Interesting Info: Part XVI (All Jackets-related "tidbits" in here)

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EspenK

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Sep 25, 2011
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Interesting fact - 71 views no posts. Does Sam keep admiring his transition game to boost the count? :laugh:
 

CBJWerenski8

Formerly CBJWennberg10 (RIP Kivi)
Jun 13, 2009
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Aaron Portzline
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I will be off #CBJ beat and off Twitter for a few days, maybe longer. Pray for my family and hug your little ones. Hope to be back soon.
 

CBJSlash

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Aug 13, 2003
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If you look at what was available for the Preds in their expansion draft, it shouldn't be a surprise why they pummelled us for as long as they did. They got valuable, young pieces. We got Sanderson and Odelein (Spacek).

Mike Dunham
Tomas Vokoun
Andrew Brunette
Scott Walker
Kimmo Timonen for not taking Gary Galley
 

Arch City Zach

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Jun 10, 2011
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If you look at what was available for the Preds in their expansion draft, it shouldn't be a surprise why they pummelled us for as long as they did. They got valuable, young pieces. We got Sanderson and Odelein (Spacek).

Mike Dunham
Tomas Vokoun
Andrew Brunette
Scott Walker
Kimmo Timonen for not taking Gary Galley

Anyone have a list of the players not protected from our expansion draft? I know Nabokov was the one we should have taken, but I'd love to see who else was available.
 

Mayor Bee

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Dec 29, 2008
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If you look at what was available for the Preds in their expansion draft, it shouldn't be a surprise why they pummelled us for as long as they did. They got valuable, young pieces. We got Sanderson and Odelein (Spacek).

Mike Dunham
Tomas Vokoun
Andrew Brunette
Scott Walker
Kimmo Timonen for not taking Gary Galley

They didn't have a dumbass running their team.

Just to use the 2000 expansion draft, Nabokov was available and San Jose desperately wanted to keep him in their system. They traded with both Columbus and Minnesota.

Minnesota agreed to not take Nabokov and also sent San Jose an 8th-rounder; they received Andy Sutton, a 3rd-rounder, and a 7th-rounder. Columbus received a 9th-rounder, a conditional 2001 pick (that was apparently not fulfilled), and Jan Caloun.

Sutton was 25, had played 70+ NHL games the previous two seasons, and looked like he could stick in the league. Caloun was 28, had been out of North America for three seasons, and had shown that he could not stick unless the conditions of the game favored a wide-open style (which in 2000 was quite clearly not the case).

There was plenty available in the expansion draft to do one of two things:
- Be respectable early, and/or
- Accumulate enough guys who could be traded within the first two years to contending teams for a good return

But more often than not, Dougie was taking the 3rd- or 4th-best overall option from one position group from his own team. Jonas Andersson-Junkka had never played in North American before and was 25; to take him, Dougie passed on Peter Popovic, John Slaney, Dan Trebil, and Stefan Bergqvist. Out of five defensemen Pittsburgh exposed, he took the 5th-best option.

But it wasn't just Andersson-Junkka over the other four. It was Mattias Timander over Don Sweeney, Robert Kron over Andrei Kovalenko and Martin Gelinas, Radim Bicanek over Kevin Dean and Doug Zmolek, Jamie Pushor over Shawn Chambers and Sylvain Cote, and at least ten more like this.

Far be it from me to psychoanalyze someone (possibly because I'm not qualified, possibly because I remember Gene Mauch's "not one of you in this room is smart enough to analyze me!"), but this all sums up Doug's shortfalls as a GM.

1) He's incredibly impulsive. This would bear out time and time and time again during his tenure, but he vacillates between having limitless patience and no patience. He had endless patience with his prospects, and then would swing wildly to the other side at the drop of a hat. Trust me; I'm impulsive and I recognize this in others.

Look at the expansion draft itself. He starts off by saying that he wants a physical, grinding team, then takes Geoff Sanderson with the first pick of forwards.

2) He's charismatic. This is a positive at times, but there's a bad tendency with charismatic individuals to both overstate their ability to get things done and to believe in their own genius. Kiel McLeod says he won't sign anywhere if he's drafted? He hasn't met me yet; he'll change his mind. Tyler Wright hasn't looked like an NHL player since the day he was drafted? That'll change; I wouldn't think drafting him was a great idea if it wasn't going to change. Dallas Drake doesn't want to play for an expansion team? Give me five minutes of talking to him and we'll see who wants to play where.

3) By believing in himself to a fault, he becomes blind to other possibilities. Tunnel vision, if you will. A grinding team makes sense in certain conditions, a wide-open team in other conditions. Dave King made sense as a Tortorella-lite coach under certain conditions; it made no sense with a veteran-laden expansion team. The actual process of the draft, and the expansion draft, seemed to catch him off guard. This is why 2002 was so shocking to me: the possibility existed of getting caught in a very unfavorable position, and he made an aggressive move to go up and not get caught. It's possibly the only example of true foresight he demonstrated in seven years.
 
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GoJackets1

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Aug 21, 2008
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The most notable player on that list to me, was an Artern Anisimov picked by the Wild.

Edit: Upon a Google search, looks like there was another Artem Anisimov drafted by the Flyers in the mid 90's who never came over to play. Huh.

I also noticed Detroit had a lot of pretty good unprotected players..
 

Tulipunaruusu*

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Apr 27, 2014
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Minnesota agreed to not take Nabokov and also sent San Jose an 8th-rounder; they received Andy Sutton, a 3rd-rounder, and a 7th-rounder. Columbus received a 9th-rounder, a conditional 2001 pick (that was apparently not fulfilled), and Jan Caloun.

Sutton was 25, had played 70+ NHL games the previous two seasons, and looked like he could stick in the league. Caloun was 28, had been out of North America for three seasons, and had shown that he could not stick unless the conditions of the game favored a wide-open style (which in 2000 was quite clearly not the case).

Caloun was key offensive star acquired during the time when Jarmo Kekäläinen assembled HIFK, one of the best European teams during the change of millenium era. Hell, Caloun topped off with +30 points total compared to anyone else on the team that featured plenty of future NHLers and it isn't like it was unheard that you would get a chance to play for a NHL team after putting those kind of numbers out in perhaps the best league in Europe for that time.

His NHL numbers before the acquisation were also 11 points in 13 games... with one huge offensive AHL season.
 

Mayor Bee

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Dec 29, 2008
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Haha! Martin St. Louis is on that list. So is Paul Coffey but he was definitely at the end of his career.

St. Louis had few more productive years. :laugh:

There were a ton of guys who could have either played and then been flipped for good assets, or else left as UFAs and netted compensatory picks for.

Anaheim - Fredrik Olausson, Kevin Haller
Boston - Don Sweeney
Carolina - Martin Gelinas, Paul Coffey, Andrei Kovalenko, Curtis Leschyshyn
Chicago - Doug Zmolek, Derek Plante
Colorado - Dave Andreychuk, Greg de Vries, Alexei Gusarov
Dallas - Sylvain Cote
Detroit - Igor Larionov, Larry Murphy

And so on. I don't feel like picking apart the rest of the list right now, but you get the idea.
 

Mayor Bee

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Dec 29, 2008
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Caloun was key offensive star acquired during the time when Jarmo Kekäläinen assembled HIFK, one of the best European teams during the change of millenium era. Hell, Caloun topped off with +30 points total compared to anyone else on the team that featured plenty of future NHLers and it isn't like it was unheard that you would get a chance to play for a NHL team after putting those kind of numbers out in perhaps the best league in Europe for that time.

His NHL numbers before the acquisation were also 11 points in 13 games... with one huge offensive AHL season.

I remember Caloun from his San Jose days, and I followed international hockey to an unusual extent all during the 1990s (as in, I may have been the only person in Ohio who was familiar with Brian Rafalski before he ever came to North American pro hockey). That Caloun had offensive skill isn't in question, but obviously there's a massive difference between producing points in the AHL and on the big ice compared to doing it in the NHL. In addition, the NHL was going through a major leaguewide scoring drought, further impairing the ability of offensive players to produce.

Esa Keskinen was available in the expansion draft, but no one suggested picking him up for the same reason (well, besides age). Petteri Nummelin was picked up and played the one season in Columbus. They were great players who were all ill-suited to play in the NHL at that time; the game was suffocating offensive skill. If Columbus had started in 2005, concurrent with the league's crackdown on penalties, they'd have put up huge numbers.
 

Tulipunaruusu*

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Apr 27, 2014
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I remember Caloun from his San Jose days, and I followed international hockey to an unusual extent all during the 1990s (as in, I may have been the only person in Ohio who was familiar with Brian Rafalski before he ever came to North American pro hockey). That Caloun had offensive skill isn't in question, but obviously there's a massive difference between producing points in the AHL and on the big ice compared to doing it in the NHL. In addition, the NHL was going through a major leaguewide scoring drought, further impairing the ability of offensive players to produce.

Yeah, of course he wasn't a sure thing and with a more cynical approach better results could have been achieved through team building.

It's just that Caloun's stature in Finland through his body of work made him the single most dangerous offensive threat in whole league during that NHL expansion era. He very well might have been the top foreign player in then very good SM-liiga for the time when Columbus entered into larger existence - not just another Simon Hjalmarsson. So I can't blame them for drooling after him even if it didn't work out.
 
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