Columbus Blue Jackets: Top 8 prospects worth getting excited about
What a 2019-20 season it was for the plucky Columbus Blue Jackets.
After losing two of their best players in Artemi Panarin and Sergei Bobrovsky, as well as 2019 Trade Deadline pickups in Matt Duchene and Ryan Dingle last offseason, almost everyone predicted that the Columbus Blue Jackets would finish at the bottom of the standings.
That turned out not to be the case, as Head Coach John Tortorella was able to do a fantastic job rallying his team up and getting them to play good hockey all season long. They had absolutely fantastic goaltending in Elvis Merzlikins and Joonas Korpisalo, along with great play from blueliners Seth Jones and Zach Werenski.
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While it was enough to secure them a spot in the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs, no one took them as a serious threat, and sure enough they were knocked out of the First Round by the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The problem with this Blue Jackets roster is that they lack offensive weapons. They do have some solid pieces in Pierre-Luc Dubois, Cam Atkinson and Gustav Nyquist, but those three don’t compete with the majority of NHL teams’ top forwards.
Unfortunately, Columbus is not the most attractive market for players, meaning they likely won’t be able to bring in much scoring help via Free Agency. Instead, they will have to rely on their current prospects to fill the holes and help in that department in the upcoming years.
As it currently stands, they sit near the middle of the league in terms of their prospect pipeline. While that may not sound overly exciting to Blue Jackets fans, they do have a few gems at the top of this list who are on the right track to becoming fantastic NHL players.
As mentioned in every other Top 8 Prospects article throughout this series, any player who has played in more NHL games than any other league in a season, regardless of the season, will not be included.
With that being said, here are the Top 8 Prospects in the Columbus Blue Jackets organization.
8. Gabriel Carlsson
Given that he was taken in the First Round (No. 29 overall) at the 2015 NHL Entry Draft and has yet to secure a full-time role in the NHL, Gabriel Carlsson almost appears closer to a draft bust rather than a prospect, but at 23-years-old he still does have some time to turn things around. The Swedish born defenseman does have some nice assets, particularly his size as he is listed at six-foot-five.
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Carlsson has received short NHL stints in every season since 2016-17, yet has only appeared in 23 regular season games to this point. This past season saw him appear in 41 AHL games with the Cleveland Monsters where he put up 12 points, and an additional six NHL games where he was held pointless.
He is heading into the 2020-21 season on a new two-year extension, which will likely be the last contract he gets in North America if he is not an NHL regular by the time it is up.
7. Trey Fix-Wolansky
Trey Fix-Wolansky was taken in the Seventh Round (No. 204 overall) at the 2018 NHL Entry Draft after an impressive 32 goal, 89-point season with the Edmonton Oil Kings of the WHL. After being drafted, he played one more season with the Oil Kings where he was able to improve upon his totals, scoring 37 goals and 102 points.
He appears to be a nice late round find by the Columbus Blue Jackets after being passed completely during his first year of draft eligibility in 2017. He spent the 2019-20 season with the Monsters and had a pretty successful rookie season, scoring 12 goals and adding 14 assists in 43 games played.
The one concern with Fix-Wolansky is his size, as he is just five-foot-six, 176 pounds, however he has been able to put up numbers in every league he has played in to this point.
6. Andrew Peeke
Defenseman Andrew Peeke nearly didn’t qualify for this list, as he appeared in 22 games with the Columbus Blue Jackets during the 2019-20 season and 29 with the Cleveland Monsters. Taken with the 34th pick of the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, the 22-year-old played three seasons for Notre Dame before making his professional debut this past season.
While his numbers at the college level didn’t jump off the page, he was able to produce at a solid rate for the Monsters in 2019-20, putting up 16 points in his 29 games. During his 22 NHL games, he was able to score his first NHL goal and add two assists. He will have a great chance at cracking the Blue Jackets lineup for the 2020-21 season.
5. Dmitry Voronkov
With their second of two Fourth Round picks at the 2019 NHL Entry Draft, the Blue Jackets selected Dmitry Voronkov at 114th overall. The extremely talented Russian forward spent the majority of his draft eligible season playing in the VHL, which is the second highest league in Russia, and posted 14 points in 50 games. He also appeared in three KHL games that same season for AK Bars Kazan, but was held pointless.
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Since being drafted, Voronkov has spent the past two seasons in the KHL with AK Bars. The 2019-20 season saw him post 12 points in 34 games, which are very solid numbers for an 18-year-old in what is widely considered the second best league in the entire world.
He was also able to represent Team Russia at the 2020 World Juniors and proved just how good he is when matched up against players his own age, as he scored three goals and added four assists in seven contests. He is now 32 games into his second KHL season, and has 14 points thus far. While he is no where near a finished product, he looks very promising at this point.
4. Daniil Tarasov
The first and only goaltender on this list is Daniil Tarasov. The Columbus Blue Jackets were able to grab the young Russian netminder with the 86th overall selection at the 2017 NHL Entry Draft. He spent the season after being drafted in the MHL, which is Russia’s top junior league, and posted a sparkling 1.85 Goals Against Average along with a .921 save percentage in 40 games.
As a result of the great season, he was promoted to the VHL for the 2018-19 season where he continued his dominance with a 1.71 GAA and a .928 SV% in 25 contests.
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The now 21-year-old Tarasov wanted a chance to play at an elite professional level for the 2019-20 season, and decided to play for Assat in the SM-liiga. The league proved to be much more difficult for him than others in seasons past, as he put up a fairly uninspiring 2.80 GAA and a .899 SV% on the year.
Despite the down year, however, he was able to land a spot in the KHL for Salavat Yulaev Ufa, and has been lights out, albeit in a small sample size. In eight games played, he has put up a 2.01 GAA along with a .929 SV%. Whether or not those numbers will decrease as the season goes on remains to be seen, but it is a great start for what looks to be an extremely promising prospect.
3. Yegor Chinakhov
When Columbus Blue Jackets General Manager Jarmo Kekalainen announced that he was selecting Yegor Chinakhov with the 21st overall pick at the 2020 NHL Entry Draft, everybody who had done their research on the draft prospects was in shock.
Many had not even heard of the Russian forward, and the ones who did had him projected to go in the mid-to-late rounds of the Draft. Given that the 2020 Draft was talked about as being one of the deepest in quite some time, it seemed like a huge gamble to go way off the board like they did.
Despite the many critics however, it looks as though Kekalainen may have made a great decision. Although it is still extremely early, Chinakhov is off to a fantastic rookie KHL season. In 27 games for Omsk Avangard, the 19-year-old forward has eight goals and 15 points. Hockey fans around the world who questioned this pick will be able to get a first-hand glimpse of Chinakhov at the upcoming World Juniors, where he will look to prove many wrong.
2. Liam Foudy
Despite being taken with the 18th overall pick at the 2018 NHL Entry Draft, Liam Foudy’s numbers with the London Knights in the OHL that season didn’t look overly impressive. In 65 games that year, he put up 24 goals and 40 points. Good totals, but nothing that appeared to suggest he was a First Round talent.
Since then, however, he has shown why he was taken at the spot he was. The following season, which was his third in the OHL, Foudy scored 36 goals and added 32 assists in 62 games.
The 2019-20 season saw Foudy return to junior hockey for one final year, and he certainly made the most of it. Despite playing in only 45 games, he was able to score 28 goals and 68 points. He also cracked the Team Canada roster for the 2020 World Juniors, where his goal scoring abilities continued as he put three pucks in the back of the net during the tournament and also added an assist.
Columbus Blue Jackets fans were able to watch him play this past season as well, as Foudy appeared in two regular season games with Columbus, chipping in with an assist, as well as 10 games they played in the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs where he had a goal and an assist. He has a great shot to play the entire 2020-21 season in the NHL.
1. Kirill Marchenko
At this point and time, the Columbus Blue Jackets look like they may have found themselves a Second Round steal in Kirill Marchenko, who they took with the 49th overall pick at the 2018 NHL Entry Draft.
The now 20-year-old Russian forward had an impressive 2019-20 rookie campaign in the KHL for St. Petersburg SKA, scoring seven goals and 16 points in 31 contests. He was able to elevate his play even more in the postseason, where he had five points in four games.
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This season, Marchenko’s numbers with St. Petersburg have gotten even better. In 29 games on the season, he has put up 11 goals and nine assists. For comparisons sake on just how good this is, the Vancouver Canucks’ top prospect Vasili Podkolzin, who was selected 10th overall at the 2019 NHL Entry Draft, has just six points in 24 games for the same team.
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Marchenko was also able to play for Team Russia at the past two World Junior Tournaments. While his first year saw him put up just one goal in seven games, he was much better a year later scoring two goals and adding four assists. He has a great shot at becoming a high scoring NHL forward in the future for the Columbus Blue Jackets.