Columbus, Ohio — Three weeks after making the decision to name Mike Babcock as their new head coach, the Blue Jackets have finally made it official.
The club Friday announced a “Major Hockey Operations Announcement” at 10 am on Saturday. A source familiar with the situation confirmed the athlete Babcock, who last coached in the NHL with Toronto in 2019, will be introduced as the ninth coach in franchise history.
The Blue Jackets had to wait to put Babcock in charge of the appointment because he was still under contract with the Maple Leafs through June, and the Blue Jackets and Leafs were unable to reach terms on a settlement that would have allowed him to get out of his contract early.
Athletic Pierre Lebrun reports that Babcock’s contract with the Blue Jackets is a two-year, $4 million per season contract, making him the highest-paid coach in franchise history.
Babcock’s hiring did not sit well with some Blue Jackets fans. After he was fired by the Maple Leafs during the 2019-20 season, at least two of his former players in Toronto and Detroit alleged that Babcock verbally and emotionally abused him. He retracted the accusations, saying the story about Marner had not been accurately portrayed by the media.
The Blue Jackets could not comment publicly on the decision to hire him, but they will get that opportunity on Saturday.
The draw to hiring Babcock is his hard-working, defensively responsible coaching style, an approach that had previously brought the Blue Jackets success with coaches John Tortorella and Ken Hitchcock.
Babcock’s resume, however, is almost unrivaled, and he was one of the first candidates interviewed for the job to replace Brad Larsen, who was fired a day after the Blue Jackets finished with the second-worst record in the league.
He won a Stanley Cup (2008 with Detroit), two Olympic gold medals (2010 and 2014 with Canada), an IIHF World Championship (2004 with Canada), an IIHF World Junior Championship (1997 with Canada) and a World Cup gold medal (2017 with Canada).
He has a 700-418-183 career record in the regular season with Anaheim, Detroit, and Toronto (608 percentage points) and a 90-74 record in the playoffs, including the Stanley Cup Finals with Anaheim and Detroit (two).
Fantilli’s decision won’t take long
Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen has made it clear that he believes first-round draft pick Adam Fantelli is ready to play in the NHL right away, and that he is “ready for his next challenge” after dominating as a freshman at the University of Michigan.
On Thursday, one day after the Blue Jackets selected third-place finisher Fantilli, the Blue Jackets met with him and his advisors—agent Pat Brisson and Fantilli’s parents—to discuss the matter. Kikalainen left the meeting optimistic that Fantelli would sign.
The signing is expected to happen quickly once Fantilli’s decision is made.
Fantilli will be in Columbus soon for the Blue Jackets’ annual development camp, which runs Sunday through Thursday in Chiller North. He is eligible to sign his basic three-year contract on Saturday, the start of the 2023-24 season.
player in, player out
Kekalainen said he did not expect the NHL draft to have an impact on the Blue Jackets’ plans in free agency. But then Fantilli fell into their arms at No. 3 when Anaheim bucked tradition and drafted center Leo Carlsson with the No. 2 pick.
Now, with Fantilli in the fold, the Blue Jackets have 17 forwards who are expected to either have regular lineup positions or have one-way contracts. Standard practice in the NHL is to carry 13 or 14 forwards during the regular season.
The back end is also jammed. There are eight defensemen with one-way contracts, plus rookie David Gerrick, who is expected to vie for a roster spot after a solid first professional season with AHL Cleveland this past season.
With that as a backdrop, the Blue Jackets are expected to run lightly on Saturday when free agency opens up across the league.
“That might make our decisions a little bit more difficult now because we feel we’re going to get a player on the roster (at Fantilli) for next season,” Kikalainen said. “We already have a large number of them. You can only have 23 on your roster, so we probably have to do something if we get into the UFA market.”
The Blue Jackets were expected to seek a position, either via free agency or to the commercial market. That could still happen, of course, but the Jackets’ midfield depth chart now includes six NHL favorites: Boone Jenner, Jack Roslovic, Cole Sillinger, Sean Kuraly, Dmitry Voronkov, and Fantilli.
It’s easy to move a center to the wing, but the Blue Jackets have an abundance of wingers, too. Johnny Goudreau, Kent Johnson and Alexandre Texier will battle it out for the best six minutes on the left side, and Patrick Lane, Kirill Marchenko and Igor Chinakov on the right side.
Bernie and Bjork will be back
The Blue Jackets only restricted free agents after a flurry of signings earlier this month were depth linebackers Tim Berni and Marcus Bjork, but both were off the market by Friday’s 5 p.m. deadline.
Bjork, 25, has signed a one-year, two-way contract that will pay him $775,000 at the NHL level and $375,000 in the American Hockey League.
Bernie, 23, has a qualifying bid of $874,125 for the 2023-24 season.
Both players have seen more action in Columbus this season – their first in North America – than anyone could have expected due to crushing injuries. Bernie has played in 59 games for the Blue Jackets, with an aggregate of 1-2-3. Björk played in 33 games and totaled 3-8-11.
development camp
The Blue Jackets were still working on finalizing their development camp roster as of Friday.
Kikalainen said all eight of the club’s selected sides were likely to attend over the weekend, including goalkeeper Melvin Strahl (Sweden) and Uiva Keskinen (Finland), who were traveling from Europe.
(Photo by Mike Babcock: Al Bello/Getty Images)
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