To satiate the requests from the content gods, I am here to give you another mailbag. I asked Twitter to give me a few questions to answer and thankfully was provided with some questions that will help the offseason go by a little faster.
We start off with a question about a couple of former Columbus Blue Jacket players:
Pick a fighter: Boller or Jody
— Carson (@CarsonReider) August 20, 2019
Why would Carson start this mailbag off with such a difficult question? How am I supposed to choose between Jody Shelley and Jared Boll? There are a couple of different ways that you can contextualize this. I could go with the best fighter or I could go better player to determine who I choose. Just going off pure numbers alone, I think Jody was both the better player and fighter. Boll may have had a better peak as a hockey player, but Jody has the longevity on his side, the penalty minutes and the general overall reputation.
I'm going with Jody Shelley.
With a logjam of d, if you were gm do you feel comfortable moving werenski for one of the unsigned rfa forwards
— Brett Sidoryk (@iamTwigggy) August 20, 2019
This is a fantastic question.
There are a bunch of unsigned RFA forwards. If you think you can get any of them cheaply and under what Werenski's number might be, it is something to consider. Overall though, Werenski may be too valuable as a player and for a player with a set price point. The Mitch Marner's and Matthew Tkachuk's of the world have a wide range of comparables to draw from. Zach Werenski does not. There is a possibility that you could end up adding a forward but also adding an additional $4 million to the AAV to your roster as well in a straight swap.
The forward group for the Blue Jackets isn't ideal. There are a fair amount of questions and a lot of "hopes and dreams" when discussing who is going to fill in where. That isn't a way to fill out the top of your lineup. A young stud forward could change that in a moment's notice and add more balance. The likelihood of that happening is somewhere in the range of me getting another butt tattoo.
Is Jarmo done for the offseason or can we expect an eleventh hour signing? If so, whos still out there that may be of interest?
— Jonathan Barnes (@osubluejacket) August 19, 2019
There is always a possibility that a one-year UFA could be brought in and a couple of exciting PTO players could be at training camp. Any large scale pickups at this point just don't seem to be in their plans. The Joe Thornton's, the Patrick Marleau's and Thomas Vanek's of the world could be intriguing, but the unknown about cap space makes it difficult.
That could potentially change if the team is able to keep Zach Werenski for a song. Those dominoes are all waiting to fall as well. Until Mitch Marner and his camp make a decision, it feels like the last part of this offseason won't be rubber-stamped until then. Considering how that negotiation has been going, we may not see anything until a couple of weeks before training camp. Slow news days are about to go the way of the dinosaur shortly.
