Blue Jackets 1, Golden Kn

Columbus Blue Jackets News Clips Dec. 18-19, 2018

Columbus Blue Jackets PAGE 02: Columbus Dispatch: Blue Jackets 1, Golden Knights 0: Jackets find way to win tight game PAGE 04: Columbus Dispatch: Blue Jackets: Right mix of offense, defense proves elusive PAGE 06: Columbus Dispatch: Blue Jackets want to stay the course against up-tempo Golden Knights PAGE 09: The Athletic: G33: No Panarin, no problem; Blue Jackets scrap their way to win over Vegas PAGE 13: The Athletic: On the Blue Jackets’ decision to protect Josh Anderson in the expansion draft, and his side deal with John Tortorella PAGE 16: Columbus Dispatch: Artemi Panarin expected back 'very soon' PAGE 18: Columbus Dispatch: Shuffled forward lines get results PAGE 20: Columbus Dispatch: Blue Jackets 1, Golden Knights 0: Five takeaways PAGE 23: Columbus Dispatch: The epic tale of Nationwide Arena: How its construction put life in the Blue Jackets and a heart in downtown Columbus

Cleveland Monsters/Prospects

NHL/Websites PAGE 38: The Athletic: Revealing GM tendencies: Which NHL GMs trade the most? When do they like to deal? PAGE 49: TSN.CA: Hakstol fired amid one of bloodiest stretches for NHL coaches ever

Blue Jackets 1, Golden Knights 0 | Jackets find way to win tight game

By Brian Hedger, Columbus Dispatch – December 17, 2018

It wasn’t easy, but the Blue Jackets were rewarded this time for playing a strong game.

The defense was stingy, Sergei Bobrovsky notched his first shutout of the season and captain Nick Foligno scored the only goal in his 800th career NHL game to upend the Vegas Golden Knights 1-0 in front of 15,008 on Monday night at Nationwide Arena.

“You’ve got to learn from your experiences, and in this game, it was, ‘Who’s going to break first?’ ” said Foligno, who scored his eighth goal 40 seconds into the third period. “We talk about that a lot. The game is kind of a stalemate at first and then all of a sudden, it’s that one opportunity and finding the way to put it in the back of the net when you have that chance.”

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The captain found it and the Blue Jackets (18-12-3) improved to 2-2-1 in the first five games of a season- high, six-game homestand. They capitalized in a game that presented a good chance to bounce back from a 2-1 overtime loss Saturday to the Anaheim Ducks, but it was harder than it could have been.

Despite playing without star Artemi Panarin, who is day-to-day with a lower-body injury, Columbus faced a team playing the finale of a back-to-back and starting a backup goaltender who hadn’t played in a month.

Not only that, but Malcolm Subban was 0-4-0 with a bloated 4.03 goals-against average, frigid .859 save percentage and had allowed seven goals the last time he played, a 7-2 loss Nov. 19 at the Calgary Flames.

Combine all that with the Jackets playing much better defensively and one might think it might stack up to a multi-goal victory for the home team. Instead, it was just the opposite. Columbus outplayed Vegas for two periods, dominating the second, but had nothing to show for it starting the third.

It was scoreless after 40 minutes despite the Blue Jackets holding the edge in shots (21-14), attempted shots (31-22) and scoring chances — which according to the website naturalstattrick.com favored the Blue Jackets 16-8 overall and 12-3 in the second period.

The opportunities were numerous, but Subban denied them all until Foligno finally beat him.

“When you play the right way and you focus so much defensively on your game that way, you just want to finally start getting those goals,” Foligno said. “We could feel it coming.”

That’s probably because they had come so close to scoring.

Anthony Duclair, filling in for Panarin on the top line, was denied off a mini-breakaway in the first period — Subban making a nice skate save at the left post. In the second, defenseman Seth Jones hit the left post and forward Lukas Sedlak hit Subban’s left shoulder with slap shot, inches away from goals each time.

Meanwhile, the defense remained solid and Bobrovsky was sharp — especially in the latter half of the third with a 1-0 lead.

“I thought that’s where Bob was outstanding and made some great saves there,” coach John Tortorella said. “The first two periods, he really didn’t have to work. We’re involved in these close games and I think we’ve handled ourselves pretty well. Tonight, we found a way to get the result.”

Blue Jackets | Right mix of offense, defense proves elusive

By Brian Hedger, Columbus Dispatch – December 17, 2018

It’s a balancing act the Blue Jackets might be trying to solve all season.

They don’t want to play too many games in which goals are handed out like Oprah handing out cars, but they also would like to score a little more than a couple of goals a game — the way they’ve scored goals all season until a recent dedication to solidifying themselves defensively.

Before facing the Vegas Golden Knights on Monday at Nationwide Arena, Columbus had scored 107 goals and ranked eighth in the NHL with 3.34 goals per game. The Jackets also were ranked 23rd in goals allowed, though, yielding 104 for an average of 3.25 per game.

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“It is a balancing act, for sure,” defenseman Seth Jones said. “We can’t be over-aggressive and give up odd-man rushes. Our job is to keep the puck out of the net. You see, kind of, these more low-scoring type games this past week we’ve been in … we’ve got to find a way to win these. And that’s that.”

Prior to hitting a “reset” button of sorts after a 4-0 loss to the Washington Capitals to start the current six-game homestand, the Blue Jackets struggled to prevent turnovers and odd-man rushes. They ironed out a lot of those issues in three games prior to hosting Vegas, but also averaged just 2.33 goals and went 1-1-1.

“You don’t need to lose offense and try to score goals by giving up on defense or not concentrating on defense,” coach John Tortorella said. “One hand washes the other there. You play good defense, you’re going to get more offense. And we’re not taking our foot off the pedal in any means, as far as trying to create offense. It’s just making sure when we don’t have the puck that we’re in better position to get it back.”

Panarin out

About an hour before the opening face-off, the Blue Jackets announced Artemi Panarin wouldn’t play against the Golden Knights because of a lower-body injury.

Panarin, who’s listed as day-to-day, participated in the morning skate. It’s unclear what the injury is, when or how it occurred. Anthony Duclair, who’d been scratched in six of the previous eight games and the last two in a row, re-entered the lineup and skated in Panarin’s spot on the top line.

“There was a question mark during the (morning) skate,” Tortorella said. “We didn’t think it was going to come to this. I talked to (Duclair) and had him go for warmup, but we found out about an hour or so (before the game). When he came in, we listened to him and just had him tell us how he felt — and he wasn’t going to play.”

Moving parts

Zach Werenski moved from the third defense pairing to the second unit Saturday against Anaheim, playing that game with David Savard in the Jackets’ 2-1 overtime loss.

Tortorella didn’t disclose the defense pairings after the morning skate Monday, but said the main goal is simply getting Werenski straightened out.

“I’m not trying to find the right partner for him,” Tortorella said. “We’re trying to help his game. So, this year, we’ve been flexible in trying to find right pairs at certain times during the year. I’m not sure what they’ll be as we move forward.”

Quotable

“It’s not an ideal line, as far a makeup of a line, but I’m comfortable with the other three. So, it falls out that way a little bit. I’m not sure where we go with it.” — Tortorella, on a forward line of Lukas Sedlak, Alexander Wennberg and Oliver Bjorkstrand

Blue Jackets want to stay the course against up-tempo Golden Knights

By Brian Hedger, Columbus Dispatch – December 17, 2018

It’s a balancing act the Blue Jackets are still trying to solve.

They don’t want to play in too many games where goals are handed out like Oprah Winfrey used to hand out cars, but they’d also like to score a little more than they did last week — including a 2-1 overtime loss Saturday to the Anaheim Ducks.

Columbus outplayed Anaheim most of that game and even scored the first goal to lead 1-0 in the first period. The Jackets just couldn’t get another puck past goalie John Gibson and got just one point for their effort, which was better than getting no points in a similar 3-2 loss Tuesday against the Vancouver Canucks.

“I believe our goal-scoring will continue to come,” coach John Tortorella said after a morning skate Monday at Nationwide Arena. “You can’t get antsy or impatient because we only score one goal last game and open ourselves up.”

The Vegas Golden Knights are next up for the Blue Jackets, who have just two games left this week in their season-high, six-game homestand. Vegas is a team that likes to apply a lot of pressure in the offensive zone, create turnovers and run scores up off odd-man rushes.

Prior to hitting a “reset” button after a 4-0 loss to the Washington Capitals to start the homestand, Columbus struggled preventing turnovers and odd-man rushes. The past three games, the Jackets have significantly cut down their number of scoring chances allowed but haven’t scored enough goals off chances they’ve generated for themselves.

Columbus has out-chanced the past three opponents by about 10 per game, according to the coaching staff’s estimation, but has gone 1-1-1 and averaged just 2.33 goals per game. Tortorella is imploring patience.

“We have to continue to remedy the lack of positioning and the amount of odd-man rushes that we were giving up for a while, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that,” he said. “Regardless of the result, and that’s the key, we’ve got to stay with it.”

Seth Jones, the Jackets’ top defenseman, agrees.

“It is a balancing act, for sure,” he said. “We can’t be over-aggressive and give up odd-man rushes. Our job is to keep the puck out of the net. You see kind of these more low-scoring type games this past week we’ve been in, we’ve got to find a way to win these - and that’s that.”

THE MATCHUP

The Blue Jackets (17-12-3) are second in the Metropolitan Division, six points behind the Washington Capitals, and have earned points in their past two games.

The Golden Knights (19-14-2) are fourth in the Pacific Division, six points behind the first-place Calgary Flames. Vegas is coming off a 4-3 victory Sunday at the New York Rangers and has won three of its past

6 four. Since Nov. 21, the Golden Knights are 10-2-1 and ran off a season-high five-game winning streak Nov. 21-29.

Columbus held a full morning skate and is expected to start goalie Sergei Bobrovsky (12-10-1) for the third straight game. Bobrovsky has a 2.99 goals-against average and .901 save percentage. Vegas did not hold a morning skate and coach Gerard Gallant hasn’t disclosed his starting goalie. The Golden Knights’ No. 1 goalie, Marc-Andre Fleury (19-10-2, 2.58 GAA, .907) started Sunday in New York and has made 13 straight appearances.

INJURY FRONT

Vegas

The Golden Knights will be without speedy forward Erik Haula, who is on injured reserve with a lower- body injury.

Columbus

The Blue Jackets do not have any players on injured reserve and aren’t expected to have any injury or illness issues.

WHO’S HOT?

Vegas

Ducks center William Karlsson, formerly of the Blue Jackets, has eight goals and nine points in the past 11 games, while linemates Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith are looking to extend point streaks. Marchessault has a goal and two assists in a three-game point streak and Smith has two goals and two assists in a four-game point streak.

Columbus

Artemi Panarin has four goals, 12 assists and 16 points in the past 13 games, while linemate Cam Atkinson has 13 goals, 10 assists and 23 points in the past 16 games.

PROJECTED LINEUPS

GOLDEN KNIGHTS

Forwards

Jonathan Marchessault – William Karlsson – Reilly Smith

Max Pacioretty – Paul Stastny – Alex Tuch

Oscar Lindberg – Cody Eakin – Ryan Carpenter

Will Carrier – Pierre-Edouard Bellemare – Tomas Nosek

Defensemen

Brayden McNabb – Nate Schmidt

Shea Theodore - Nick Holden

Jon Merrill – Collin Miller

Goalie

Marc-Andre Fleury or Malcolm Subban

Also on the roster

RW Ryan Reaves, D Brad Hunt, D Deryk Engelland

BLUE JACKETS

Forwards

Artemi Panarin – Pierre-Luc Dubois – Cam Atkinson

Nick Foligno – Boone Jenner – Josh Anderson

Lukas Sedlak – Alexander Wennberg – Oliver Bjorkstrand

Markus Hannikainen – Brandon Dubinsky – Riley Nash

Defensemen

Ryan Murray – Seth Jones

Markus Nutivaara – David Savard

Zach Werenski – Scott Harrington

Goalie

Sergei Bobrovsky

Also on the roster

G Joonas Korpisalo, RW Anthony Duclair

G33: No Panarin, no problem; Blue Jackets scrap their way to win over Vegas

By Aaron Portzline, The Athletic – December 17, 2018

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Artemi Panarin complained of soreness during the morning skate Monday, but it wasn’t until the players began arriving at Nationwide Arena later in the day that a decision was made.

“We didn’t think it was going to come to this,” Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said. “We found out about an hour or so before the game — just listening to him tell us about how he felt — that (Panarin) wasn’t going to play.”

Tortorella told Anthony Duclair when he arrived at the rink that he was taking warmups and drawing into the lineup against Vegas after a series of healthy scratches. Then Tortorella set about to reconfigure the Blue Jackets’ lines to face one of the NHL’s top teams, not to mention one of the fastest.

What followed was a continuation of the Blue Jackets’ sterling defensive play of late, but also something different — they weren’t the team that cracked first.

Nick Foligno scored the game’s only goal 40 seconds into the third period, goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky made 28 saves for his first shutout of the season, and the Blue Jackets won a 1-0 thriller over the Golden Knights.

“Oh, it feels great,” Foligno said. “All the boys were excited to celebrate a goal and a big one at the time. When you focus so much defensively, you have to find a way to get those goals.

“That’s a big, big start to the third period. You can play the right way the rest of the game, and now they’re the ones chasing it, taking chances.”

Foligno was in the slot when Seth Jones’ slap shot was kicked out by Vegas goaltender Malcolm Subban. He scored off his backhand, his eighth of the season.

Bobrovsky, meanwhile, had 14 of his 28 saves in the third period. It was the Blue Jackets’ first shutout of the season and their first 1-0 win in more than a year: Dec. 9, 2017, versus Arizona.

The Blue Jackets have buttoned themselves down defensively after a wild stretch this season when they gushed scoring chances and let the neutral zone become an interstate. They appeared to fix it with just the snap of their fingers, allowing only seven goals in their last four games.

But as quickly as the goals against dried up, so has the goal scoring. Tortorella said the scoring chances have continued at the same pace as before — the Jackets had been at 20 or more the previous four games — but the Jackets haven’t finished on golden chances.

That, coupled with the absence of their most talented forward, portended trouble Monday against Vegas.

“I was so proud of the guys the way we answered tonight,” Foligno said.

Tortorella put Duclair in Panarin’s spot, not only at five-on-five play — on the left side of center Pierre- Luc Dubois and right wing Cam Atkinson — but on the top power play unit.

He also flipped struggling Alex Wennberg with Boone Jenner, putting Wennberg between Foligno and Josh Anderson and Jenner between Lukas Sedlak and Oliver Bjorkstrand.

“I probably wouldn’t have changed the lines if we didn’t have the injury,” Tortorella said. “I thought we were playing well going into this game, so I didn’t want to change things up. But this gave me an opportunity to try some different things.”

The Blue Jackets are 2-0 with Panarin out of the lineup. They have two days off before hosting New Jersey, but there’s no word on how long Panarin (lower body) might be sidelined.

Notebook

• The shutout was the 25th of Bobrovsky’s career, all with Columbus. His last was March 22 versus Florida. “All games are fun to play,” Bobrovsky said. “When game is tight, it’s interesting to play. In the third period, that started to push. All the guys did a good job to box them out and allow me to see the puck.”

• Bobrovsky made 14 of his saves in the third period, when the Golden Knights started to crank it up a bit. Tortorella: “It got a little scary there in the second part of the third period. That’s where Bob was outstanding, made some great saves there. The first two periods he barely had work. We’re involved in these close games, and I think we’ve handled ourselves pretty well.”

• When Bobrovsky arrived from Philadelphia before the 2012-13 season, he was without a shutout in his NHL career. The 25 he’s had with Columbus are sixth-most in the NHL since the start of the 2012-13 season. Those with more: Marc-Andre Fleury and Braden Holtby (31), Tuukka Rask (30), Pekka Rinne (28) and Jonathan Quick (26).

• Foligno was playing his 800th NHL game — 351 with Ottawa and 449 with Columbus. “I feel young,” he said postgame. “I feel like we’ve got 800 more in me.”

• Foligno is not a big guy for milestones. But there are two he wants to complete during his career, one a personal marker for longevity and the other the greatest trophy in sports. “My dad (Mike) had the silver stick (1,000 games) in our house, and I got to be part of that celebration as a kid, and I always thought that was pretty cool,” Foligno said. “It’s a big deal to hit 1,000 games. That one’s big. But I want a Stanley Cup. Now that’s a cool milestone.”

• Wennberg went 11 of 14 in the faceoff circle, one of his best games this season. He was 7 of 9 against old friend William Karlsson, Vegas’ No. 1 center. You can bet that stat will play well in Stockholm next summer when they hang. The Jackets won 31 of 49 faceoffs in the game.

• Tortorella has had Duclair out of the lineup frequently because he’s grown weary of his play away from the puck. After a hot start to the season, Duclair had been a healthy scratch in six of the last eight games prior to Monday.

• Duclair played 16:36, had two shots on goal and one blocked shot. He was noticeable. Here’s Tortorella: “I thought Duke … the speed that he can show, some of the things he can do. I just hope he understands the other part of it, because I’d love to keep him in the lineup. But that’s gonna fall on him.”

• Duclair made a brilliant pass out of the Blue Jackets’ zone in the first period, gathering the puck with his back to the play and immediately chucking it behind him to help spring Cam Atkinson on a two-on- one rush with Jones.

• Since the Blue Jackets had their “No, Seriously Guys, Let’s Start Checking” meeting a little more than a week ago, they’ve allowed only seven goals in four games. Three of those were deflected goals, while two were sloppy goals allowed by Bobrovsky and Joonas Korpisalo. The Blue Jackets have been cursing their “puck luck,” because on the other end of the rink they’ve had glorious scoring chances come up empty, either by hellacious goaltending saves, the crossbar or some such debris. It sounds like a loser’s lament, but the Blue Jackets hoped it would turn around and quickly.

• Here’s Tortorella: “I knew … well, I didn’t know, I just felt … if you remember the play (third period), Jonesy (Seth Jones) makes a great stick check on a guy. Bob is looking the other way. The puck bounces and hits the post. Instead of going in the net, it hit the post. I felt right there that we had a chance to win the game. We’ve just had so much bad puck luck. It’s good to get the result.”

• Karlsson had a rough night: He played 17:55, was minus-1, with one shot on goal and 4 of 16 on faceoffs.

• Vegas went 2-1-1 on a four-game road trip, but its season so far has been nothing more than a series of road trips. This was game No. 36 for the Golden Knights, 22 of which have been on the road. That’s a lot of home dates to make up and a lot of reason for optimism. The Knights are 10-3-1 at home this season and 39-13-3 all-time.

• The Blue Jackets are off Tuesday. Back to work with a 1 p.m. practice Wednesday.

Analytically speaking

The Athletic’s hockey data dynamo Alison Lukan provided these insights into the Blue Jackets’ win:

• Did the Jackets deserve to win Monday’s game? Once again, it was truly a team effort. On the game as a whole, the Jackets gave the Golden Knights a slight advantage in five-on-five shot attempts (47.13 percent), which earned a slim edge in scoring chances (51.22 percent) and high-danger attempts (53.33 percent). But those totals are tempered by a third period that saw the Jackets withstand a Vegas surge wherein the visitors doubled up the home team on shot attempts (24-13) and scoring chances (12-5). But it was then that Bobrovsky stepped up.

• The goaltender faced 22 shot attempts in the first two periods but matched that performance and more in the final period alone for a final total of 50 attempts against, 28 on target, zero in the net. Bobrovsky’s final save percentage was 6.6 percent above where it was expected to be. And don’t discount the work Subban did. The Jackets were expected to score 2.86 goals, but could only manage one with Subban saving 1.89 goals above average.

• The Duclair – Dubois – Atkinson trio stayed intact through mostly all of Duclair’s 9:38 in five-on-five play, and Duclair ended the evening plus-1 in shot attempts and minus-1 in scoring chances.

• Wennberg’s line, with Foligno and Anderson, was primarily matched against Vegas’ top line of Karlsson, Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith. Wennberg and company got the best of the Golden Knights’ trio, going plus-1 in both shot attempts and scoring chances and plus-2 in high-danger attempts.

Another game, another monster night for the Seth Jones-Ryan Murray pairing. They led all Blue Jackets in shot attempt percentage (63.16), scoring chance percentage (65 percent) and high-danger attempt percentage (75.0 percent).

On the Blue Jackets’ decision to protect Josh Anderson in the expansion draft, and his side deal with John Tortorella

By Aaron Portzline, The Athletic – December 17, 2018

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Most players respond well to John Tortorella’s style of coaching, but some bristle under his competitive fire and brutal honesty. And then there’s Blue Jackets forward Josh Anderson, who took an unusual step earlier this season.

Anderson asked Tortorella for more Torts.

“When you’re not playing that well, you need to hear it from somebody else, not just the guys in the room, but the head coach,” Anderson said. “It gives you that energy.

“Torts has been pretty good. He’s been talking to me every third game or whatnot, just to keep on top of me and make sure that I’m being physical and skating, things like that. It’s helped me in the long run.”

Anderson is a 6-foot-3, 225-pound forward, a virtual giant in today’s NHL. He skates more than well enough to keep up, allowing him to play a power forward’s game in a league that’s been turned over to smaller, skilled players in recent years.

In many ways, his junior career with the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League prepared him to play under Tortorella. Former NHLers Dale and Mark Hunter, who own and operate the Knights, are known for their tough, unbending ways, too.

Anderson asked Tortorella for a more hands-on approach because he noticed his game having too many ups and downs. It’s a move very few players have made in Tortorella’s 18-year run as an NHL head coach.

“He admitted to himself that he needs more help and he needs more push,” Tortorella said. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for a player like that.

“It wasn’t ‘Come scream at me,’ It was just reminders. Once a week I’ll go to him after he plays a couple of good games and say, ‘OK, that’s done. Let’s have a good practice and be ready to go for the next game. You can be better.’

“There are some games where he struggles and you say, ‘Put it away, get ready for the next one.’ It’s not a meeting in my office. Sometimes it’s just skating by at practice and saying, ‘Josh, be ready to go tomorrow night.’ Those little reminders help, and I respect him for coming to me and presenting that to me.”

Keeping Anderson over Karlsson

The Blue Jackets drafted Anderson in the fourth round (No. 95 overall) in the 2012 draft, one of the rare “finds” the organization has mined out of the later rounds.

Credit to Blue Jackets management, too, for bringing Anderson along the right way. For years, the Blue Jackets vowed to develop talent the right way, but a dearth of talent at the NHL level rushed many players straight to the top.

Anderson spent two seasons in junior after he was drafted, then played two full seasons in the American Hockey League, winning the Calder Cup with AHL Cleveland in 2016.

All the while, the Blue Jackets were elated with what Anderson could bring to Columbus’ roster.

Anderson, 24, is tied with No. 1 center Pierre-Luc Dubois for second on the club with 13 goals, putting him on pace to score 33 goals this season. His plus-15 rating is tops on the club.

“There aren’t very many players with that combination of size and speed,” Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen said. “And I don’t care what anybody says if you have a guy that size that can play and keep up with today’s game — and that’s no problem for Josh — it’s a game-changer.

“If you take Josh out of our lineup, we’re a different team. He has an element that very few players have in today’s game.”

When the Blue Jackets host the Vegas Golden Knights on Monday, it will be impossible to watch the game without thinking about the decision the Blue Jackets made two summers ago.

Fearing they’d lose a player within their cluster of young talent — Anderson was top of the list, but center Alexander Wennberg and goaltender Joonas Korpisalo were also included — the Blue Jackets bent over backward to make an expansion trade with Vegas GM George McPhee.

They agreed to let the Golden Knights take center William Karlsson so they could protect that cluster. But when Karlsson went on to have a career year in 2017-18 — he was third in the league with 43 goals — the Blue Jackets took considerable heat.

Here’s the thing, though: if presented today with a choice — keeping Anderson or Karlsson? — the Blue Jackets might, after gnashing of teeth and shouting it out as a hockey operations department, decide to keep Anderson all over again.

The Athletic did a (highly) unscientific and anonymous survey of NHL types — front office, coaches, scouts, national media, etc. — asking them the same question: “Not taking into consideration the rosters or contracts, would you trade Josh Anderson for William Karlsson?”

Twenty-nine people were contacted, 23 responded. Fifteen said they would not trade Anderson for Karlsson, and eight said they would.

From the pro-Karlsson camp: “Karlsson is the real deal. He’s proven in Vegas that he has the speed and skill and a 200-foot game.”

From the pro-Anderson camp: “That’s a ton of goals from a guy who can fight Chara.”

Still on the rise

Anderson said he hasn’t forgotten the Blue Jackets’ decision to protect him in the expansion draft.

“It’s always in the back of my mind,” he said. “I’m here for a reason. They did a lot to protect me, so I owe it back to them to develop as a player and give it all I have every game.

“Obviously they saw something in me the first year I was here. But I still have room for improvement. I think I have a long ways to go, like I can get better each year.”

Tortorella talks frequently about his young players having “high ceilings,” but he says that more about Anderson than any other player.

In a league that’s increasingly moved away from physical play and fighting, Anderson gives the Blue Jackets an advantage over most teams, because he can play a top-six role.

For the past six weeks, he’s played on the right side of a line with center Boone Jenner and left wing Nick Foligno, the Blue Jackets’ second line.

“There aren’t too many guys like him (in the NHL),” Tortorella said. “I don’t want to compare them, because I know Josh hates it. But there’s a guy in Washington who’s helped that team, the Wilson kid.

“(Tom Wilson) plays a similar style and helped that club get to the pinnacle, as far as winning the Stanley Cup. Josh has a chance to really lead this team in that type of position, as a power forward, to get over the hump.”

Anderson bristles at the comparison because the name “Tom Wilson” comes with a lot of baggage. Wilson has been suspended by the NHL four times in a little more than one year because of illegal hits; Anderson has never been suspended.

But, the Capitals play Wilson high in the lineup, on the power play and on the penalty kill, and he’s a big player (6-foot-4, 218) who brings speed and snarl to their top lines.

Anderson was taken off the power play earlier this season after a rough game in Florida on Oct. 11. But he’s worked his way back to being on the power play and the penalty kill.

“We had a conversation, me and Torts, after that game where he said we need better out of you,” Anderson said. “You have to clean up your five-on-five game.”

So began the side deal between Anderson and Tortorella. He wants the veteran coach to remind him, constantly, of where he’s at and where he needs to be.

Tortorella is all too happy to remind him.

When Anderson went head-first into a goal post late in the second period of a game vs. Vancouver last week, Tortorella noted that Anderson tried desperately to get back into the game, but team doctors wouldn’t allow him to return.

“I think what he feels now is how we depend on him as a player in our lineup,” Tortorella said. “I don’t think he wants to let anybody down. He’s a very important guy for us right now in our organization.”

Artemi Panarin expected back 'very soon'

By Brian Hedger, Columbus Dispatch – December 18, 2018

Artemi Panarin isn’t expected to be out long because of the injury that kept him out of the Blue Jackets’ lineup Monday.

The Jackets’ co-leading scorer missed a 1-0 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights because of an undisclosed lower-body injury, but agent Dan Milstein told The Dispatch on Tuesday that Panarin’s injury is “minor” and he should be ready “very soon.”

Panarin, who’s status is day-to-day, used the morning skate Monday to test out the injury. He left Nationwide Arena expected to play but returned later with a different prognosis.

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Anthony Duclair skated in his spot at left wing on the top line, and coach John Tortotella also decided to reconfigure the second and third lines.

The Blue Jackets didn’t practice Tuesday, and the team didn’t issue any further updates about Panarin’s availability for practice Wednesday or the next game Thursday against the New Jersey Devils — the finale of a season-high, six-game homestand.

As for Panarin’s unresolved contract situation, Milstein said it was not discussed during a recent meeting in Russia with Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen. After meeting last month in Detroit, Milstein said they reconnected during the recent Channel One Cup tournament held last week in Moscow.

“We discussed various subjects, including free agents,” Milstein said. ”(There was) no discussion regarding Panarin. We (will) discuss it after the NHL All-Star (weekend).”

In November, following his previous meeting with Kekalainen, Milstein said he would meet with Panarin during the Jackets’ mandated bye week (Jan. 20-24) to discuss business. That week leads into the All- Star weekend.

Kekalainen, who’s still in Russia, could not be reached.

Prospect update

Milstein is also the agent for Vladislav Gavrikov, a 23-year-old Blue Jackets prospect playing his second season with SKA St. Petersburg in the Kontinental Hockey League.

Gavrikov, a 6-foot-3, 205-pound defenseman, was selected in the sixth round of the 2015 NHL draft. He’s in the last year of his KHL contract and will meet with Milstein at the end of the season to discuss his future, which could include a transition to North America for the Blue Jackets.

Gavrikov, a left-handed shooter, has three goals and nine assists in 35 games this season, along with a rating of plus-33. Last year, he finished with five goals, 14 points and a plus-21 rating in 50 KHL games,

16 and played in two international tournaments — helping the Olympic Athletes of Russia win gold at the Winter Olympics in South Korea.

Shuffled forward lines get results

By Brian Hedger, Columbus Dispatch – December 18, 2018

Hard decisions are the kind NHL coaches love to make, because good teams are usually the ones facing them.

In a nutshell, that is where we find Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella 33 games into the season. His roster is rich with skilled forwards, but there are only six spots to fill on the top two lines — leaving little to zero room for Alexander Wennberg, Oliver Bjorkstrand and Anthony Duclair.

“I don’t think you want to put (Duclair and Bjorkstrand) onto a line like a (Boone Jenner-Nick Foligno- Josh Anderson) line,” Tortorella said, referring to a trio of forwards who have dashed and mashed their way into becoming an atypical second line. “I think they fit with a (Wennberg), a playmaking center, or a (Pierre-Luc Dubois), who basically does a lot of things. That’s the problem sometimes, is there’s not enough room when there’s some other guys going.”

It’s a good problem to have, if you ask a coach or general manager, but it’s still a problem nonetheless.

Previously this season, Tortorella has said he’s not fond of Wennberg centering a third line with Duclair and Bjorkstrand on the wings — citing their skill-based playing styles as a poor fit for a checking line.

At the same time, spreading them over the third and fourth lines has also been an issue. They’ve been outmuscled on both sides of the puck, and their puck-possession has lagged.

So, what’s the solution?

Tortorella took another stab at it Monday in a 1-0 victory over the Vegas Golden Knights, using Artemi Panarin’s unexpected lower-body injury to reconfigure his top three lines.

Duclair, who had expected to be a healthy scratch, skated in Panarin’s spot on the top line. Wennberg moved up to center the second line, playing with Foligno and Anderson, while Jenner moved to the middle of the third line with Lukas Sedlak and Bjorkstrand.

The results were noticeable. The Jackets dominated puck possession, despite missing Panarin, and they scored the only goal when Foligno’s persistence paid off 40 seconds into the third period.

Duclair and Bjorkstrand each contributed positively, including Duclair filling in admirably for Panarin, and Tortorella acknowledged it afterward.

“I do think they played good tonight, and I think they’re certainly mindful of how hard they have to play,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll make hard decisions and they continue to try to play the right way.”

Earlier in the day, he acknowledged how difficult it’s become to find the right combination for the third line — which has most often featured Wennberg at center. Flanking him with Duclair and Bjorkstrand hasn’t clicked yet, but breaking up the other three lines doesn’t seem like the best answer either.

It’s like having three sides of a Rubik’s Cube complete and the fourth a mishmash of color.

“It’s not an ideal line, as far as makeup of a line, but I’m comfortable with the other three,” Tortorella said. “So, it falls out that way a little bit. I’m not sure where we go with it.”

Blue Jackets 1, Golden Knights 0 | Five takeaways

By Brian Hedger, Columbus Dispatch – December 18, 2018

They’re still not converting a lot of scoring chances, but all it took was one for the Blue Jackets to win Monday night at Nationwide Arena.

Thanks to a shutout effort in net by Sergei Bobrovsky and captain Nick Foligno’s eighth goal of the season, in his 800th career NHL game, the Jackets prevailed 1-0 against the Vegas Golden Knights.

In a way, it was the perfect rebound from a 2-1 overtime loss Saturday to the Anaheim Ducks in a similar game that had a sour ending. This is how the Blue Jackets would like to play now, defensively sound, even if it means more nail-biters that keep everybody on edge.

And, if things get a little crazy, they’ll take wins that way too.

“To compete in this league and be a good team in this league, you’ve got to be able to play in both situations,” coach John Tortorella said. “You’ve got to be able to play in close games and sometimes it gets wacky. You’ve got to be able to handle those types of ebbs and flows and momentums of the game. I think we have the ability to do both.”

They proved it Monday, improving their record during this homestand to 2-2-1 with one game left Thursday against the New Jersey Devils.

Here are five takeaways from it:

1) The Panarin situation

Artemi Panarin, the Jackets’ star left wing and co-leading scorer, participated fully in a morning skate at Nationwide Arena. There were no outward signs of an injury, even though he was testing something out. Upon his return to the rink in the late afternoon, the decision was made to sit him with an undisclosed lower-body injury.

Anthony Duclair drew back into the lineup, skating in Panarin’s spot at left wing on the top line, and Tortorella decided to make a couple other line changes too.

“There was a question mark during the (morning) skate,” coach John Tortorella said. “We didn’t think it was going to come to this. I talked to (Duclair) and had him go for warmup, but we found out about an hour or so (before the game). When (Panarin) came in, we listened to him and just had him tell us how he felt - and he wasn’t going to play.”

Panarin is day-to-day, so it’s thought to be a relatively minor issue.

2) Duclair has a night

The effect part of the cause-and-effect attached to Panarin’s absence was Duclair, who played one of his strongest games this season. Despite not scoring a goal, he didn’t look out of place on a line with two skilled players – center Pierre-Luc Dubois and Cam Atkinson – and he was around the net a lot.

Duclair finished with two shots, including a mini-breakaway stuffed at the left post by Malcolm Subban, and played a solid 16:36 on 20 shifts. Duclair had been scratched the previous two games and expected to sit in a third straight. His plans changed quickly.

“I got to the rink and they told me I was going to do warmups,” Duclair said. “I didn’t even think (playing) was a possibility. I didn’t even know about (Panarin’s) injury. When I got the call, I was a bit surprised but I just had to be ready for it.”

Duclair’s situation wasn’t the only change in the forward lines. Tortorella also moved Alexander Wennberg up to center a line with Foligno and Josh Anderson, while moving Boone Jenner into the center slot of Wennberg’s former line – skating with Lukas Sedlak and Oliver Bjorkstrand.

″(Panarin’s injury) gave me the opportunity to change the lines a little bit, trying to get Wenny going putting him in more of an offensive position,” Tortorella said. “I probably wouldn’t have changed the lines if we didn’t have the injury, but I think it made it easier to change the lines ... I think it did add some freshness to us.”

3) Mr. 800 is Mr. Clutch

Foligno wore a Blue Jackets baseball cap on his head and a big red welt on his right cheek after the game, the result of being mashed headfirst into the end boards in the second period.

The welt was courtesy of Golden Knights defenseman Deryk Engelland, who was penalized two minutes for crosschecking and appeared to apologize to Foligno immediately after it happened.

“Never fun to get your face hammered into the glass,” Foligno quipped.

No, but scoring a clutch game-winning goal in career game No. 800 was probably enjoyable – even though that’s not the milestone the Jackets’ captain wants most.

“I always look at 1,000 (games),” he said, thinking of the 1,018 games that his dad, Mike, played for five NHL teams over 16 seasons. “My dad had the silver stick in our house and I got to be a part of that celebration as a kid, and I always thought that was pretty cool. It’s a big deal to hit 1,000 games, so I think that one’s big. I want a Stanley Cup. That’s a cool milestone.”

Both are still within sight.

4) A new way to win

The Blue Jackets have played some wild games this season and they’ve won most of them. They’ve won by scores of 6-3, 7-4, 7-3, 7-5 and have also lost 8-2 and 9-6 in one that we shall soon never speak of again, a couple weeks ago against Calgary.

They’ve also played 12 games in which seven combined goals were scored and went 8-3-1 in them.

What we’re seeing right now, however, is Blue Jackets 2.0, post “reset button” version. Since the other game that we shall soon never speak of again, a hideous 4-0 loss to the Washington Capitals to start the current homestand, this has been a different team altogether.

This version actively works to cut down on mistakes that lead to odd-man rushes and numerous goals allowed. This version is tougher through the neutral zone, trying to create turnovers going the right direction. This version is more disciplined defensively, but also less likely to score goals – so far, anyway.

The Jackets have still created scoring chances the past four games, but they might not be the same brand of scoring chances they generated playing all that fast-break hockey to start the season.

It’s a tighter game they’re playing now, which is ultimately a good thing because it’s a more sustainable style over the long-term. It takes patience, though, and a lot of belief that key goals will go their way. Winning 1-0 in a game they dominated could be a good first step in that direction.

“The belief starts to come in,” Foligno said. “I think it’s always been there, but you need to be rewarded when you’re going through that. You just want something good to happen, but you can only do it by playing the right way. You can’t hope for it to happen. You have to go out and do it. I thought slowly we’ve started to get that message across and tonight we reaped the benefits of it. It’s huge for our morale.”

5) Bobrovsky’s big third

This was Bobrovsky’s first shutout of the season and 25th of his NHL career, all since the Blue Jackets traded to get him from the Philadelphia Flyers in 2013.

Unlike a number of the first 24, this one was pretty straight forward until the latter half of the third period. That’s when the Golden Knights made their last-gasp push to tie it, trailing 1-0.

According to the website naturalstattrick.com, Vegas dominated puck-possession and scoring chances in the third period. The Golden Knights outshot the Blue Jackets 14-10 in the third, took almost 65 percent of all shot attempts in the period and had a 12-5 edge in scoring chances.

Bobrovsky turned them all away in a game they needed him to be perfect.

“He played outstanding tonight,” Foligno said. “Anytime he’s playing like that, you just feel so confident and comfortable when he’s back there. It was no different tonight.”

The epic tale of Nationwide Arena: How its construction put life in the Blue Jackets and a heart in downtown Columbus

By Tom Reed, The Athletic – December 18, 2018

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Less than 48 hours before Tim McGraw and Faith Hill opened Nationwide Arena on Sept. 9, 2000, a soundcheck was being conducted by men who didn’t know a mixing console from an amplifier.

On the virgin ice surface, a morning skate was underway that didn’t involve any Blue Jackets, but men with no hockey experience or blades on their feet.

“I don’t even know if I’m supposed to say this, but we just partied,” said Jeff Asman, president of The Painting Company and one of the hundreds of workers who helped build Nationwide Arena. “We got some beer. I went out to my vehicle and grabbed some CDs and just cranked the music while some of the guys just slid across the ice.”

In the wee hours of Sept. 8, after the last bolt had been tightened and final coat of paint applied, project manager Jeff Beitel brought nearly two years of endless labor to a halt. It had been Beitel’s task to coordinate the schedules of 50 to 60 subcontractors to ensure they delivered a finished product on time.

The 18,144-seat building, with its stunning brick and glass facade, was complete. In the years to come, it would anchor a district that drew suburbanites back downtown and brought captains of sports industry from across the nation to learn how Nationwide Realty Investors had managed such a triumph of urban renewal.

But no such thoughts crossed the minds of Beitel and his 15 to 20 workers who were still in the building at 1:30 a.m. Hours before city and state leaders would speak to the public and media, Beitel just wanted his men to celebrate.

Asman played the role of Andy Dufresne, the prisoner who breaks into the Shawshank office to commandeer the public address system and release the sound of sweet music to the masses. Down below, at event level, the workers frolicked on the ice, intoxicated not as much by the alcohol but the tremendous sense of accomplishment.

Some stadiums age faster than sitting presidents. Twenty years after ground was broken in 1998, Nationwide Arena remains one of the NHL’s best-preserved venues. Built at the cost of $175 million, it serves as a monument to good planning and craftsmanship.

“We were like the perfect team, like the ’85 Chicago Bears,” said Charlie Steitz, whose Sauer Group Inc. installed the ventilation, heating, cooling and plumbing. “Every person was the perfect person for their job.”

The party broke up just before 5 a.m. The bleary-eyed Beitel and others went to breakfast at Tee Jaye’s and a few returned to the arena for the morning dedication. Later that evening, workers were encouraged to bring their families for a free tour of a place that had become like a second home.

Before the McGraw and Hill concert; before the chaos of the Doug MacLean era; before the arrival of NCAA Tournament basketball games and UFC cards; before Mick Jagger sang of getting no satisfaction and before Nick Foligno supplied it with a Blue Jackets playoff overtime-winning goal, the men and women who built Nationwide Arena had one last communion with it.

“It’s funny but you build these buildings and you can go anywhere any time,” Steitz said. “You own the building for two years. Then, all of a sudden, one day they put new locks on the doors and you are not allowed to go anywhere anymore. It’s a weird feeling. I walk around the arena now and I know what’s behind so many doors but I don’t have access to them.”

This is the story of the people who unlocked those doors and opened up the prosperous Columbus district, one that attracts an estimated 6 million visitors annually. It’s the story of the labor they put into a project and the rewards they got out of it — some of which they literally took to their graves.

Robert Woodward, Dimon McFerson and Brian Ellis were instrumental figures in developing the Arena District. (Courtesy of Nationwide Realty Investors)

The facilitator

Dimon McFerson, the former CEO of Nationwide Insurance, woke to headlines of stinging defeat on the morning of May 7, 1997:

“ ‘No’ to arena tax; Issue 1 falls hard, 56%-44%” read The Columbus Dispatch.

Below the fold, another headline stated: “NHL hockey franchise dead …”

For the fifth time in two decades, Franklin County voters had rejected an arena tax issue. The latest proposal, a three-year, 0.5 sales tax, would have helped finance a downtown arena and soccer stadium on the site of the old Ohio Penitentiary.

What made the setback more crushing was the NHL’s plan to add four clubs that would have included Columbus if voters had approved a publicly funded venue.

Just weeks before the league’s expansion committee was to make its final recommendations, the city had no arena and the team’s potential lead investor, Lamar Hunt, was in concession mode.

“This will make it impossible for the National Hockey League to come to Columbus,” Hunt, who owned the city’s MLS team, told The Dispatch. “I’ll say again, we were at the 99.9 percent level as far as certainty of getting a franchise if the issue had passed.”

The MLS was in its infancy with no assurance of survival. Despite its growing population and affluence, it appeared Columbus would not shake its “cow town” reputation. The city’s biggest sports rivals would continue to reside in small towns such as Ann Arbor, Michigan, and West Lafayette, Indiana.

“Arena vote confirms (Ohio State’s) status as king,” boasted a Dispatch column headline May 8.

McFerson wanted one more shot at salvaging the Arena District project. Without any timeouts, he was about to lead the greatest two-minute drive in Columbus sports history.

“It was one of the most fun and foundational days in my life,” McFerson said of the morning after Issue 1’s defeat. “Our offices were on the 36th and 37th floors of the Nationwide building. I was talking with

24 our chief investment officer, Bob Woodward, and we were commiserating and saying how wonderful it would have been for this side of town. It would have taken a blighted area that needed redeveloping and done something spectacular with it.

“I said, ‘Woody, we need to find a way to do something ourselves.’ ”

Two years ago, Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella famously described Zach Werenski’s decision to return to a playoff game despite a facial fracture as having “balls the size of the building.”

Tortorella would have loved the buccaneering McFerson.

The CEO convinced his Nationwide board to privately finance the arena, provided an ownership group for the hockey team was willing to pay an $80 million expansion fee and agree to the terms of the lease.

“Frankly, it took a lot of guts to make the proposal that he made on a conference call to our board,” said Brian Ellis, president and COO of Nationwide Realty Investors. “I don’t know if I have ever seen a gutsier move by a CEO.”

The 120-year-old Ohio Penitentiary was closed in 1984, but some had hoped to preserve a section of the building. (Courtesy of Columbus Landmarks)

The arena site had a bizarre and controversial history. The abandoned and fire-damaged penitentiary, which closed in 1984, had become an eyesore. But a group of preservationists had hoped to keep the southern portion of the complex, with its striking Gothic facade, standing. Some marched in protest. “Save the Pen” T-shirts were created.

Others could not wait to demolish the prison. On Aug. 1, 1990, former mayor Buck Rinehart took controls of a wrecking ball with the intent of flattening part of the 120-year-old penitentiary.

“I’m going to go punch a hole in that place,” Rinehart was quoted as saying in The Dispatch. The mayor’s staff frantically tried reasoning with him, noting the city didn’t have legal title to the property. The mayor responded: “It’s in the middle of our town. That’s good enough for me. I’ll declare martial law.”

By 1997, the prison was gone and the site cleared, but a push for a downtown arena had gained little traction. Ohio State University was in the process of building the Schottenstein Center, home to Buckeyes sporting events and major concerts, and the school’s leadership didn’t see a need for a second new arena in Columbus.

McFerson was running out of time. The NHL had set a June 4, 1997, deadline.

Just as the Nationwide CEO thought he had his ownership coalition in place, Hunt expressed serious reservations. His group balked at the 25-year lease proposal, according to court documents, arguing the expansion club would lose millions because of it.

McFerson found himself almost out of options by the morning of May 30. He turned to a self-made billionaire, a man who grew up in a rural West Virginia home without electricity or indoor plumbing. A man who secured a $600 loan for a single load of steel in 1955 using his ’52 Oldsmobile as collateral.

From humble origins, John H. McConnell, founder of Worthington Industries, built an empire during the next half-century that employed 8,000 workers in 69 locations with about $3 billion in annual sales. McConnell also had agreed to take a small stake in the hockey team if Issue 1 passed.

“I knew John had planned to be a (minority) partner,” McFerson said. “I just called the family and said I would like to come up and talk to you guys and tell you where we are.”

McConnell agreed to a meeting that afternoon. McFerson hopped into his car and readied his pitch. He knew the terms of the lease would be a tough sell even to a man with deep pockets and a philanthropic heart.

But McConnell was willing to take one for the team and his city. How many chances do you get to bring a major-league product to your adopted hometown?

“Mr. Mac looks at me and says, ‘This is important to the city,’ ” McFerson recalled. “He said, ‘if Lamar won’t do it, I’ll do it.’ Those were his exact words. I stood up and said, ‘Are you serious, John?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely. I’ll take what Lamar was going to take.’ That was it. We just shook hands.”

John P. McConnell, the son of the steel magnate, confirmed the framework for an agreement was brokered in one afternoon. McConnell agreed to pay $80 million to become majority owner.

McFerson took his last-second deal to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman on June 2. The league announced on June 17 that Columbus, Atlanta, Nashville and St. Paul, Minnesota, had been tentatively awarded expansion franchises.

The team would begin to play in the 2000-01 season.

“Dimon was adamant about finding a way to move this forward,” said John P. McConnell, who became the Blue Jackets majority owner after his father died at age 84 in 2008. “We were impressed that he took it on so quickly …

“There was urgency around this because the NHL needed to have an answer for their 2000 expansion teams. So there was the phone call and then the meeting and Dad agreed to buy the team. It was a pretty big day and amazing when you think of the timeline.”

Now, McFerson needed to find someone to build him an arena — one with a view of the city.

The visionary

Brian Ellis spent the summer of 1997 traveling across the nation, searching for ideas inside of NHL, NBA and multipurpose venues.

He found his greatest inspiration, however, in baseball parks.

Visits to Cleveland’s then-Jacobs Field and Baltimore’s Camden Yards spoke to him more than any tours of hockey and basketball facilities. Such is the essence of Ellis, an unconventional and uncompromising developer.

He was 35 years old when Nationwide handed him the biggest assignment of his career. While he had worked on big projects in the past, Ellis had no experience with stadiums or arenas.

But a lack of expertise and a tight deadline did not force him into rash decisions or staid building designs.

“What we loved about those baseball stadiums is the way they spilled out from the (lower) bowl into the concourses,” Ellis said. “So they open up and create an experience before you get through the vomitory.”

Picture yourself walking into the left-field entrance at Progressive Field and being immediately greeted by the sight of the diamond. Now, envision your arrival at a Blue Jackets game through the Front Street entrance and seeing the lower bowl.

“This was one of the first arenas to crack the bowl open,” said HOK architect Christopher King, who worked on the arena project with another firm, NBBJ. “It connects the inside and the outside of the building. It connects what’s going on inside the building with what’s going on in the street and that hadn’t been done before.”

Nationwide Arena also became one of the first venues to offer a variety of wrinkles in terms of seating, particularly at the club levels. It introduced terrace tables and a “party tower” for large groups. The structural framing of the tower reduced the roof span at one end of the building.

The arena also became the first in the NHL to include a practice rink — the brainchild of John P. McConnell, according to Ellis.

“That was a really smart idea,” King said. “Lots of teams have practice facilities in the suburbs or miles away. This was considered a major competitive advantage. Players didn’t have to travel all over the city. They were using only one locker room for practices and game days.”

Ellis honored McFerson’s lone request. The Nationwide Boulevard side of the venue is covered in glass, offering fans a window to the city. There are 60,000 square feet of glass in the arena, and King believes few, if any, stadiums of that era could match the total.

“We wanted to leave as little to the imagination as possible,” Ellis said. “It was all about making a great first impression.”

Ellis began looking for an arena architect in the fall of 1997. He met with all the big names in the field but was turned off by hearing their vision for Columbus. The Nationwide contingent wanted someone willing to work with its ideas.

Ellis chose a smaller firm, Heinlein Schrock Sterns, based in Kansas City, and he partnered it with NBBJ. For a businessman keen on initial impressions, Ellis was willing to overlook an awkward first encounter.

“The Heinlein Schrock Sterns office was in a redeveloped area,” he recalled. “We walked in and there’s nobody greeting us. There is no receptionist. We are walking in and literally trying to find these guys. It was like, ‘We’re here from Nationwide for the interview’ and this guy we run into says, ‘Oh, let me find George (Heinlein).’ These guys weren’t ready for us. We ended up getting our own coffee.”

Once the meeting began, however, Ellis loved what he heard. He wasn’t just building a 685,000-square- foot arena, but also developing a district with bars, restaurants, entertainment venues, office space, parking garages, hotels, condos and apartments.

There’s been more than $1 billion in investment into the district in the past two decades.

The Arena District has seen more than $1 billion in investments in the past two decades. (Screenshot courtesy of Nationwide Realty Investors)

Ellis was fanatical about ingress and egress — the flow of people and traffic. He knew the Blue Jackets probably would lose their share of games in the early seasons and the last thing he wanted was angry fans waiting 35 minutes to get out of a parking garage and onto a highway after a 5-0 thumping at the hands of the Predators.

“There was lots of thought into where people were going to park and where they were going to enter the arena,” King said. “There were very detailed analyses of traffic movement. Brian wanted to know how long it would take to dump a garage.”

Ellis loved creative tension as a means of drawing out the best in his designers. He constantly questioned ideas and didn’t mind having architects rip up plans and start over.

The red brick-clad district is filled with little secrets and symbolism. It is Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” come to life.

Arena District designers incorporated remnants of the old prison in the project. These cell doors hang on the Moline Plow Building. (Tom Reed / The Athletic)

Ellis made visitors walk downstairs into Buca di Beppo because the restaurant’s name in Italian roughly translates to “Joe’s basement.”

Throughout the district, visitors can find remnants of the old penitentiary. Two cell doors hang on the west side of the Moline Plow Building. Prison stones are used in the low walls of North Bank Park and a structure in Daniel Burnham Square.

The trestle in Ludlow Alley, which carries thirsty patrons from the arena to the R Bar, was not specially designed for the district. Workers found it abandoned in a field and decided to incorporate it.

“Brian believed there was never a bad time to make a good decision,” King said. “They knew where every dollar made the most impact. They challenged every decision we made and usually for the better. Brian made me a better architect.”

Not bad for a guy who had never built an arena.

Keith Myers made significant contributions to the Arena District project. One of the most audacious was his desire to move the Union Station arch to its current location. (Tom Reed / The Athletic)

The arch mover

In the spring of 1999, Keith Myers woke one day to the sight of his career flashing before his eyes.

Amid all the bold planning that went into the Arena District, perhaps nothing was as audacious as the architect’s desire to move the Union Station arch more than 2,000 feet to the head of McFerson Commons.

Myers understood the massive risks involved and needed the blessing of the mayor’s office before the project could be greenlighted. Any mistake or damage to the 489-ton terra-cotta tile and concrete structure could sink his small firm.

He felt good that International Chimney, the company that relocated the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, had won the bid for the job. What Myers didn’t know is International Chimney had opted to subcontract the work.

“I go out there looking for International Chimney and I see this trailer — and I can’t make this up — that says, ‘Dingey Movers from Zanesville,’ ” Myers recalled. “I am like ‘holy shit, Dingey Movers.’ I’m expecting guys in white coats and calculators, engineers everywhere, and I’ve got Bill Dingey in bib overalls.”

There’s an entire generation of central Ohio residents who have only seen the arch in its current home across from the arena on Nationwide Boulevard. Designed by the legendary Daniel H. Burnham in the beaux-arts classicism style, the arch is a popular backdrop for wedding photos and modeling shoots.

Fans on their way to the arena, Huntington Park and Express Live can stop and read about the history of the monument. They can learn it was part of the North High Street arcade that formed a grand entrance to Union Station. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson delivered his first speech on the Treaty of Versailles after World War I in front of the arcade. Visitors also can discover how the arch was saved from the wrecking ball by a federal judge’s court order in 1976 after the demolition of Union Station had begun. They can read how the salvaging of the arch and its move to Hickory Street spurred the birth of the city’s historical preservation movement.

What’s not on the placards is the colorful tales and the sleepless nights surrounding the arch’s second move across two sets of railroad tracks on the back of 12 dollies.

Dingey Movers of Zanesville was in charge of relocating the 489-ton city landmark in 1999. (Courtesy of Keith Myers)

“That thing wasn’t strapped in, the weight of it just sat there,” said Bart Dingey, the son of Bill. “If a hydraulic line had snapped, that thing was coming down in front of all those television cameras. The stress was overwhelming.”

And to think Myers had begged Ellis to be part of the Arena District project.

“Keith wanted to meet with me,” Ellis said. “I didn’t know him that well. He came into my office and said, ‘I need you to know how important this is for me. This is going to be the most significant thing someone in my position could ever do in his hometown. And you have to let me do it. I’ll do it for free if I have to. You cannot give this to anybody else.’ ”

Ellis named Myers the master-plan architect and paired him with a more seasoned designer. Myers had sketched out his vision for the district, but on the day of a crucial meeting with Ellis and other project executives, he allowed the more experienced architect to show his rendering.

The group did not like what they saw. Sensing his big chance slipping away, Myers reached into his briefcase and pulled out his plan, which included a park across from the arena. They loved it.

Twenty years later, as the 62-year-old Myers sat at a conference table — he’s now Ohio State’s vice president of planning and real estate — he began to cry while recalling the meeting.

“I took that drawing and put it in a frame and gave it to Brian on the night the arena opened,” Myers said.

His original plan did not have a showcase piece at the head of the park. Myers didn’t want to erect a fountain or statue. He wanted “something heroic.” He was dreaming big — 489 tons of big. Every day on his way to work, Myers drove past the arch. He envisioned yoking the city’s past and its future.

What he didn’t realize is the arch could no longer be disassembled. When it was moved the first time from North High to Hickory Street, workers had filled it with mortar never considering someone might want to relocate it.

Myers and his consultant Bob Loversidge decided the risk was worth the reward. They marveled at the sight of the Dingey boys digging beneath the arch’s foundation.

“I remember telling one of them, ‘that takes a lot of courage to be working under there, you could be crushed,’ ” Myers said. “The kid looked at me and said, ‘Nah, working for my dad is a lot scarier.’ ”

Bill Dingey was known for his gruff facade. When a member of a local preservation society, interested in uprooting his house, asked for references, Bill Dingey replied:

“Don’t need references. You drop a house (and) word gets around.”

After weeks of prep work, the arch was loaded on the dollies. The 2,000-foot trek took the moving company two days to complete. They had to pay the railroad $10,000 to reroute train traffic, disconnect overhead power lines and build a ramp over the tracks.

A host of media members and curiosity seekers assembled to witness the engineering feat. Bart Dingey remembered seeing spectators standing on rooftops with cameras.

Myers brought his family to the site and watched a few hours of work before taking his kids to Cincinnati for the weekend. He couldn’t bear the thought of seeing the top-heavy arch crumble to the ground.

The architect returned to his office Monday and found a note from his project manager on his desk.

“It read, ‘good news and bad news on the arch,’ ” he recalled. “‘The bad news is it’s not parallel to Nationwide Boulevard. I thought, ‘well, shit, we’ll figure that out.’ I flipped the note over and it says, ‘He missed by an inch and a half.’

“Bill Dingey was incredible. He jacked it up, rolled it over railroad tracks, moved it 2,000 feet and put it down and missed by an inch and a half. Smartest son of a bitch I’ve met in my life.”

Jeff Beitel served as the arena’s project manager for Turner Construction. His wife, Diane, said despite 12-hour days over two years, Jeff almost never missed family functions, which included coaching their daughters’ basketball teams. (Courtesy of the Beitel family)

The conductor

In the final days before the arena opened, Jeff Beitel excitedly phoned his wife with a bizarre request.

The Turner Construction project manager asked her to look out the front window of their home to see if she could see a beam of light in the night sky. They were testing the spotlight on the top of the arena’s AEP Tower, which shines during Blue Jackets game nights.

“I told him, ‘No, I can’t see it, but we live in Powell,’ ” Diane Beitel said of the suburb, which is a 20- minute drive from downtown.

Beitel thought anything was possible with enough hard work and planning. It was an attitude that made him a perfect choice for a difficult task.

The Ohio State graduate worked at Turner for 27 years and mastered many tough assignments. A big personality with a competitive streak that runs longer than the Scioto River, he liked to say he was “undefeated” in the face of project deadlines.

This one, however, came with a huge penalty if he fell from the ranks of the unbeaten. The NHL was prepared to assess a $10 million fine if the arena wasn’t ready for the start of the 2000-01 season.

Myers and others had heard Ohio State administrators expected that the arena would never be done on time and that the Blue Jackets would have to play at least a few games at the Schottenstein Center.

Beitel proved them wrong.

“This is my crown jewel job,” he loved telling people.

Beitel worked 12-hour days but never neglected his family during the two years of arena construction. He coached youth basketball for his three daughters and almost never missed a game during the project.

Steitz said Beitel possessed a rare gift for someone in his position of prominence. He could be both demanding of his workers and understanding of their plights. Every day, he met with subcontractors and mapped out strategies so they could work effectively and efficiently in different parts of the arena.

There were welders, electricians, painters, plumbers, surveyors, bricklayers, glass makers, maintenance crews. So many moving parts to track.

“The management by Turner was extraordinary,” said Alex Johnson of the Ardit Company, which installed the terrazzo flooring throughout the concourses. “Jeff was one of the good guys. There was a tremendous amount of coordination going on there. From day one, we were working overtime and he managed to keep all the schedules straight.”

Rick Lombardi, vice president and general manager of the local Turner Construction office, said not a single worker was killed or seriously injured on the project — the first in central Ohio to require mandatory drug testing.

Inside Beitel’s trailer hung a sign that read: “Is 99 percent good enough?” Steitz said it listed examples of what happens when people like heart surgeons and automakers “almost” get it right.

One deadline after another was met. When the arena’s skeleton was complete, many workers received commemorative pucks with the inscription: “Structural Steel Topping Out — Oct. 22, 1999.” Those pucks became treasured mementos for everyone on the project.

“Jeff was the driving force behind it,” Steitz said. “He came out of the field and he never lost touch with what it took to build things. He was the ultimate team player, the guy who understood everyone’s role. He was like a symphony conductor.”

Charlie Steitz loved to tease Jeff Beitel about a plot to bury a Pittsburgh Penguins card beneath Nationwide Arena. (Tom Reed / The Athletic)

Beitel was serious about his work, family, golf and poker. Those under his watch, however, could still joke with him.

Steitz is a Pittsburgh native and a lifelong Penguins fan. He loved to threaten Beitel with a plot to bury a 1972-73 Penguins trading card under the concrete slabs.

“A lot of project managers stay in the trailer and some of the workers have no idea who he is,” Steitz said. “Jeff had this amazing ability to be hands-on one minute and pull back and offer a 10,000-foot view the next.”

A day after the workers’ party on the ice, Beitel had 100 tickets to the first McGraw-Hill concert. He invited almost everyone he knew.

“We would go to Blue Jackets games and he would just look around the building with a smile, look around at the good time everyone else was having,” Diane said. “He was so proud of that building and the work that went into it.”

The surveyor and the survivor

Sandy Doyle-Ahern loved pro hockey long before her surveying and civil engineering company began work in the Arena District in the late 1990s. She learned the game at the knee of her father, Trevor Doyle, who took young Sandy to Flyers games when they lived in suburban Philadelphia.

While the president of EMH&T Engineers has become a diehard Blue Jackets fan, you don’t need to rummage too deep into her closet to find the Rick Tocchet No. 22 Flyers jersey she wore throughout high school.

“My father was a textile dyer and he bought chemicals and dyes from a gentleman who also worked as a penalty-time keeper at the old Spectrum,” Sandy said. “We hung out at an arena restaurant where the players would drop in and it gave me a chance to grow up around the Flyers in the 1980s.”

When Nationwide Realty Investors chose to build an arena, she was thrilled for the new fans who would get the opportunity to attend games and concerts, and enjoy the benefits of the surrounding district.

Sandy had no idea, however, she would have the chance to repay Trevor for introducing her to hockey and bringing her so close to the game.

Her elderly parents relocated to Columbus about six years ago to be near Sandy and her growing family. Not long after their move, Trevor was diagnosed with lung cancer.

“We almost lost him because he got pneumonia,” Sandy said fighting back tears.

Trevor, 80, fought through the adversity thanks to great medical care and the support of his wife, Sylvia, and Sandy’s family. The Columbus hockey community also provided a secondary assist. Longtime Blue Jackets broadcaster and cancer survivor Bill Davidge reached out to Trevor in an effort to buoy his spirits.

Davidge has watched Sandy and Trevor become involved in the charitable Blue Jackets Foundation and donate money to his fundraisers.

“They are good people,” Davidge said. “It goes beyond a love for hockey. They go that extra mile with the financial support.”

Attending Blue Jackets games with his daughter has helped Trevor in his recovery process. Among his favorite memories was a between-periods Zamboni ride that Sandy arranged.

“It’s been so gratifying for me,” Trevor said. “It’s not a religious experience, but in some ways, I feel born again. We go to games. We go to Blue Jackets functions. That kind of stuff would have never happened if we were still in Philadelphia,

“It’s beyond father-daughter now. It’s like we are friends of hockey.”

Sandy Doyle-Ahern was introduced to hockey by her father, Trevor, in Philadelphia. After Trevor moved to Columbus six years ago, his daughter turned him into a Blue Jackets fan. (Courtesy of the Doyle-Ahern family)

Sandy has been a season-ticket holder since the club’s inception. She has four tickets for family and two others that she raffles off to fellow EMH&T employees.

The family has watched the club grow through difficult and even tragic times. Sandy and her husband, Michael, were in the building March 16, 2002, when a deflected puck flew into the stands and struck a young fan, Brittanie Cecil, in the left temple. Brittanie died two days later at age 13. The incident led the NHL to require mandatory netting at both ends of rinks to protect fans seated in the end zones.

“I can’t imagine the unspeakable tragedy her family went through and it’s so sad for them and for the legacy of the arena,” said Sandy, who has two teenage daughters. “… I’m glad the reaction was to take care of reducing the fan risk, and if anyone ever complains that it makes it hard to see, it’s a pretty easy explanation why (the nets) are there.”

Sandy’s favorite player is Cam Atkinson — not only for his scoring ability but also his community outreach. Atkinson has played a major role for a franchise that’s qualified for the postseason in each of the past two years.

But Sandy’s favorite moment involves another player. She was at Nationwide Arena on April 23, 2014, as Foligno scored the overtime winner that knotted the Blue Jackets’ series against the Penguins at two games apiece.

Many interviewed for this story list Foligno’s goal as the arena’s greatest highlight.

“I was with my wife and 20,000 of our closest friends,” Brian Ellis recalled. “I can’t remember a more exciting feeling. It was our first home playoff win and nobody wanted to go home. I think we all ended up at the R Bar.”

Sandy and Trevor are hopeful even better nights lie ahead. Trevor, who emigrated from England to Canada in 1956, has quite the hockey history. He’s lived in Toronto, Montreal and Philadelphia at times when those cities won titles.

Imagine a Stanley Cup parade down Nationwide Boulevard.

Bill Dingey might have to reinforce the arch’s foundation.

Mark Greiner has worked at Nationwide Arena since it opened in 2000. He’s tasked with the building’s maintenance. (Tom Reed / The Athletic)

The fixer

Mark Greiner begins every workday walking through the entire facility listening for trouble.

Before the first player or coach enters Nationwide Arena, the 61-year-old assistant general manager of operations takes advantage of the morning’s stillness to hear whether the building is talking back to him.

Is that motor above the ceiling in the upper concourse making a funny sound? What’s that squeaky noise near the cooling units?

“I tell my doctor I get my 10,000 steps in and he says, ‘that’s good, Mark,’ and I say, ‘No, I get my 10,000 steps in by noon,’ ” Greiner said. “Since I have been here, I have had two knees and a hip replaced from all the walking and stairs. I hate stairs.”

Upon its completion, Nationwide Arena was lauded for its architectural design. In recent years, many of the compliments are reserved for its maintenance. It doesn’t look or feel like a stadium that’s 18 years old.

Hollywood starlets aren’t as well preserved or chemically enhanced as the arena. Greiner is the one in charge of the Botox.

Among his crew of 11 workers, two men are assigned to paint every day. That’s right, every day. The minute Greiner spots a chip in a wall or scuff mark, he grabs his walkie-talkie and notifies a painter of his location.

People around the NHL have taken note.

“What’s impressed me about Nationwide is how modern it’s looked from day one,” said Oilers coach Ken Hitchcock, who spent parts of four seasons with the Blue Jackets.

Greiner was hired by former team president Doug MacLean not long after the building opened in 2000.

His crew’s responsibilities used to include arena changeover — the transformation of the event floor from a concert setting or a basketball court to a hockey rink. In those days, Greiner prayed the Blue Jackets did not get an unfavorable carom off the glass or boards in the first game after a changeover.

“Oh, you would hear about it from Doug if there was a bad bounce,” Greiner said. “But the thing about him is he always apologized.”

Greiner grew up playing hockey. So have his kids. He loves the sport and those who are a part of it.

Last spring, former Blue Jackets coach Gerard Gallant invited Greiner to Las Vegas to attend a Stanley Cup Final game. Gallant’s expansion Golden Knights reached the championship round, and he wanted his buddy — the two families became close during the coach’s time in Columbus — to experience the atmosphere.

Greiner has been to games in other NHL markets, but he rarely finds himself watching the action on the ice. He’s too busy looking for potential maintenance issues.

Brian Johnson, who’s worked in the arena for 18 years, is a floor technician. He operates three floor scrubbers. (Tom Reed / The Athletic)

The operations manager isn’t the only one who takes pride in Nationwide’s appearance.

“I’m trying to go full-go every day,” said Brian Johnson, a floor technician who works under another maintenance supervisor. “Hard work is a good habit.”

Johnson operates floor scrubbers that look like mini-Zambonis. Hardly a day passes when you can’t find workers in the concourses tending to some project.

Not that there isn’t room for improvement.

The arena received an unfavorable review in a recent ESPN report that rated all 111 North American pro stadiums on food-safety inspections at concession stands. Nationwide had the third-worst mark among NHL arenas.

Those responsibilities, however, do not fall under Greiner’s watch. His job is to keep mechanical operations humming.

Columbus City Council recently approved a 5 percent ticket tax on local sporting and entertainment events that will generate an estimated $2.4 million for arena repairs. (Ohio State sporting events are not subjected.) Blue Jackets president Mike Priest supported the measure for Nationwide Arena tickets because the money would go toward capital expenses needed at the venue.

Arenas are like homes. There’s always something that requires fixing. Greiner’s biggest fear is freezing pipes during the cold-weather months. And so he keeps his eyes and ears open for the first signs of problems.

“I know more about doors than I ever thought I’d have to know,” Greiner said.

“(Former team executive) Jim Clark and (former assistants) Rick Wamsley and Gord Murphy will come into town and say how good the building looks. They say it still looks the way it did in the first five years.”

Of course, there are a lot of new parts since 2000. Just ask Greiner’s orthopedic surgeon.

HOK architect Christopher King is one of many who worked on the Nationwide Arena project to keep the commemorative pucks given out by Turner Construction. (Tom Reed / The Athletic)

The credits

A few months ago, Dimon McFerson returned to Columbus for the first time in three years. He retired from Nationwide not long after the arena opened. The 81-year-old Mormon lives in St. George, Utah, surrounded by children and grandkids.

McFerson attended an Ohio State football game before taking a carload of friends to the Arena District. He showed them the home of the Blue Jackets, the baseball stadium and the commons that bear his name. He couldn’t help but smile.

“It got developed just the way we thought it would with five- and six-story brick buildings with a traditional look that will last forever,” McFerson said. “I think we moved the center of town four blocks north for a couple of decades.”

Not everything went according to plan, however.

Lamar Hunt, who died in 2006, was right. The 25-year arena lease became a financial burden to ownership and the franchise. And, eventually taxpayers. The Blue Jackets couldn’t draw on traditional revenue streams such as parking and arena naming rights, which were owned by Nationwide. The team’s chronic losing over the first decade drove down attendance and, unlike other major sports leagues, the NHL has no lucrative American television contracts to help prop up needy teams.

Club officials acknowledged losing $80 million over a seven-year stretch in 2009. Three years later, the arena transitioned from private to public ownership as the Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority bought it and agreed to allow the Blue Jackets to remain rent-free in exchange for the promise of staying through 2039.

The cautionary tale has not stopped other cities from visiting the Arena District to gain insight into developing their own projects. Officials from Detroit, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Sacramento to name a few have toured the area.

“That is the ultimate compliment: We love what you have done here and how can we do it in our city?” Ellis said. “My answer is there’s no magic formula. It’s specific to every market and it’s hard to replicate it.”

Among the great ironies is that two decades after voters rejected plans for a downtown arena and soccer stadium, it appears Columbus will have both. New Crew SC ownership is expected to move the club into a $230 million soccer stadium as part of a public-private venture. It will anchor a new “Confluence Village” that’s adjacent to the Arena District.

Alex Johnson, who helped lay the terrazzo in Nationwide Arena, is amazed at how the area has grown up around the arena. One of the evergreen perks, he said, is when his involvement in the project comes up in casual conversation.

“It’s an extraordinary accomplishment for the community,” he said. “It’s allowed the city to grow beyond the image that it was a cow town.

“When you get the opportunity to say, ‘I had a little part in that,’ you pick your shoulders up a little bit. You push your chest out a little more.”

The names of almost every worker who had a hand in the arena’s construction appear on a giant wall display that hangs in the main concourse near the Front Street entrance.

“It’s one of the sharper-looking buildings in the league,” Blue Jackets center Brandon Dubinsky said. “You see some of these places and they are ugly and gray and spacey-looking kind of buildings. Having

36 been here as a fan for concerts, they have done a great job with the setup and the seating and the amenities that went with it.”

Jeff Beitel, a big Blue Jackets fan, didn’t live long enough to see his club’s rise to respectability and perennial playoff contention.

In the summer of 2008, he was suffering debilitating headaches on a family vacation in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Weeks later, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer.

Beitel, who became a vice president at Turner, worked until a month before he died on Aug. 17, 2009. He was 50.

He is survived by his wife and their three daughters: Shannon, Brittany and Stephanie.

Diane no longer attends Blue Jackets games, but in the couple’s bedroom, she keeps an 11-by-18 picture of her husband and other Turner employees standing in a semicircle at center ice.

“After the Nationwide job, he was given the chance to work on the renovation of the Horseshoe,” Diane said. “He was an Ohio State grad and he loved Buckeyes football. It was a big assignment. But nothing in terms of work ever meant more than being a part of building Nationwide Arena.

On Aug. 20, 2009, hundreds of mourners gathered at Rodman Neeper Funeral Home. They expressed condolences and shared their favorite Jeff Beitel stories. They talked about the party on the night before the arena opened.

As the crowd inside the parlor thinned, Charlie Steitz made a request to Diane. Steitz and Beitel had been good friends. He was the one who teased Beitel about burying the Penguins card in the arena.

Steitz reached into his pocket and grabbed one of the commemorative pucks given to so many Nationwide Arena workers.

He placed it inside the casket.

(Top photo courtesy of Nationwide Realty Investors)

UPDATE: This story was updated after publication to reflect it is Dimon McFerson. An earlier version was not correct.

The Athletic / Revealing GM tendencies: Which NHL GMs trade the most? When do they like to deal?

By Craig Custance, The Athletic – December 17, 2018

When it comes to NHL trading season, a time of year we’re gradually starting to enter, we’re constantly looking for clues about what’s to come. It’s part of the fun. If there’s a bunch of scouts at a game, it’s noted. If a team sends multiple executives to see an opposing team play in consecutive games, it’s noted. Last week, one scout even pointed out that two executives seemed to be having an intense conversation in the press box. It could have been over a fantasy football transaction for all we know, but it was definitely noted. We can’t help it.

But rather than trying to interpret the schedules of NHL scouts, there might be a better way to project which teams are going to be busy and when – Look at history. General managers, especially those with a bit of a track record, have tendencies. You can count on Penguins GM Jim Rutherford making a trade in November or December if he doesn’t like what he sees. Often it involves Carl Hagelin. Red Wings GM Ken Holland is more patient. He doesn’t tend to do offseason deals. A majority of his deals are done closer to the deadline.

What are other trends? How active are the league’s GMs and when? Combing through the transaction data collected at nhltradetracker.com, we set out to find those answers and more.

The information tracked:

For every GM (except Paul Fenton, Kyle Dubas, Don Waddell and Julien BriseBois because there just weren’t enough transactions to unearth trends), five years of transactions were added up and broken down into multiple categories. First was the time of year each GM made their trade: Offseason, evaluation period (Oct. 1 to Dec. 31) and trade deadline window (Jan. 1 to the trade deadline). Then came a bit of subjective tracking. Each trade was identified as either a hockey trade (player for player), buying, selling and other. Trades that fell in the other category tended to be trades around Vegas’ expansion draft, moving up/down in the draft, and Marc Savard-like trades made for cap reasons.

Because not every GM has been employed for the past five years, in order to level the playing field and identify the most/least active, the total number of trades completed by a GM was divided by total months employed as the GM over the past five years to get a trades per month stat. To give it perspective, the average NHL GM completed 0.54 trades per month employed. Anything close to one indicates a heightened aggression on the trade front. The types of trades made and time was converted into percentages to make reasonable comparisons among GMs.

All trades are created equal in this exercise. So Shea Weber for P.K. Subban counts the same as Cody McLeod for Felix Girard. In fact, many of the trades completed were closer to AHL deals than NHL deals, accounting for the high number of hockey trades in a league where they don’t seem all too frequent. It’s also worth noting that how active a GM is in the trade market doesn’t necessarily equate success or lack thereof.

Let’s dive in.

The Most Active GMs

1. George McPhee, Vegas Golden Knights

Trades/month: 1.05

Hockey trade: 9 percent

Buying: 14 percent

Selling: 23 percent

Other: 55 percent

McPhee’s numbers are inflated by a huge number of deals centered around the expansion draft. So far, 77 percent of his trades were in the offseason, which is considerably higher than any other GM. But he was also active at the deadline last season. He was believed to be in hot pursuit of Erik Karlsson and then pivoted to the Tomas Tatar deal in the final minutes of the deadline. He also swung the big Max Pacioretty deal. He’s been active.

2. John Chayka, Arizona Coyotes

Trades/month: 1.03

Hockey trade: 59 percent

Buying: 25 percent

Selling: 9 percent

Other: 6 percent

Compared to his colleagues, a trades per month number north of one is remarkable. Chayka likes to deal and his trades come at all times of the year. The deals also come in all forms, from taking on contracts for cap space to trading a pick to get negotiating rights to a free agent. If Chayka hasn’t made a deal in a couple weeks, get ready.

3. Marc Bergevin, Montreal Canadiens

Trades/month: 0.85

Hockey trade: 53 percent

Buying: 25 percent

Selling: 22 percent

Other: 0 percent

Bergevin has made some memorable deals during his tenure as Canadiens GM, adding Shea Weber, Max Domi and Jonathan Drouin. Over 50 percent of his trades are hockey deals rather than just buying and selling, which is a high number. He’s also one of the most active GMs in the trade deadline period.

4. Stan Bowman, Chicago Blackhawks

Trades/month: 0.73

Hockey trade: 57 percent

Buying: 18 percent

Selling: 18 percent

Other: 7 percent

Bowman likes to deal. Besides his willingness to strike hockey deals (like the Artemi Panarin and Brandon Saad blockbusters), he’s also typically decisive at the trade deadline, selling when appropriate or buying when necessary.

5. Bob Murray, Anaheim Ducks

Trades/month: 0.67

Hockey trade: 45 percent

Buying: 35 percent

Selling: 15 percent

Other: 5 percent

Murray is another GM who aggressively looks to improve his team during the season rather than the offseason. His numbers during the first few months of the season are high and he’s one of the few guys who has a track record of making significant trades in the season’s first few months, including the Sami Vatanen/Adam Henrique deal with the New Jersey Devils in November of 2017.

6. Peter Chiarelli, Edmonton Oilers

Trades/month: 0.66

Hockey trade: 34 percent

Buying: 28 percent

Selling: 38 percent

Other: 0 percent

Chiarelli’s deals are spread out fairly evenly, showing a willingness to make trades at any point of the season. He’s another GM that is higher than his colleagues during the season’s early months, using trades to shake things up early. Of his trades with the Oilers, 24 percent were made in the evaluation period.

7 (tied). Jarmo Kekalainen, Columbus Blue Jackets

Trades/month: 0.63

Hockey trade: 53 percent

Buying: 16 percent

Selling: 26 percent

Other: 5 percent

Kekalainen is definitely not afraid to make a big deal, and history shows they tend to work out well for the Blue Jackets. He added cornerstones Seth Jones and Panarin through trades, and with so much uncertainty surrounding potential UFAs Panarin and Sergei Bobrovsky, Kekalainen will be a man of interest in the next few months.

7 (tied). Jason Botterill, Buffalo Sabres

Trades/month: 0.63

Hockey trade: 33 percent

Buying: 33 percent

Selling: 25 percent

Other: 8 percent

It’s a bit early to try and detect trends with Botterill, but he’s already done well with his early trades for the Sabres. Jeff Skinner was a home run, while the Evander Kane and Ryan O’Reilly deals have stocked him with ammunition to keep dealing if he wants.

7 (tied). Dale Tallon, Florida Panthers

Trades/month: 0.63

Hockey trade: 45 percent

Buying: 29 percent

Selling: 16 percent

Other: 11 percent

Half of Tallon’s deals with the Panthers happened at the trade deadline. His history suggests that if the Panthers are even close to being in the playoff race, he’ll make a push to try and help them get in.

In the Middle

10. Lou Lamoriello, New York Islanders

Trades/month: 0.59

Hockey trade: 45 percent

Buying: 15 percent

Selling: 40 percent

Other: 0 percent

This is a combination of data from Lamoriello’s time with the Islanders and with the Maple Leafs. It’s skewed in part because he was dealing with a rebuild situation in Toronto, with a high selling percentage. He’s a guy who makes most of his deals (65 percent) in the trade deadline window, so he’s one to watch in the coming months.

11. Pierre Dorion, Ottawa Senators

Trades/month: 0.59

Hockey trade: 32 percent

Buying: 37 percent

Selling: 26 percent

Other: 5 percent

The Matt Duchene trade aside, Dorion tends to do his business between January and March. There are some high-end potential rental options in Ottawa this season, so it should be another active stretch for Dorion.

12. Ray Shero, New Jersey Devils

Trades/month: 0.58

Hockey trade: 36 percent

Buying: 32 percent

Selling: 24 percent

Other: 8 percent

Shero’s numbers indicate a willingness to deal at any time of the season and in a variety of forms. He was active at the deadline last season, adding Pat Maroon and Michael Grabner. He’s made significant offseason trades in Taylor Hall and Kyle Palmieri, and he picked up Sami Vatanen during the evaluation period.

13. Jim Rutherford, Pittsburgh Penguins

Trades/month: 0.54

Hockey trade: 48 percent

Buying: 28 percent

Selling: 17 percent

Other: 7 percent

If we were to rate trades made on a significance scale, Rutherford would be high. He likes to address concerns earlier in the season rather than later in order to give new players a chance to fit in. There’s been a payoff with guys like Carl Hagelin and Trevor Daley becoming a big part of success.

14. Jeff Gorton, New York Rangers

Trades/month: 0.51

Hockey trade: 52 percent

Buying: 19 percent

Selling: 29 percent

Other: 0 percent

Most of Gorton’s heavy lifting has come around the trade deadline with the Rangers identified as very clear buyers or sellers during his tenure. As the Rangers continue their rebuild, the selling percentage will likely continue to grow.

15 (tied). Rob Blake, Los Angeles

Trades/month: 0.50

Hockey trade: 70 percent

Buying: 10 percent

Selling: 20 percent

Other: 0 percent

It’s early in the Rob Blake era but this next stretch will be an interesting one for a GM who is likely going to look to get younger and faster on the fly in Los Angeles. He’s only made two trades that fell in the selling category and that number is going to increase before the deadline.

15 (tied). David Poile, Nashville Predators

Trades/month: 0.50

Hockey trade: 47 percent

Buying: 30 percent

Selling: 20 percent

Other: 3 percent

Poile is fearless. Major trades have brought in P.K. Subban, Kyle Turris and Ryan Johansen. He’s not afraid of the midseason blockbuster, but this season is setting up to make him more of a traditional deadline buyer.

17. Jim Benning, Vancouver Canucks

Trades/month: 0.49

Hockey trade: 41 percent

Buying: 22 percent

Selling: 37 percent

Other: 0 percent

So far, Benning has done more tinkering with his trades than doing anything considered blockbuster with moving Ryan Kesler as the exception. But his ability to identify talent is evident even in the smaller trades.

18. Brad Treliving, Calgary Flames

Trades/month: 0.46

Hockey trade: 38 percent

Buying: 38 percent

Selling: 23 percent

Other: 0 percent

Treliving’s trade frequency is slightly below average, but when he makes deals, they tend to be trades of consequence. There were the two big deals involving Dougie Hamilton. The Travis Hamonic trade was a big one. And Treliving has twice traded for a starting goalie.

19. Joe Sakic, Colorado Avalanche

Trades/month: 0.45

Hockey trade: 48 percent

Buying: 26 percent

Selling: 26 percent

Other: 0

He’s a bit on the conservative side in terms of deal-making but that patient approach helped him bring in a huge return for Duchene. He’s made 57 percent of his trades in the trade deadline window, and it will be interesting to see how he approaches the deadline with his team on the cusp of serious contention.

20. Doug Wilson, San Jose Sharks

Trades/month: 0.42

Hockey trade: 36 percent

Buying: 28 percent

Selling: 32 percent

Other: 4 percent

We’re getting to a point in the list where it’s populated by long-time general managers who are going to have a slightly below average trades per month number simply because of their long tenure. We know

Wilson likes to be in on the big names when they become available. He’s also decisive at the trade deadline as his buying/selling numbers indicate.

21. Jim Nill, Dallas Stars

Trades/month: 0.40

Hockey trade: 42 percent

Buying: 25 percent

Selling: 29 percent

Other: 4 percent

Nill has made some notable trades, with Tyler Seguin still the standout trade on his resume, but Nill’s history suggests that the preference for him may be internal solutions rather than a big midseason trade.

22. Chuck Fletcher, Philadelphia Flyers

Trades/month: 0.38

Hockey trade: 40 percent

Buying: 35 percent

Selling: 20 percent

Other: 5 percent

Fletcher’s data is all from his time with the Minnesota Wild and his numbers suggest that his heavy preference is to use his entire evaluation time to figure out what he has with his team and then strike a deal closer to the deadline. Of his trades in Minnesota, 80 percent were made during the trade deadline window after Jan. 1, significantly higher than any of his colleagues.

23. Doug Armstrong, St. Louis Blues

Trades/month: 0.35

Hockey trade: 43 percent

Buying: 33 percent

Selling: 19 percent

Other: 5 percent

We know Armstrong isn’t afraid to make big deals and his lower trade numbers are in part because of his longevity. But Armstrong doesn’t tend to tinker. When he deals, he deals. Ryan O’Reilly, Kevin Shattenkirk, Paul Stastny, T.J. Oshie, Brayden Schenn, Ryan Miller, Jay Bouwmeester are all players involved in an Armstrong blockbuster. So when you hear big names are available in St. Louis, it shouldn’t be surprising.

Conservative and Patient

24. Brian MacLellan, Washington Capitals

Trades/month: 0.33

Hockey trade: 17 percent

Buying: 50 percent

Selling: 11 percent

Other: 22 percent

We’ve only seen MacLellan operate during an era in which the Capitals were in the Stanley Cup hunt, evidenced by his high buying number. MacLellan’s two biggest deadline deals (Shattenkirk and Curtis Glencross) didn’t necessarily pan out. His subtle move for Michal Kempny certainly did, so that may be his preference moving forward.

25. Don Sweeney, Boston Bruins

Trades/month: 0.30

Hockey trade: 23 percent

Buying: 54 percent

Selling: 23 percent

Other: 0 percent

Sweeney made a couple blockbusters early in his tenure, providing a blueprint on how to reset the clock for a team with an aging core. He’s also an aggressive buyer at the deadline when the Bruins are in it. But he hasn’t been a high volume guy during his time as GM of the Bruins.

26. Ken Holland, Detroit Red Wings

Trades/month: 0.28

Hockey trade: 12 percent

Buying: 29 percent

Selling: 53 percent

Other: 6 percent

If Holland is going to deal, it’s likely going to happen close to the trade deadline. In the past five years, his offseason trades were either moving in the draft or AHL player deals. The Red Wings have come up recently in trade speculation regarding Jimmy Howard and Gustav Nyquist, but history suggests those won’t get done until closer to the deadline, if at all.

27. Kevin Cheveldayoff, Winnipeg Jets

Trades/month: 0.25

Hockey trade: 27 percent

Buying: 27 percent

Selling: 20 percent

Other: 27 percent

The Jets are a Western Conference powerhouse, and they were built through patience and drafting. Cheveldayoff’s conservative approach resulted in frustration from fans earlier in his tenure but nobody is complaining right now with the Jets very much a legitimate Stanley Cup contender.

When are GMs Making Deals

Most Active During Evaluation Period

(percentage of trades GM made from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31)

1. Jim Rutherford, Penguins – 28 percent

2. Jim Nill, Stars – 25 percent

3. Peter Chiarelli, Oilers – 24 percent

Marc Bergevin, Canadiens – 24 percent

Ray Shero, Devils – 24 percent

6. Dale Tallon, Panthers – 21 percent

7. Bob Murray, Ducks – 20 percent

8. John Chayka, Coyotes – 19 percent

9. Brad Treliving, Flames – 19 percent

10. Jeff Gorton, Rangers – 19 percent

Most Active During Trade Deadline Window

(percentage of trades GM made between Jan. 1 and trade deadline)

1. Chuck Fletcher – 80 percent

2. Lou Lamoriello – 65 percent

3. Jarmo Kekalainen – 63 percent

4. David Poile – 60 percent

5. Ken Holland, Red Wings – 59 percent

6. Pierre Dorion – 58 percent

7. Joe Sakic, Avalanche – 57 percent

8. Brian MacLellan – 56 percent

9. Stan Bowman, Blackhawks – 55 percent

10. Don Sweeney, Bruins – 54 percent

History suggests this group prefers to make their trades after Jan. 1 and before the trade deadline. The way the standings are shaping up, most of these guys should be active again.

TSN.CA / Hakstol fired amid one of bloodiest stretches for NHL coaches ever

By Frank Seravalli, TSN – December 17, 2018

PHILADELPHIA — Coaching in the NHL is a cold business. There’s no hiding from it. Years of close friendship and Stanley Cup memories routinely unravel on the result of an ill-fated road trip.

But even the ugliest of coaching divorces are at least usually a clean split.

Rarely does a team allow a coach to dangle out there like the Philadelphia Flyers did with Dave Hakstol, who was mercifully fired on Monday after parts of four seasons at the helm.

That a coaching change became necessary was no shock. The Flyers rolled over and quit on Hakstol on their swing through Western Canada.

It was the execution that was botched.

Hours after a report surfaced on Sunday that Hakstol was fired, the Flyers denied the story and said definitively: “Dave Hakstol is our coach.” A spokesman said practice would resume on Monday and even after the team took the ice without Hakstol, there was no official word.

A mess was made of Hakstol for the hockey world to see, an embarrassing fumble played out in real time on social media for one of the game’s proudest franchises.

The Flyers have sliced and diced plenty over their 51 years - from Roger Neilson and then-GM Bob Clarke saying “we didn’t tell him to go get cancer” to firing Peter Laviolette three games into a season - but someone must have forgotten to sharpen the guillotine in South Philadelphia.

“I just felt there was a disconnect,” Flyers GM Chuck Fletcher said of Hakstol and his team. “When the communication breaks down, I guess ... when the message wasn’t received you get to a point where this is what happens. You make a change and you try to get a different voice ... I felt it was in everybody’s best interest, including Dave, to make this decision sooner rather than later once it came to this point.”

Hakstol was fired amid one of the bloodiest stretches for coaches in NHL history.

Five coaches have been canned over the last 44 days since Los Angeles axed John Stevens on Nov. 4, including Joel Quenneville in Chicago on Nov. 6, Mike Yeo in St. Louis on Nov. 19, Todd McLellan in Edmonton on Nov. 20 and Hakstol.

Only one season in the history of the game has seen more in-season coaching changes than this one - in 2011-12 when seven bench bosses were fired.

We still have a week to go until Christmas. Perhaps the spirit of the NHL's unique holiday roster freeze can be extended behind the bench.

Because the volatility has been incredible, even for NHL standards. Case in point: Hakstol had not made it three and a half seasons with the Flyers, where he was already the third-longest tenured coach in franchise history, and only three men in the NHL had been at their post longer: Tampa Bay’s Jon Cooper, Winnipeg’s Paul Maurice and Nashville’s Laviolette.

More than one-third of the NHL (11 teams) has turned over coaching staffs since the buzzer sounded on the end of last regular season in April. That was bound to happen after last season was the first in the expansion era to not have a single in-season coaching change.

And more change is on the way.

Three clubs, now including the Flyers, have coaches operating on an interim basis. The Kings and Blues have promised nothing to Willie Desjardins and Craig Berube.

Fletcher promoted AHL Lehigh Valley Phantoms coach Scott Gordon for what essentially amounts to a 51-game tryout for the job. Gordon, 55, coached the New York Islanders for parts of three seasons from 2008-11.

“My expectation is that Scott will be the head coach for the rest of the year,” Fletcher told reporters. “I’m going to begin a process to identify what I think the qualities of the next head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers needs ... In all honesty, I’m not sure how long that will take. Until I know what I’m looking for, I can’t find it.”

For Hakstol, who became the first coach in 25 years since “Badger” Bob Johnson to jump from the NCAA to the NHL when he was hired by former GM Ron Hextall in 2015, it was a failed experiment. Hextall was fired by the Flyers two weeks ago on Dec. 3.

Hakstol did not win a round in two Stanley Cup playoff appearances. He compiled a 134-101-42 record for a .560 points percentage, a perfectly middling record in today’s game.

He was also never evaluated with the benefit of proper goaltending. The Flyers had a team save percentage of .897 over the last three seasons, better than only Carolina (.8966) league-wide in that span. That the Flyers qualified for the playoffs in one of those seasons is impressive.

Unquestionably, part of the reason Hakstol was fired was the stalled development of some of the team’s young stars. Defenceman Ivan Provorov, 21, has experienced growing pains after a 17-goal campaign. No. 2 overall pick Nolan Patrick, 20, has taken a step back after closing last season on a tear. Shayne Gostisbehere, 25, has been a shell of his former self this season.

It will be on Gordon to shepherd along top goaltending prospect and Team Canada World Junior star Carter Hart, who was recalled from the AHL on Monday. Hart will be the Flyers’ sixth goaltender to see time this season, the second team ever to do that before Christmas.

Fletcher said the Flyers’ goal is “still to make the playoffs.” So, who’s next?

Fletcher denied a report that said Joel Quenneville accepted the job to be the club’s next coach, saying he hasn’t "spoken with Joel for probably over two years.”

“No, he’s under contract with Chicago, I haven’t asked for permission,” Fletcher said.

Yes, the search is on - for the next man up to be fired. We all have an expiration date, but hopefully nothing like coaches in the NHL.

Contact Frank Seravalli on Twitter: @frank_seravalli