Columbus Blue Jackets

Columbus Blue Jackets goalie Sergei Bobrovsky is once again on the shelf with a groin injury, and it is uncertain when he will be able to return.

Continue for updates.

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Kekalainen Comments on Bobrovsky's Injury

Monday, Jan. 25

"It’s tough to put this in words, because I’ve been assured that there was no way he came back too early either time," Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen said, via Aaron Portzline of the Columbus Dispatch. "He was fully healed, with full strength, full range of motion ... everything was back to normal. In everybody’s mind who has worked with him, he was not coming back too early at all."

"I don’t see any reason why that would be the case," Kekalainen said when asked if Bobrovsky could miss the remainder of the season. "This is not a … if you have a major tear, you’re out 6-8 weeks. This is not a major tear. But obviously now that there’s been a little tear twice now, after his bigger one, we’re going to make sure."

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Groin Issues Continue to Plague Bobrovsky

Portzline outlined just how much Bobrovsky's groin has hampered him over the past two-and-a-half seasons:

#CBJ G Sergei Bobrovsky has missed 43 games - and counting - with groin injuries since the start of 2013-14. Back on IR, out indefinitely.

— Aaron Portzline (@Aportzline) January 22, 2016

He already missed 16 games this season due to the groin as the Blue Jackets have rolled out four different goalies in their first 48 games.

Despite posting a respectable 2.65 goals-against average, the 2012-13 Vezina Trophy winner has posted an 11-13-1 record this campaign. Much of that is due to the Blue Jackets' struggles this season as they are the worst team in the NHL with 39 points.

Of the league-leading 159 goals allowed by the Columbus defense this year, only 67 have been conceded by Bobrovsky in 27 games. Not much of the blame can fall on him. However, things could be a bit different for the Blue Jackets if he could find a way to stay on the ice. 

Bobrovsky's regular backup, Curtis McElhinney, injured his leg on Jan. 4 and has been on injured reserve without a timetable since then. This forced the team to call up 21-year-old Joonas Korpisalo, who has appeared in 10 games. 

With Bobrovsky back out, the Blue Jackets have recalled Anton Forsberg from the AHL. The 23-year-old has played in four games with Columbus this season.

Now, the Blue Jackets are facing a foreseeable future with two young, inexperienced goalies as the backstop to a defense that has struggled all season. It seems like a recipe for disaster in Columbus, which was a team with Eastern Conference playoff aspirations heading into the 2015-16 season. 

Stats courtesy of Hockey-Reference.com.

Columbus Blue Jackets star goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky has been dealing with a groin injury since Dec. 10. However, he is ready to return.

Continue for updates.

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Bobrovsky Active vs. Capitals

Tuesday, Jan. 19

The Blue Jackets announced Bobrovsky will start Tuesday vs. Washington.

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Bobrovsky Continues to Struggle with Injuries

Bobrovsky missed extended time last season when he suffered a groin injury, and he wasn't able to play in the NHL All-Star Game as a result. With the goaltender dealing with another long-term issue, it doesn't bode well for the 27-year-old's long-term outlook.

StatsCentre highlighted how well Bobrovsky had been playing before going down in a Dec. 8 3-2 overtime loss to the Los Angeles Kings:

CBJ goalie Sergei Bobrovsky injured tonight. He has been among the NHL's most effective over the past month & change pic.twitter.com/8UEp6OL25D

— StatsCentre (@StatsCentre) December 9, 2015

Curtis McElhinney replaced Bobrovsky between the pipes for Columbus. General manager Jarmo Kekalainen expressed optimism on Dec. 9 about the goalie's ability to fill in well, per the Columbus Dispatch's Aaron Portzline: "Curtis has been very good, and now he gets his chance again. Now we're going to have to find other ways to win hockey games. Bobrovsky has been keeping us in games, being the Bob we all know and love."

McElhinney has posted a 2-6-2 record this season with a 3.33 GAA. He hasn't proven himself as a full-time NHL starter and is a downgrade from the man ahead of him on the depth chart.

Injuries hit the Blue Jackets in a big way last season, and their hard luck appears to be continuing. Their most valuable player in Bobrovsky has now gone down twice, leaving Columbus in danger of sinking further into the Eastern Conference basement in 2015-16.

On Friday the Columbus Blue Jackets defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins by a 2-1 score. It was the 10th game the team played under John Tortorella, and the win moved the team back to .500 under its new head coach, with a respectable 5-5-0 record.

Brandon Dubinsky missed the game with an injury, his first absence since Tortorella took over behind the bench.

Brandon Dubinsky will miss tonight's game with an upper body injury. #CBJ

— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) November 13, 2015

Although Dubinsky was out of the lineup for this victory, he’s been a vital figure in the Blue Jackets resurgence under Tortorella. He’s certainly been the team’s most effective centre under the new regime, as a quick glance at scoring totals post-Tortorella confirms:

• Dubinsky: 9 games, 3G-5A-8PTS
• Ryan Johansen: 8 games, 0G-4A-4PTS
• Gregory Campbell: 10 games, 1G-2A-3PTS
• William Karlsson: 10 games, 0G-1A-1PTS

Nick Foligno has also spent some time at centre; he has just three points (all assists) in 10 games under Tortorella. Dubinsky has been the lone capable offensive centre since the coaching change.

It’s surprising in some ways, because no effort has been made to hide the fact that the relationship between Tortorella and Dubinsky has been strained in the past. After Dubinsky was traded to Columbus from New York and Tortorella was fired by the Rangers, the talented centre let his displeasure with his old coach be known.

“I think my relationship with Torts fell apart the last year that I was there,” Dubinsky told Pat Leonard of the New York Daily News. “I just felt like his relationship with some of the other players could be doing the same thing. So I guess that pretty much sums it up. I wasn’t completely surprised [when he was fired].”

When Tortorella was hired to coach Columbus, that strained relationship was brought up by the media. In comments to Aaron Portzline of the Columbus Dispatch¸ both Tortorella and Dubinsky stressed that the antagonism was in the past. Tortorella explained it was a different point in Dubinsky’s career; Dubinsky credited Tortorella with making him a better player and said that relationships have “ups and downs.”

It was the coach who made a point of meeting with the player, though, and it was the coach who stressed how important it was that the two have a successful relationship right out of the gate.

I need to lean on him. He is part of that heartbeat of the club there. He needs to be a conduit between the coaching staff and the players until I get to know the other guys also. He’s an important man. We spent a number of years together. I think he can explain some of how I go about it as a coach and kind of make this a smooth transition with the team. And he’s a hell of player, too.

So far the marriage is working well. The Blue Jackets are winning hockey games, and Dubinsky is putting up points, particularly on the power play. There are, however, some warning signs.

At even-strength Columbus has been out-chanced 65-47 with Dubinsky on the ice over his nine games under Tortorella; the chance counts were 52-41 in the Blue Jackets’ favour with Dubinsky out there prior to the new coach’s arrival. Scoring has shot up in part because everything Dubinsky shoots has gone into the net; he’s fired the puck just nine times on the opposition goalie and scored on three of those tries. Things tend to look rosy whenever a forward can rock a 33.3 shooting percentage, but nobody can sustain that for very long.

This may be a natural part of the coaching change, that there’s going to be an adjustment as Dubinsky settles into a new system and gets used to working with his old coach once again. For now, the results have been all that anyone could ask for and have been to the benefit of both the player and the team.

But it’s also a situation worth keeping an eye on, because eventually Dubinsky’s shooting percentage is going to flag, and unless those scoring chance numbers improve, his line is going to start taking it on the chin in the goals department. That’s when we’ll find out exactly how strong the rebuilt relationship between player and coach is.

Statistics courtesy of war-on-ice.com, and NHL.com. 

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.

After a disastrous 0-7 start to the 2015-16 season, the Columbus Blue Jackets fired head coach Todd Richards on Wednesday and hired former Stanley Cup-winning coach John Tortorella to replace him.

TSN's Darren Dreger was the first to report the news, one day after the Jackets were shut out 4-0 by the New York Islanders.

Per Chris Johnston of Sportsnet, assistant coaches Craig Hartsburg and Brad Larsen will remain behind the bench for now.

General manager Jarmo Kekalainen explained the decision in a team release:

After much deliberation and discussion, we have made the very difficult decision late last night to remove Todd Richards as our head coach, and we’ve reached an agreement with John Tortorella to join the Columbus Blue Jackets in that capacity.

None of us saw our season unfolding the way it has, and every one of us from management to coaches to players bears responsibility. There is still a lot of hockey to be played, and we believe this change was necessary to give our team the best chance to accomplish the goals we’ve set for this season.

The hiring of Tortorella—who was tabbed to coach Team USA in next year's World Cup of Hockey—comes less than 24 hours after he revealed on SiriusXM's NHL Game Day that no teams had approached him regarding a head coaching job, according to Josh Cooper of Yahoo Sports.

"I read things, percentages of who is going to get fired first," Tortorella said. "It's such a disrespected position, it really drives me crazy how people treat it. So I have not been contacted, coaches being talked about are real good coaches."

According to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet, the deal between Columbus and Tortorella came together quickly, as he was hired early Wednesday morning at around 1:30 a.m. ET.

“John Tortorella is an experienced National Hockey League coach with a proven track record of success,” Kekalainen said. “He is a Stanley Cup winner, and we believe the right person to lead our team at this time.”

"I'm not here to reinvent the wheel," said Tortorella in his introductory press conference. "I want to get back to who we are."

Tortorella added more on what he expects from his team, per Rob Mixer of the Blue Jackets' Digital and Social team:

"We want to pursue. We want to be aggressive. We want to go north-south. I want to spend time on how we play. There are leaders in this room that will help us. We’ll get this going in the right direction.  It’s amazing what you can do with the right type of arrogance in your game.”

Also, per Friedman, since Tortorella is still technically employed by and getting paid by the Vancouver Canucks, who fired him after the 2013-14 season, the Blue Jackets must send draft-pick compensation to Vancouver.

This isn't unlike the Buffalo Sabres being forced to send the Pittsburgh Penguins a 2016 third-round pick after hiring Dan Bylsma this past offseason.

The 49-year-old Richards was in the midst of his fifth season at the helm for the Blue Jackets after coaching the Minnesota Wild for two years. He boasts a career record of 204-183-37 and led Columbus to the playoffs in 2013-14.

The Blue Jackets missed out on the playoffs last season despite a surge down the stretch, but they were expected to improve notably in 2015-16. In addition to acquiring forward Brandon Saad from the Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus returned the likes of Ryan Johansen, Nick Foligno, Scott Hartnell and goalie Sergei Bobrovsky.

Columbus certainly has a talented roster, and the front office is rolling the dice on Tortorella in hopes that he can harness it.

The 57-year-old Tortorella is a controversial figure due to his penchant for wearing out his welcome with an in-your-face style, but he did lead the Tampa Bay Lightning to a Stanley Cup victory in 2004. He also took the New York Rangers all the way to the Eastern Conference Final in 2012.

Torts' overall success is undeniable, with a career record of 446-375-37-78 to go along with eight playoff appearances in 14 seasons, but Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star doesn't necessarily believe this is the right move for Columbus:

The Columbus Blue Jackets, amid the flames and wreckage, faces streaked with ash, ask John Tortorella to save them. Good luck, guys.

— Bruce Arthur (@bruce_arthur) October 21, 2015

The Blue Jackets desperately needed a shake-up, though, and there is no question that the Boston native's personality will change the vibe in the locker room. He might rub some people the wrong way in the process, but it is worth the risk considering how deep a hole the team has already dug for itself.

Hiring Tortorella will look like a genius move if the Jackets manage to rebound, and if they don't, then the worst thing that can happen is the team will have to search for a more permanent answer next offseason. 

Follow @MikeChiari on Twitter.

Brandon Saad is moving closer to his Columbus Blue Jackets preseason debut after missing some of training camp this week following an accident that saw him get struck in the face with a puck.  

Continue for updates.

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Saad Could Play Saturday vs. Pittsburgh Penguins

Friday, Sept. 25

Rob Mixer of the team's official site reports the injury caused him to undergo four root canals Tuesday. He returned to the ice for Thursday's practice and is now aiming to make his first appearance in a Blue Jackets sweater against the Penguins, though head coach Todd Richards hasn't confirmed it yet.

"It's all really about how I feel, and I felt good in practice," Saad said, per Mixer. "It's a little different with the face protection, but for the most part, it felt pretty good."

The left winger will sport a visor that covers his entire face until the injury is healed. He's not worried about the missed time, telling the Jackets' official site the camp work has been encouraging and that "good players tend to gel fairly quickly."

Columbus is expecting big things from the 22-year-old forward. The team acquired his restricted free-agent rights from the reigning champion Chicago Blackhawks back in June and then signed him to a six-year contract extension in July.

Saad has steadily improved since making his debut with Chicago during the 2011-12 campaign. Last season, he tallied 52 points (23 goals and 29 assists) while playing in all 82 regular-season games. He added 11 more points in 23 postseason contests.

Once healthy, he should have an opportunity to slot in on the team's top line alongside Ryan Johansen and Nick Foligno. Though he's not overly concerned about missing some preseason games, a few chances to build chemistry with that talented duo before the season starts certainly won't hurt.

After acquiring left winger Brandon Saad from the Chicago Blackhawks in a seven-player deal Tuesday, the Columbus Blue Jackets announced Friday that they have signed him to a six-year contract extension. 

Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen was thrilled to be locking up a two-time Stanley Cup winner until 2020-21: 

Adding a player of Brandon's caliber is exciting for the Columbus Blue Jackets organization and our fans and we are extremely pleased to have reached this long-term commitment that assures he will be an important part of our team for years to come.

Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman reports that Saad will make $6 million per year on his new deal. 

At 22 years old, Saad is coming off the best season of his young career, scoring 23 goals and adding 29 assists for a career-high 52 points. He added eight goals in the postseason, helping the Blackhawks win their third Stanley Cup in six seasons. 

In 208 career games, Saad has recorded 126 points and a plus-44 rating. He plays a tough brand of hockey, yet is not penalized often. In those 208 games, he has just 44 penalty minutes.

Already a proven winner, Saad joins a crop of young forwards under the age of 30 in Columbus who will make a serious run in the Eastern Conference next season. Nick Foligno and fellow 22-year-old Ryan Johansen both recorded over 70 points last season. 

Saad could be playing second-line hockey flanking Brandon Dubinsky at center and right winger David Clarkson. Dubinsky is capable of scoring 20 goals or more, but he hasn't done so since recording 24 in 2010-11 with the New York Rangers. Clarkson also has had successful scoring seasons, netting 30 goals in 2011-12 with the New Jersey Devils, but has since underwhelmed with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Pairing three skilled players like this on a second line could yield high rewards for the Blue Jackets.

Stats courtesy of Hockey-Reference.com

The Columbus Blue Jackets have been decimated by injuries all season. You can now add right winger David Clarkson to the list.

Continue for updates.  

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Blue Jackets Announce Clarkson Out

Wednesday, March 4

The team’s official website reported Wednesday that Clarkson “will be sidelined four to six weeks due to a torn oblique muscle suffered in Tuesday night’s game against the Washington Capitals, club General Manager Jarmo Kekalainen announced today.”

Aaron Portzline of the Columbus Dispatch reported that Clarkson suffered the injury in his Blue Jackets debut on Feb. 28 and played through the pain until it became too much.

Portzline also added from Kekalainen "He’s still going to get the fresh start he needs and wants. I saw a lot of good things in the three games he played, and in two of them he was injured."

Columbus had postseason aspirations heading into the season after reaching the playoffs and challenging the Pittsburgh Penguins once it got there last year, but the campaign has gone off the rails with nonstop injury problems. In fact, the Blue Jackets lead the league in man-games lost to injury in 2014-15.

Clarkson was newly acquired from the Toronto Maple Leafs in a trade before the deadline and didn’t take long to fall in line with the rest of the injured roster. He has 196 points in his career (112 goals and 84 assists) and could be a major part of the Columbus attack in the future.

For now, he will simply look to get healthy.

One can only imagine Ryan Johansen lying in his hotel bed, slowly awakening from a pregame nap in Toronto, grabbing his phone off the end table and seeing the news of Sergei Bobrovsky's four-year, $29.7 million contract extension and having one immediate thought...

..."I thought we were a team on a budget."

It was only a few months ago when the Columbus Blue Jackets played hardball with Johansen, their budding star coming off an entry-level deal. The negotiations became public and contentious as one side wanted a bridge deal (aka bad deal) and the other side wanted a long-term deal (aka too much money for an RFA). The two sides eventually pulled a Benjamin Button by meeting in the middle with a three-year, $12 million agreement.

Since then, the Blue Jackets have backed dump trucks full of money onto the lawns of Bobrovsky and Nick Foligno, the latter receiving a six-year, $33 million contract two weeks ago while in the middle of a career season.

The Blue Jackets are a team on a small-market budget—their payrolls have ranked 19th, 14th, 24th, 13th and 23rd the past five seasons, via the CapGeek archives—so it makes sense they account for every penny.

That's what makes bestowing Bobrovsky with four years at a $7.425 million cap hit somewhat strange.

#CBJ Jarmo Kekalainen asked if he believes Bobrovsky is a top 5 G in the #NHL: "Yeah. Otherwise we wouldn’t have given him this contract....

— Aaron Portzline (@Aportzline) January 10, 2015

The bar for goaltenders was set by the Rangers' Henrik Lundqvist last season when he signed a seven-year, $59.5 million contract extension that carries an $8.5 million cap hit. And let me tell you—that's a heck of a bar. That's a bar with a free jukebox, never-ending happy hour and it lacks one of those games with speed bags bros love to hit as hard as they can. It's a great bar.

And now, starting next season, only Lundqvist has a larger cap hit than Bobrovsky, according to The Columbus Dispatch's Aaron Portzline. It doesn't seem right that Bobrovsky has the second-best bar in the league (it probably has the speed bag game).

There really isn't a straight line from Johansen to Bobrovsky to Lundqvist, as it swerves and moves all over the place, but there is a line there.

Johansen was a fresh RFA when he had his contract squabble with the Blue Jackets while Bobrovsky is an RFA much closer to UFA status, so he has much more leverage and a better ability to extract dollars from the organization. There's a similar premium on each's position, though, as No. 1 centers and No. 1 goaltenders are held in high regard around the league.

Contracts are signed at different times with different organizations with different salary-cap situations, but consider now that Bobrovsky has a higher cap hit next season than goaltenders Pekka Rinne, Tuukka Rask, Carey Price and Jonathan Quick, among others. A player is always worth exactly what the market bears, but did the Blue Jackets maybe overpay a little bit here?

Bobrovsky's resume is hardly unimpressive but it's quite limited. He won the Vezina Trophy in 2013 after a 48-game season, one that shouldn't be taken as seriously as trophies won in 82-game seasons. But even if you consider his .932 save percentage in 2013 an anomaly, he had an impressive .923 a season ago, and his .917 save percentage this season is one on the rise as the Blue Jackets get healthy.

The playoffs can make or break a player, but Bobrovsky has limited work and almost no success there—the 26-year-old is 2-6 with a 3.50/.890 split in the postseason with the Blue Jackets and Flyers.

There's nothing wrong with having Bobrovsky as your goaltender for the next four years, but couldn't the Jackets have played a little more hardball with him? Has he really proved he's worth about $1 million less than Lundqvist about $500,000 more than Rinne and Rask and about $1 million than Price?

Could the Blue Jackets have saved about $500,000 per year on the Bobrovsky deal? If you think that dollar value isn't all that much, consider the St. Louis Blues decided to stick with the inferior Steve Ott this past offseason while the superior Vladimir Sobotka and the team were $300,000 apart in negotiations, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, resulting in Sobotka leaving for the KHL.

Every dollar counts for small-market teams and while this is far from an egregious overpayment, it's an unnecessary one.

All statistics via NHL.com. Salary-cap info via Spotrac unless otherwise noted.

Dave Lozo covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @DaveLozo.

The Columbus Blue Jackets have taken steps to secure their long-term future at the goaltending position by reportedly signing Sergei Bobrovsky to an extension.

According to Aaron Portzline of The Columbus Dispatch, Bobrovsky has received a four-year contract extension worth just under $30 million:

Puck-rakers: #CBJ sign G Sergei Bobrovsky to 4-year, $29.7 million extension http://t.co/YaXnkJemOk

— Aaron Portzline (@Aportzline) January 9, 2015

As noted by ESPN's Pierre LeBrun, the extension saves the Blue Jackets a lot of headaches that would have taken place with Bobrovsky over the next two years:

Bobrovsky would have been RFA July 1, then UFA in summer of 2016.

— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) January 9, 2015

The 26-year-old Bobrovsky has been a standout since being traded to Columbus in 2012. He has allowed an average of 2.34 goals in 123 games with the Blue Jackets and won the Vezina Trophy as the NHL's best goalie following the 2013 season.

There seemed to be some tense times at the negotiating table, as Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen told LeBrun in November that the team made a fair offer to Bobrovsky.

"We love Bob, we want to obviously keep him," Kekalainen said. "We made a fair offer in our opinion and it didn’t go anywhere. We’ll keep after it. He’s an incredibly hard-working player and he’s a leader that way and such a good example. We absolutely want to keep a guy like that and for long-term."

Fortunately, the two sides were able to keep talking and finally struck a deal that works for both parties. It also benefits Bobrovsky because he gets paid now and can be a free agent at age 30, which would allow him to get another big contract.

The Blue Jackets have struggled to break through in the Eastern Conference this season, sitting in a tie for fifth place in the Metropolitan Division. However, Bobrovsky is holding up his end of the bargain. He's 15-10-2 with a 2.75 goals-against average.

If the front office can find impact talent on offense, the Blue Jackets will become a threat in the East.

The hardest thing to find is strong goaltending, but Bobrovsky has solidified that spot for this franchise. He's got the talent to carry this team far with a little more scoring help.

Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Jack Johnson is a former first-round draft pick and United States Olympian, but the 27-year-old blueliner shockingly finds himself flat broke.

According to Aaron Portzline of The Columbus Dispatch, the Indianapolis native has filed for bankruptcy after a number of poor investments and decisions by his parents put him in a financial crisis.

Per Portzline, Johnson initially turned over control of his finances to his parents in 2011. What ensued was a bevy of follies that included Johnson's parents taking out as many as 18 high-interest loans in an effort to monetize his contract.

Those risky moves backfired, which resulted in Johnson being sued on three occasions. In addition to that, his parents reportedly made big purchases such as a house and vehicles without consulting their son.

Johnson told Portzline of his issues, "I'd say I picked the wrong people who led me down the wrong path. I've got people in place who are going to fix everything now. It's something I should have done a long time ago."

According to Portzline, wealth-management firm partner Gary Marcinick claims he has seen similar cases in the past:

These players are so young, and they have a lot of money coming in—so they're targets. They rely blindly, often, on the judgment of their parents or agents, and they sometimes have agendas that are not optimal.

Players find it difficult to question their agents. They don't even know the right questions to ask. And they're even more reluctant to question Mom and Dad.

Many have been taken aback by the alleged actions of Johnson's parents, including columnist Adam Proteau of The Hockey News:

Betraying your own child is despicable. Here's hoping Jack Johnson's ability to trust hasn't been irreversibly shattered.

— Adam Proteau (@Proteautype) November 20, 2014

Johnson is now estranged from his parents, and attorney Marc Kessler claims that he is on track to get his finances back in order, per Portzline:

Jack's financial situation was detrimentally affected by the actions of those who were trusted to handle his business affairs. Unfortunately, these were predatory lenders going so far as to use Jack's NHL contract as collateral.

In order to best protect his future, he's filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and he's enlisted a new group of professionals who are helping him get through these matters. Jack remains focused on hockey. He appreciates the support of the entire Blue Jackets organization and the fans during what is a pretty difficult time.

Johnson still has three years and $13 million remaining on his current contract, according to CapGeek.com. He is coming off a solid 33-point season and should have no issue netting a fairly substantial contract by the time he reaches free agency.

Even so, this is certainly an extremely unfortunate and eye-opening situation. If nothing else, perhaps it is something that other young NHL players can learn from moving forward.

Follow @MikeChiari on Twitter