EP Rinkside Prospect Pool Rankings: No. 26 Ranked Columbus Blue Jackets

If one considers that there are teams that are yet to win a Stanley Cup for a span of time longer than the Columbus Blue Jackets have existed; their run to the second round of the playoffs this spring was worth the price of admission.

A series of deadline gambles that Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekäläinen made — which suffered a great amount of scrutiny at the time — is the reason that run was possible. There were some that believed the Jackets might not even make the playoffs at the time. Talk about a gamble.

The next few years will be painful. Partly because the Blue Jackets didn’t achieve their goal of winning the cup with Matt Duchene, Ryan Dzingel, Sergei Bobrovsky, and Artemi Panarin on their roster. Mainly because they didn’t have a draft pick in the first three rounds of the