The Two-Line Pass

Here is a list of left wings that are currently under contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets: Rick Nash, Fredrik Modin, Kristian Huselius, Jason Chimera, and Raffi Torres.

Here is a list of centers that are currently under contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets: Jiri Novotny, Manny Malhotra, and Derick Brassard.

Here is a list of right wings that are currently under contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets: Jared Boll.

So today they signed R.J. Umberger and Mike Peca. Both centers.

The Columbus Post Dispatch also reported that they will negotiate with two restricted free agents, goaltender Pascal Leclaire and center/left wing (again, not right wing) Nikita Filatov.

Umm, does Scott Howson not see a problem with this? A center is not a right wing, and neither is a left wing. What the hell is Columbus going to do this year? The best remaining right wings in the free agent pool are David Vyborny (26 points last season), who played in Columbus last year and in whom Howson has expressed little interest, Trevor Letowski (18 points) and Martin Lapointe (13). All three are north of 30 and all three, frankly, were never especially good.

Columbus has a few very mediocre prospects to fill its right side, but any team that wants to make the playoffs for the first time in franchise history, which is ostensibly what Columbus is trying to achieve, probably shouldn’t have Adam Pineault getting second-line minutes every night.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Sum-sum-summertime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.