine, and then you look at the season Hampus Lindholm is having and you wonder if the Bruins should disrupt any of the top pairings.

Then you have Connor Clifton, who outplays his size and checks with the best of them, and Derek Forbort, who provides penalty-killing grit that's essential for the playoffs. Lest we forget about 6'6" Brandon Carlo, who is proficient in tough minutes when he has to be.

Wait, folks, come to think of it, it's almost like this record-breaking team's defense is pretty good already. There's some talk around Boston about reuniting McAvoy with a big-and-tough partner similar to Zdeno Chara, but it would be risky to move Grzelcyk to a different pairing when he is a league-best plus-36 and on pace for a career-high 30 points.

I was pleasantly surprised that the Bruins changed course and opted for Orlov and Hathaway instead of Gavrikov. They got a potential top-four defenseman in Orlov anyway, and they added more grit all around with Hathaway, a 6'3" bottom-six forward who has nine goals and 16 points in 59 games.

Gavrikov would've been a solution to a problem that doesn't exist for the Bruins. They've been fine on defense, but some sturdy help on the left side couldn't hurt.

Orlov and Hathaway are smart complementary players for a deep run. I like the deal as an insurance move in anticipation of a potential injury or poor performance from one of the established defensemen.

I'm not expecting this to be the reason the Bruins win the Cup, and that's the beauty—they aren't messing with something that is clearly, record-breakingly not broken.