A little over a month from now, the 2017-18 Columbus Blue Jackets will take the ice amid a bevy of excitement while trying to put together the first back-to-back playoff runs in franchise history.
It’s an exciting time, one years in the making in the eyes of the fans.
And as it turns out, this team has literally been years in the making as well.
How far back can you trace this roster?
How about the 2001 NHL draft?
It’s kind of hard to wrap your mind around it, but this team’s bloodlines go back more than 16 years.
With the team’s first pick in that draft, the Blue Jackets selected goaltender Pascal Leclaire with the eighth overall pick, making Pazzy the second first-round pick in franchise history.
Leclaire made his Jackets debut during the 2003-04 season, then played in parts of five seasons in Columbus. Then, at the trade deadline of the 2008-09 campaign, the first playoff season in Blue Jackets history, he was shipped with a second-round draft pick to Ottawa for center Antoine Vermette.
Vermette was a key part of that original playoff team then played for Columbus until the deadline of the 2011-12 season, when he was sent to Phoenix for goalie Curtis McElhinney and a bevy of draft picks including a second-round pick that was originally owned by Ottawa.
Then, in June 2012 at the NHL draft, Columbus traded that second-round pick and a handful of others to Philadelphia for a young and talented but inconsistent goaltender named Sergei Bobrovsky.
As they say, the rest is history. Bobrovsky became a two-time Vezina winner in Columbus and is expected to be the backbone of this year’s team – and on top of that, he’s part of the oldest continuous chain when it comes to assembling this year’s Blue Jackets team.
This is expected to be one of the better Blue Jackets teams in franchise history after the team gained respect around the NHL a year ago with a record-shattering 50-win season. And with training camp looming ever closer, we figured it was the perfect time to piece together exactly how this Columbus Blue Jackets team came to be.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the building of this team is how much of it came from within. Of the players listed on the team’s official roster at this moment, 14 of them were drafted by Columbus, making this one of the true team-built rosters in the NHL right now.
After that, it’s intriguing to see how much of the roster was built through a select cluster of trades, including the Rick Nash deal with the New York Rangers, the trade of Jeff Carter to Los Angeles, Sami Pahlsson, and that one deal with Philadelphia that brought the aforementioned goaltender to Columbus.
Without further ado, we look at a position-by-position breakdown of how this group of Columbus Blue Jackets came to be.
Forwards
Josh Anderson: 2012 fourth-round pick, 95th overall (pick acquired from Vancouver in trade that sent Sami Pahlsson to Canucks; Pahlsson originally signed July 1, 2009)
Cam Atkinson: 2008 sixth-round pick, 157th overall
Oliver Bjorkstrand: 2013 third-round pick, 89th overall (pick acquired from Pittsburgh along with 2013 second-round pick Dillon Heatherington in June 2013 trade that sent second-round pick Tristan Jarry to Penguins)
Matt Calvert: 2008 fifth-round pick, 127th overall
Brandon Dubinsky: Acquired July 23, 2012, with Artem Anisimov, Tim Erixon and first-round pick (Kerby Rychel) for Rick Nash (first overall pick in 2002), Steven Delisle (fourth-round pick in 2008) and third-round pick in 2013 (Pavel Buchnevich)
Nick Foligno: Acquired July 1, 2012, for Mark Methot (sixth-round pick in 2003)
Markus Hannikainen: Signed to an entry-level contract April 20, 2015
Boone Jenner: 2011 second-round pick, 37th overall
Sonny Milano: 2014 first-round pick, 16th overall
Tyler Motte/Artemi Panarin: Acquired June 23, 2017, with sixth-round pick in 2017 draft (Jonathan Davidsson) for Brandon Saad (acquired in 2015 for Artem Anisimov, Jeremy Morin, Corey Tropp, Marko Dano and a fourth-round pick in 2016), Anton Forsberg (seventh-round pick in 2011) and a fifth-round pick in 2018. Columbus acquired Anisimov in deal for Nash; Morin in trade for Erixon, who originally came to Columbus in Nash trade; Tropp off waivers from Buffalo in November 2013; Dano as first-round pick originally acquired in Jeff Carter trade to Los Angeles.
Jordan Schroeder: Acquired June 23, 2017, for Dante Salituro (free-agent signee July 1, 2016)
Lukas Sedlak: 2011 sixth-round pick, 158th overall
Alexander Wennberg: 2013 first-round pick, 14th overall
Defensemen
Gabriel Carlsson: 2015 first-round pick, 29th overall (pick acquired from Toronto for 2015 second-round pick Travis Dermott, 2015 third-round pick Martins Dzierkals)
Scott Harrington: Acquired June 25, 2016, for Kerby Rychel (first-round pick in 2013, originally acquired in Nash trade)
Jack Johnson: Acquired Feb. 23, 2012, with 2013 first-round pick Marko Dano for Jeff Carter. Columbus originally acquired Carter for Jakub Voracek (first-round pick in 2007) as well as first- and third-round picks in 2013.
Seth Jones: Acquired Jan. 6, 2016, for Ryan Johansen (first-round pick in 2010)
Ryan Murray: 2012 first-round pick, 2nd overall
Markus Nutivaara: 2015 seventh-round pick, 189th overall
David Savard: 2009 fourth-round pick, 94th overall (pick acquired with first-round pick Luca Sbisa, traded to Philadelphia in R.J. Umberger acquisition in June 2008, from Colorado for Adam Foote in trade Feb. 26, 2008; Foote signed with team Aug. 2, 2005)
Zach Werenski: 2015 first-round pick, 8th overall
Goaltenders
Sergei Bobrovsky: Acquired June 22, 2012, for a second-round pick (originally Ottawa’s, acquired by Phoenix in a trade for Kyle Turris, then traded to Columbus on Feb. 22, 2012, along Curtis McElhinney and a 2013 fifth-round pick for Antoine Vermette, whom Columbus acquired on March 4, 2009, for 2001 first-round pick Pascal Leclaire and 2009 second-round pick Robin Lehner), that 2013 fifth-round pick and a 2012 fourth-round pick (originally Vancouver’s, acquired for Sami Pahlsson, who signed with Columbus on July 1, 2009)
Joonas Korpisalo: 2012 third-round pick, 62nd overall
