Blue Jackets Sunday Gathering: Zach Werenski fires agent; which centers to keep

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A collection of notes, insights, ruminations and did-you-knows gathered throughout the week that was for the Blue Jackets:

Item No. 1: Zach Werenski fires agent

Blue Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski told The Athletic on Sunday that he has fired NHL super agent Pat Brisson, confirming an earlier report.

Werenski declined to say why he fired Brisson. The timing is interesting for Columbus. Werenski is set to become a restricted free agent after next season, and Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen can negotiate a new deal with him as soon as this July.

The source indicated that Werenski plans to hire Judd Moldaver of the Wasserman and Orr Hockey Group, whose client list includes Toronto’s Auston Matthews, Nashville’s Roman Josi, Philadelphia’s Carter Hart and others.

Moldaver once worked with Brisson and CAA Hockey before leaving — and taking Matthews with him — three years ago.

Brisson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Werenski has been out of the Blue Jackets lineup since April 8 and will miss the rest of the regular season after having surgery to repair a sports hernia. He’s expected to be ready for the start of training camp in the fall.

Brisson still has one major client in the Blue Jackets’ dressing room — defenseman Seth Jones, who plays on the top pairing with Werenski and is one of his best buds off the ice.

As of now, it appears that Jones is still a Brisson client.

If he were going to make a change, it would almost certainly have happened by now. Jones is an unrestricted free agent after next season — a major difference from Werenski’s pending RFA status — and his willingness to sign an extension with the Blue Jackets this summer may be the biggest story of the club’s offseason.

With all of the major issues on Kekalainen’s plate, it was unclear if Werenski’s extension would be on the to-do list before the puck drops next October.

In addition to negotiating Jones’ new deal, Kekalainen must determine the fate of coach John Tortorella, hire a new coach if Tortorella leaves, trade one of the club’s two goaltenders before they hit unrestricted free agency next summer and make significant upgrades to the club’s roster, using its three first-round picks and copious cap space.

But it seems unlikely that Werenski would make an agent change now if he weren’t planning to have contract talks this summer. Werenski is set to make $7 million next season in the final year of his current deal.

As of today, he’s set to be the highest-paid Blue Jacket next season. If he signs an extension, it wouldn’t start until the 2022-23 season.

Brisson’s name has been in the news all season in Columbus. He represented former Blue Jackets center Pierre-Luc Dubois, who requested to be dealt late last fall and eventually played his way into a trade with a messy scene in the first week of the season.

Dubois and the Blue Jackets had reached an accord to play this season in Columbus and deal with his trade request this offseason, but Brisson, Dubois and his family were infuriated when Tortorella divulged personal matters, they felt, on his weekly radio show, “Hockey & Hounds.”

Brisson once held considerable sway in the Blue Jackets dressing room, with as many as six clients at one point a few years ago. Now he represents just Jones. Minor-league forward Stefan Matteau has parted ways with Brisson, too, according to a source.

Blue Jackets forward Max Domi was represented by Brisson until last fall, when he switched to Darren Ferris prior to his trade to Columbus.

Item No. 2: Centers of attention

When Kekalainen heads into the talent-acquisition mode of his offseason, the overwhelming focus will be center ice. The way the best-laid plans at that position fell to pieces this season — Dubois traded, Domi moved to the wing, Mikko Koivu retired, etc. — is the best explanation for the Blue Jackets’ immense struggles.

But before Kekalainen goes shopping, he has to consider his own cupboard. Tortorella has spent most of this season breaking in young centers, with considerable frustration and infrequent bright spots.

• Domi has been back at center for a few weeks now and has been a far more productive and dangerous player than he was during the first two months of the season. And much of this has happened with him at center ice. In his first 27 games, he had 3-4-7, tied for 11th in points, with a minus-15 rating. Since March 10, in 23 games, he has 5-10-15, tied for third in that span, with a minus-1 rating.

• Jack Roslovic has taken his lumps defensively but has been an impactful offensive player, with 10-20-30 in 44 games. (Dubois has 8-12-20 in 35 games with Winnipeg.)

• Alexandre Texier has shown flashes but has not produced offensively. In 86 career games, he has 11-18-29. He hasn’t scored a goal in 41 games, dating to Jan. 26.

It’s hard to imagine Kekalainen adding three centers this offseason — truth be told, he might be lucky to add one prominent center, given how hard they are to pry off a roster — but how many does he feel he needs?

Does he believe the first half of Domi’s season or the second? Does he feel that Roslovic’s struggles away from the puck can be fixed? Is Texier going to figure it out in the near future?

There are a lot of moving parts this summer.

Item No. 3: Lottery lookahead

Buffalo’s loss to Boston on Saturday made it impossible for the Sabres to finish with a better record than the Blue Jackets, thus Columbus cannot finish with the worst record in the NHL. So the Blue Jackets have that going for them!

Through Saturday’s games, the Blue Jackets (43 points) have the fifth-worst record in the NHL, but that demands some explanation. Vancouver is still two points behind Columbus, but the Canucks have played six fewer games and will almost certainly leapfrog the Jackets.

However, expansion Seattle has been given the third-best chance going into the lottery as part of its entry into the league, so unless the Jackets finish with the second-worst record in the league, their lottery chances will be no better than fourth-best.

New Jersey (41 points) and Anaheim (39) could still catch Columbus, and Columbus could still catch Ottawa (43), Los Angeles (44), Detroit (45) and San Jose (45) down the stretch. So it’s a big final week of the season.

The lottery, by the way, will be held June 2. It’s usually held between the end of the regular season and the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs. But Vancouver’s bout with COVID-19 last month will have the Canucks playing until May 19, likely after the playoffs have started for some clubs.

Until the league knows where the Canucks slot, it can’t figure out lottery odds. So the lottery will be staged well into the playoffs.

Item No. 4: Dress blues

Did the Blue Jackets look slightly different Saturday in their 2-1 overtime loss to Carolina?

Earlier this season, when the NHL unveiled its “reverse retro” jerseys, the Blue Jackets wore red sweaters with the original “CBJ” logo and blue pants. The red top got mixed reviews — some loath the original logo, some thought it looked too much like Washington — but those blue pants … say, now.

Players loved ’em. Management loved ’em. So the Blue Jackets asked the NHL’s permission for a “uniform modification” in Saturday’s game.

Look good, feel good 🤩 pic.twitter.com/aA7PxAQx6c

— Columbus Blue Jackets (@BlueJacketsNHL) May 1, 2021

The new kits couldn’t help them on the ice — the Hurricanes won 2-1 in overtime on Dougie Hamilton’s goal — but they did look sharp, and a formal request from the Blue Jackets to make the switch permanent could be forthcoming.

“If a formal request ultimately is made to alter the club’s uniform, the change would not be implemented until the 2022-23 NHL season,” said club spokesman Glenn Odebralski.

The assumption is that the Blue Jackets will continue to wear red pants with the home blues even if the change is granted.

Snacks

• Kekalainen will take part in his second Olympic Games next Feb. 4-20 in Beijing. Kekalainen is the assistant general manager, aiding GM Jere Lehtinen, for the Finnish national team. He was assistant GM when Finland won the bronze medal in Sochi (2014) and the same for the World Cup in 2016.

• Let this sink in as the league prepares for another expansion draft this summer: Since entering the NHL for the 2016-17 season, the Vegas Golden Knights have the fourth-best record in the league, trailing only Tampa Bay, Boston and Washington. They’ve been a Stanley Cup contender every season. Yet Vegas is the one existing club that is exempt from the process, meaning it won’t lose a single player to the Seattle Kraken this summer. The NHL has to keep its word and this was the agreement when the Golden Knights paid $500 million for the club. This is how it worked during the previous wave, too. Nashville (1998) and Atlanta (1999) did not lose players when Columbus and Minnesota joined in 2000. But that’s about where the similarities end.

• AHL Cleveland learned this week that there will be no postseason. AHL president Scott Howson, a former Blue Jackets GM, announced that the Calder Cup playoffs were canceled for a second consecutive season and that each of the AHL’s five divisions would be charged with staging their own playoffs if they so desired. Only the Pacific Division can pull it off, apparently. So the Monsters have six games remaining, including Sunday night’s game in Texas.

• Spare a quiet moment to pay respects to Rick Shepherd, a broadcast engineer in the Blue Jackets’ game operations and event presentation department. If you’re a Blue Jackets fan, you’ve no doubt enjoyed Rick’s work through the years, even if you never got to meet him. He passed suddenly over the weekend. Our thoughts are with his family.

(Photo of Werenski: Jamie Sabau / NHLI via Getty Images)