It’s now been over a month since the Columbus Blue Jackets have played a game. They won’t see the ice again for a regular-season game for another 4 1/2 months yet. But that doesn’t mean we can’t start looking ahead to the 2025-26 version of the Blue Jackets.
GM Don Waddell has a lot of business to take care of between now and the start of the season. Besides having to decide on potential moves during this offseason, he has a lot of decisions to make about their free agents.
Waddell told the Hockey Writers recently that many of those free agent decisions would happen after speaking with head coach Dean Evason upon his return from the Men’s World Championships. With 14 players to decide on, not everyone will be back with the team.
While we await the decisions the Blue Jackets make, we will start projecting their roster between now and the start of the new season. In all, there will be six editions of projections, one per month.
Today, we will make version 1.0 the pre-NHL Combine edition. As you will see, the Blue Jackets have some important questions they need to answer. They have needs to fill both up front and on the blue line. They also have important questions to answer in net.
Forwards
Using Puckpedia as a guide, there are 11 players under contract for 2025-26 that are either a lock to make the team or will have a great chance to make it. They are as follows in line format.
- Boone Jenner – Sean Monahan – Kirill Marchenko
- Kent Johnson – Adam Fantilli – ??
- Yegor Chinakhov – Cole Sillinger – Mathieu Olivier
- Zach Aston Reese- Jack Williams/Luca Del Bel Belluz – ??
The Blue Jackets have a slew of unrestricted free agents to make decisions on. That list includes James van Riemsdyk, Sean Kuraly, Christian Fischer, Kevin Labanc, Luke Kunin and Justin Danforth. We are not listing the UFA’s in the minors but you can see the full list here.
In terms of restricted free agents, Mikael Pyyhtia is one. The other big one up front is Dmitri Voronkov. He has arbitration rights. Coming off a career-high 23 goals last season, he will be due a raise. He could also be the target of an offer sheet. However Waddell told the Hockey Writers he’s not worried about that given how much cap space the team has. PuckPedia lists them having over $40 million in available space for 2025-26 as of this writing.
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at The Hockey Writers…